We had a lovely day out today at the Singleton Rare Breeds show at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum. We saw lots of sheep, cattle, goats, pigs, poultry, fleeces, hand spinning, and knitting, and met up with a surprising number of people who I know.

The animals were all beautifully turned out, and in general were very well behaved, although there were a couple of escapees and one Manx Loghtan sheep who was doing a good impression of a toddler in a supermarket and lay down on the grass in the path and wouldn’t get up 🙂 Here is a Kerry Hill sheep and owner:

I was amazed again in the variety that exist within the sheep family, the Soays were tiny – not much bigger than a cat, and the Teeswater huge with long ringlets.

There were of course some purchasing opportunities, we had a yummy hog roast for lunch (not a whole one 🙂 ), and I bought this gorgeous IST spindle.

60mm spindle, 22g, tulipwood on sycamore with a walnut shaft.

I managed a bit of spinning this evening, continuing on bobbin 5 of the merino / silk, inbetween chasing the foxes out of the back garden and stopping the neighbours cats jumping in through the lounge window (oh the delights of summer).

My neck is definitely better than yesterday though still a bit niggly. Hopefully tomorrow will be better still.

I’ve been having continued problems with heavy treadling, but following some reading up on the Majacraft group on ravelry, I tried cleaning out the hinges with compressed air and then using silicon lubricant. Hopefully this will have done the trick. They were also recommending white lithium grease on the hinges so I shall see if I can pick some up.