Crowds enjoy wool festival

Wool @ J13 at Lower Drayton Farm featured a huge variety of attractions from exhibitors and workshops to live music and street food.

Show organiser and wool artist Ingrid Wagner said she was delighted with how well it had gone.

Speaking during the event, she said: "It is going really, really well and we are so pleasantly surprised. It has just been wonderful.

"There were queues on Saturday morning and there were visitors after visitors coming on the trailer which brought people over from the car park."

Ingrid said a particular hit over the course of the weekend had been needle felting, which is when a sharp needle is used to turn wool into 3-D objects.

It uses a very sharp with barbed blades which agitates the wool.

By gradually defining the shape through needling, detailed three-dimensional structures such as animals can be created entirely from wool fibres.

Needle felting is an alternative to the traditional process, wet felting, which requires wool, hot water and soap.

Ingrid, added: "It is a bit like when you wash your hair with conditioner and then comb it through and it is untangled.

"Stabbing the needle in helps to bond together the fibres so you can sculpt with it.

"There has been a real craze for it recently and we were full within two days for that."

Close harmony trio The Haywood Sisters were on hand to provide the musical entertainment for visitors while workshops ranged from left-handed knitting, to natural dyeing to ‘moths and all things woolly’.

*how day one going

*number of visitors

*what are people enjoying the most

*which workshops

*‘Bare Bear, outfits

* a representation of a farm animal of their choice in any textile form in which they would all like to work

*deets