Exeter Craft Festival's coming soon - the workshop is busy!

Friday 17th and Saturday 18th July see us at the Exeter Craft Festival on Cathedral Green (stand 73 if you'd like to come and say hello).  We love this craft fair - it has a really friendly atmosphere and there are some gorgeous creations on offer.

Hilary's been busy making lots of things to take - as well as the usual array of bags (including our brand new 'trusty backpacks' - we're very excited) there will be plenty of keyrings and smaller items on our stall.  Fingers crossed that this weirdly cold and rainy July weather will be long gone by then!

The sheep aren't too impressed with the rain either - last weekend saw the remainder of our flock being shorn and now they're all looking a bit damp out in the fields without their coats on.

Shearing is quite a mesmerising process - 4 portable clipping machines, 4 strapping men in the shearer's outfit of shearing trousers (they'd so catch on with the hipsters of Hoxton - you saw it here first), vest and sheepskin moccasins and 4 others herding the ewes through the gate, separating the ewes' lambs, rolling the oily shorn fleeces on the tarpaulin and then stuffing them into the ginormous wool sacks.  All to the deafening sounds of the clippers, baahs and a Makita radio tuned to Heart FM.

It literally runs like a well-oiled machine, with the naked sheep pogoing vertically out of the shed with their lambs at the other end.

Baah-rilliant! (sorry).