Bendigo!

Hooray! The 15th of July is a day I've been looking forward to for months, and not because my little brother turns 34 (Happy Birthday, Simon!). No, today is the first day of the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Festival weekend.

It was a difficult and boring drive for 2 hours... :)

They hold the Wool Festival at the showgrounds, and it's a pretty big event, the biggest wool festival in Australia, I'd say. There are big tents and sheds full of fibery goodness! I bought a few things from Mandie at EGMTK.

(Spent about 30 minutes sorting through the piles, with an armful of ever-changing fibre selections. So long that other customers started asking me questions... lol)

There are three merino/bamboo/silk ones there, and one merino/seacell (number 4) and one merino/milk (number 2).

Also chose some fibre from Ixchel. L-R they are BFL(blue faced leicester)/glitz(?)/angora, merino/angora/tencel and cashmere/tencel/glitz/bamboo. (Touching that last one was deadly. I warned off two other customers). I'm noticing I picked a few similar colors, but there's nothing wrong with that ;)



This is SpinningWoodie (on Rav) who makes knitterly woodcraft. I bought the niddy noddy and the darning mushroom from him, and asked if I could take his photo. He said his wife knocked up the knitted Viking gear.

(The fibre there was from Kathy's shop, but since it's called "Timber" I thought it belonged)

Here are a couple of things from the display cabinets I liked: a woven scarf whose ends were twisted and plied, a crocheted-hearts scarf and a hexagon-lace knitted scarf.


I also bought a book on weaving with Ashford knitter's looms (as I plan to buy one with some tax return money, having not spent enough today) and a jumbo flyer and bobbin for my wheel, which will make life easier in my spinning universe.

Pretty soon, though, it occurred to me that I'd spent a fair bit of money without buying any yarn!

Top left is some laceweight silk from Ixchel, and the top right is DK possum/merino/alpaca/nylon from Fibreworks. Also from Fibreworks, some DK merino in a color I loved. Bought three, because I can't always do one-skein projects.

Here is the other color (merino/silk) that I got from Kathy's, as well as a matching fibre called Sparkle. LOL. I don't know if/how I'll spin them together, but I might find a way.


Somewhere in amongst all that shopping, I grabbed a mini pumpkin pizza from the brick pizza oven, watched a fashion parade and chatted with strangers about my hat and gloves and their spinning wheels and dyes. I looked at the baby animals (the black baby piglet was so cute but would not stand still), wandered around the sheep tents, watched the dog herding, and didn't get in one single stitch of knitting... (I did compare my half-knitted Proposition glove with a shopkeeper's completed pair of Propositions, though, so it was worth carrying it around.)

Then I headed out of the showgrounds and straight down the road to the Bendigo Woollen Mills bargain room. Just got some Luxury 4ply (green and middle-grey) and some cotton 4ply (left and right greys).

I stopped in at the Lansell shopping center for a bit before driving home. And now I have 5 minutes left of the day to do some spinning for TdF, or I won't be able to say I spun every day...

ihasta luego!