Caiti and I had an outing this afternoon to the twelfth Fête de la Laine (wool festival) at Felletin in our departément of Creuse. I think we last went three years ago, and it’s come on in leaps and bounds since then. It’s more than twice the size now and the quality of the various displays is frankly through the roof.

We had a brilliant visit. There are a few new car parks in Felletin now too, which is a help. Parking was rather hit and miss before. We followed the marked route to the Atelier.

There were a few sheep in a pen outside. I’m not sure what breed they are, but they had very classy faces. They seem much better behaved than my Suffolks too. My three, Lavenham, Debenham and Tuddenham, would have been out of that pen like a shot!

There were bright colours everywhere. You couldn’t help but feel cheerful!

The various stalls were devoted to spinning, weaving and felting; selling balls of wool or ready-made articles of all descriptions i.e. knitted, felted, crocheted and woven clothes and accessories; and giving demonstrations of spinning and felting. You could buy everything from raw fleeces to rovings to superfine spun wool.

It was hard to be restrained but, now we’re out of the earning season, we had to be! Caiti invested in Mortimer the computer mouse.

Actually, he’s a brooch. We got him from this stall.

Birgit Nagelke is a truly stunning artist with a wicked sense of humour. She was selling felted dog poo for €3, felted dead animal rugs (Chris would have loved the mole one!) and felted ashtrays full of felted fag ends. Here is another pic of her display.

It was a real crowd puller. Birgit’s website is here.

Another lovely stall was Magali Bontoux’s. We loved these felted cats.

And this chart of dye colours, all from plants and vegetables.

I bought some pastel (woad) seeds and some gaude (dyer’s rocket) so I can make my own blue and bright yellow dyes in future. Magali doesn’t appear to have her own website which is a shame since her products are lovely.

We bought some handspun, hand-dyed wool from the www.renaissancedyeing.com stall. I shall be knitting socks with the woad-dyed blue wool in the photo below, and some manchots – hand and wrist warmers – from the other wools for Caiti.

Here are a few more photos to finish up with.

It was a great afternoon out and worth making the slightly tedious journey for. I shall definitely be there again next year. It’s not something any keen knitter or yarn enthusiast should miss.