North Pennines Wool summer news.

Check out our summer newsletter here.

North Pennines Wool Group

The North Pennines Wool Group has experienced something of a hiatus since our Wool Event in October 2013.  We do apologise.  As volunteers it's always difficult to try to find the time to fit in additional work and our lives have been very busy.

However, we'd like to take this opportunity to invite you to get more involved - not in a big way, but in whatever way you like, and to do this we're going to arrange a date to meet, with tea and cake, to discuss possibilities.  If you're interested, please drop us an email and we'll let you know when we have a date, which should be sometime in early August.

Some of you have been asking whether there will be another wool event, and the answer is yes.  However, this year will be a little different - bigger and better, we hope!  And it will be a winter wool fair, so watch this space and check out our website.

Fourth North Pennines Wool Event!

The fourth North Pennines Wool Event is just 36 hours away.

We're busy making hundreds of wristbands for the wool event, so hope we get a good turnout! 

For those of you still undecided about coming along our stallholders include:

Halifax Spinning Mill 
Natural Born Dyers 
Eden Gotland Sheep 
Knitting Gift Shop
Jan Beadle Textiles
Enid Ashcroft drop spindles
Black Bat
Dot Dryden Herdwicks
Fleece to Yarn

Plus we'll have other woolly equipment, wool products and artworks (Joss Wrigg, Kim Lewis, Jules Cadie, Cathy Duncan), in addition to the fleece sales and demonstrations. 

Also remember the photography competition - please do bring along your sheepy/woolly images on the day. 

And of course you can meet some wonderful wool-producing sheep.

Don't forget your spinning wheels, drop spindles and knitting needles!

And there will be delicious food - much of it courtesy of Woodsprite!

As we say, it's a small, but perfectly formed wool event and you won't find any non-British wool there!

Hope to see you there!

The North Pennines Weardale Gansey

Hello Knitters!

We now have copies of the North Pennines Weardale Gansey available to buy, price £3.50.  For those of you hoping to pay through Paypal we hope that this facility will be available within a few days.  In the meantime you can post a cheque made payable to "North Pennines Wool Group" and post c/o Slack House Farm, Ireshopeburn, Weardale DL13 1HL

The North Pennines Weardale Gansey is a very complex pattern, suitable only for very experienced knitters.

The North Pennines Teesdale Gansey, a simpler design, will follow....

North Pennines Gansey Patterns

The North Pennines gansey patterns will be available very soon. We apologise to readers of North Pennines News trying to find the patterns on our website - there's some final tweaking going on! By Easter we hope to have full details of how and where to buy the patterns. In the meantime please direct any queries to info@npennines-wool.co.uk. Thank you for your patience.

Good wishes for 2013

The North Pennines Wool Group wishes you all a very happy 2013.  Let's hope it's a warm and woolly one - and perhaps a little drier than the past few years.

Our news for 2013 is that we hope to launch our two winning North Pennines gansey designs in the spring.  We'll keep you posted!

Small, but perfectly formed - the third North Pennines Wool Event

The North Pennines Wool Group held its third North Pennines Wool Event on Friday 28th September in Upper Weardale, County Durham.  The small community of St John's Chapel was buzzing as the Wool Event, held in the village's two halls, both situated on the village green, coincided with the North of England Mule Sheep Association gimmer lamb sale at the neighbouring mart.  Farmers and woolly folk rubbed shoulders as the village thronged with people.  

A wonderfully warm and friendly atmosphere pervaded as several hundred people flocked to the wool event, which managed to provide something for everyone.  Highlights included demonstrations of various forms of spinning – domestic spinning wheels, great wheel spinning (with Richard Proud of Fleece to Yarn), drop spindling and 'spurtzler' spinning (courtesy of Jon Booker, Natural Born Dyers), together with demonstrations of natural dyeing (Ruth Hicken), sculptural needlefelt with the renowned artist Joss Wrigg, table loom weaving (Jan Beadle), peg loom weaving (Nickie Kirkby of Eden Gotlands) and wet felted bracelets (Ellie Langley, Fleece with Altitude).  In addition a selection of remarkably calm and friendly sheep penned on the village green entertained the visitors.

A competition to design and make a sheep from British wool was judged by celebrated children’s author and fine artist, Kim Lewis.  Kim is herself a former sheep farmer. Sheep of all breeds and woolly techniques arrived to take part in the competition, the winning entry being a sheep of indeterminate breed, but largely knitted from local Gotland wool. In addition the North Pennines shepherd and poet Josephine Dickinson gave poetry readings with a woolly, hill-farming theme.

For those in need of retail therapy, visitors had the opportunity to buy fleeces, carded wools, yarns, knitting and felting kits, knitted, woven and felted woollen products and some truly beautiful locally hand-crafted equipment, including drop spindles made by Enid Ashcroft.  

The truly unique thing about the North Pennines Wool Event is that only British wool (that is wool from sheep born in Britain) is allowed through the doors.  The North Pennines Wool Group was established in 2009 by a small group of hardworking volunteers to try to promote the little known region of the North Pennines and its wool.  The North Pennines covers parts of Cumbria, Durham, Northumberland, even a tiny part of North Yorkshire, and is the native home of two of our most spectacular wool breeds - the Teeswater and the Bluefaced Leicester and, by extension, the North of England Mule, making the presence of 3500 mule sheep (courtesy of their Bluefaced Leicester fathers) just 30 yards away truly serendipitous.