A Knitting 'Crafternoon' at an Alpaca Farm......

Hello, I hope you all had a good weekend, I'm back today to share my weekend with you. I spent Saturday afternoon at Toft Alpaca Shop, for a knitting 'crafternoon'.

What a wonderful way to spend an afternoon, it is in a small village called Dunchurch which is full of thatched cottages, very chocolate box, set in the rolling countryside of Warickshire. The shop is a converted barn, full of soft, squishy balls wool, Toft only sell 100% British alpaca yarn, gorgeous, modern designs samples, comfy tub chairs covered in knitted alapaca wool covers, and the staff were lovely, so friendly and helpful.

Firstly we had a walk around the farm to meet the 220 alpaca's, a lot of the females have just given birth, the name for a baby alpaca is a cria and they were so sweet, I could of taken one home with me.

All the adult alpaca's had just had their annual shearing and their fleece sent off to the mill to be spun, Toft don't dye their wools and all the colours you can buy are either natural alpaca colour or two or three colours spun together to create other natural colours like mushroom, steel and silver.

As we walked around the farm, we were given different facts about alpaca's and you can appreciate why 100% alpaca wool is more expensive, one alpaca produces just 5 balls of wool per year !!!!

Here are a few photo's of my day.

 

When we got back to the shop we were greeted with tea, coffee and handmade cake, we were then given a Toft goodie bag with a pattern book and a small ball of alpaca wool to make a little phone sock or you could buy some wool and do one of the many patterns in the book.

I decided to buy a kit for the Mini Bulb Bag.

We all sat around a huge wooden table, on stools that were made from old, metal tractor seats, very rustic and surprisingly very comfortable. I managed to get the bottom of the bag done and pick up the stitches for the sides before the shop closed, it was a quick knit and I finished the bag on the night.

It doesn't look much here, does it, but  it then goes in the washing machine with non bio washing powder to felt it and this is the end result.

I couldn't leave without buying some wool and I bought myself some fine alpaca yarn to crochet a delicate lace scarf, I'm also waiting for some silver Suri alpaca yarn to come in, it's at the mill at the moment waiting to be spun. I will definitely be visiting again, I had such a lovely time.


xxxxDebxxxx