Wet in Wales

 We're just back from another caravan week, this time in mid-Wales near Llandovery.  We've been previously rained out of Wales on, I think, three different holidays over the years but obviously we are suckers for punishment. I had found Wales so pretty when I went to the quilting course at the Welsh Quilt Centre in Lampeter a year ago, so we decided to head back there with the caravan.  True to form, after a warm and sunny bank holiday weekend, it started raining on Tuesday off and on, and never stopped.  We gave up and came home a day early - and of course the sun came out on the drive home to taunt us.

We still had a nice holiday, with interesting excursions to the Roman Dolaucothi gold mine and to the amazing caves of the National Showcaves Centre for Wales (which amusingly also has about 150 lifesize dinosaurs scattered around the wooded hillside, many of them animatronic).  And I did fairly well for craft shops and visits as historically Wales was a centre for the wool industry.

We had a very interesting visit to the excellent National Wool Museum in Carmarthenshire, in the historic former Cambrian Mills buildings. It was once a large mill in Drefach Felindre, producing shirts and shawls, blankets, bedcovers and woollen socks. It is now a working museum with restored historic machinery which we were able to see running.  They process cleaned fleece through willowing and carding machines, then spin it on an enormously long spinning machine that spins dozens of bobbins at once. There are multiple power looms for various purposes, and a finishing shed where they can full blankets and shawls, and press woven goods with both hot and cold presses.  They send woven goods off to a mill in Scotland for the fringing to be done but have recently invested in a blanket stitch machine which they are learning to use so they can finish side edges themselves.  Due to their limited production, they didn't have any of their own blankets for sale but they did have a gorgeous blanket by Tweed Mill in North Wales that came home with me.  I also picked up a rigid heddle loom weaving book that I had been looking at on Amazon, all about pattern on these small looms - I can't do all of it on my open heddle loom but at least half of the patterns are applicable. 

This is my weaving book.  We also stopped into a local village fair and in the secondhand tent, I picked up some bargain ribbons and this English translation of a Japanese quilting book - love the Japanese cute aesthetic and there are some nice projects in this one.

We made a return visit (for me) to the Welsh Quilt Centre in Lampeter to see this year's exhibition 'As Time Goes By'.  Not quite as visually exciting as last year's circus themed display, but still some wonderful quilts on display with amazing traditional Welsh quilting motifs.

And of course it would have been rude not to pop into the wonderful Calico Kate fabric store right next door to peruse all the latest fabric lines.  But I only bought some off white solid fabric that I may use as the base for the embroidery in the BOM pack I bought a few weeks ago.

We spent one morning in Llandovery, the nearest town to our campsite, which had lots of nice shops and cafes including the lovely 'Bumblebees of Llandovery' which stocks natural fibre wool and haberdashery and lots of great stuff.  I picked up some colours of narrow ric-rac, some embroidered ribbon, some buttons, needle threaders and a keyring of wooden laser-engraved ruler tools.

Surprisingly, they also had a weaving shop called Wonky Weaver, which is only open two days a week and we were lucky enough to catch them open.  After a bit of confusion over what size of heddle I have (because mine is metric and they were working in imperial I think), I was able to buy two cones of unmercerised 100% cotton to use to weave more absorbent towels.  So I might have a go at weaving tea towels although DH protests that they will be too good to get dirty.

While I did take my embroidery and cross stitch projects with me, in general the light isn't good enough inside the van (particularly when it's overcast outside) so I was mainly knitting another outfit for my knitted doll: another t-shirt, a second pair of shoes, a hat, and the start of some dungarees.  I finished the pink dress just before we left, but it's come out a bit big so I need to sew some elastic into the waist.

That's the end of the caravan hols for this year due to DH's limited paid leave. We do like our little 'home away from home' although it is an expensive indulgence due to only using it a few weeks each year.  Much nicer than staying in a hotel though.