So, March 2011 and I had a big box of fleece. An exceedingly big box for a newish spinner! The obvious thing was to share it round my spinning friends.
I sent some to Barbro in Finland and she used her skills and experience to spin the different types of Boreray fibres and wrote a fascinating blog post about it.
Wonderwool Wales was coming up and every year Amber and her Ravelry helpers organise a Raverly activities area where Ravelry members can meet friends and money can be raised for Air Ambulance. I decided that a great way to share round the Boreray fleece & raise money for Air Ambulance would be to have bags of the fibre for people to take in return for a donation.
I skirted the fleeces and sorted the unfelted & cleanish parts of the raw fleece into 100g bags in 3 categories: Fine & Surprisingly Soft, With Character & Kemp, Robust Character
Keeping back some mixed fleece for myself, we had 22 bags which proved very popular.
I then swapped some of this fleece with Marjorie in return for a carding lesson at Stanhope Spinning Group. This was an incredibly fortuitous thing to do since Marjorie is a very good weaver as well as a spinner and she spun and wove a Boreray scarf!
The scarf was woven with a silk warp and the the undyed and dyed
Boreray woven to create this beautiful design. The final scarf,
although having even the more robust fibres in it, is very soft and
quite beautiful.
At British Wool Weekend in Harrogate in September 2011, Marjorie brought her scarf to show Sue Blacker of the Natural Fibre Company
At the end of September 2011 I was at Masham Sheep Fair and Freyalyn brought along the yarn she'd spun from one of the Wonderwool Wales' bags of Boreray - rather more impressive than my efforts!
I was flicking through this, and looking at the last photo wondered who else had this particular combination of wristbands. Then I realised no-one had!
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