MOW Roundup
Our in-person Mill Open Weekend is over for another year and… wowzers! What a wonderful, woolly weekend that was! We’re still on cloud nine remembering all your friendly faces, the fantastic talks, workshops and the seemingly endless parade of spectacular makes (more of that here on the blog next week!).
When we returned to the real world, we found this comment on our last blog post from Kate: “Thank you so much to Sonja, Helena and the team for such a wonderful, welcoming experience. The friendliness and enthusiasm of you all was remarkable and refreshing to behold – a welcome antidote in today’s world. You created a really inclusive experience that was heartwarming. To anyone wondering about going (especially if you are shy or a newbie crafter) just GO – you’ll meet the most marvellous bunch of people. Added to which the yarn on sale is just uNbeLiEvaBlE… An absolutely amazing experience 🙂”. We’re so delighted you enjoyed your visit — thank you (all of you) who came and joined in the fun!
Now we’ve had a chance to catch our breath, we thought we’d do a little roundup of what was occurring to try and give you a little flavour of the feel of the event if you’re thinking of coming in a future year.
For the last few years, we’ve taken over South Molton Town Hall to throw our woolly weekend party. These fabulous 18th century assembly rooms are flooded with natural light and give us plenty of unique spaces for you to shop, learn, chat and chill out with a cuppa when you need a break! And of course we also open the roller shutter doors of the Mill for tours, with a minibus to transport you to meet the machines and the Mill Folk who make the whole operation run like clockwork.
One of the many great joys of the MOW is thinking up all the special treats we can concoct for our visitors and this year was no exception. In the run-up to the event we rush to greet the postie as they deliver boxes and boxes of stunning hand dyed yarns from our favourite dyers. To be honest, some of those skeins don’t make it as far as the MOW because they’re just too tempting and they find their way home with one of the Mill Folk instead, but we try to restrain ourselves and leave plenty for all of you!
Every year we also make a Mill Open Weekend special and this year it was designed by you! Through a series of surveys, you chose the blend, the colours, the theme and the name, then we whipped it up at the Mill, all ready for its debut at the MOW… and it was a smash hit, so well done you! Available in 4ply yarn and tops, we had so many lovely compliments from visitors who loved both the end product and the process of helping us make it! We enjoyed hearing all about your plans for Mineralogy and can’t wait to see your finished projects! Don’t worry if you weren’t able to make it to the MOW — it will be available as part of our Virtual MOW, too.
And if you’d like to get a bit more of a flavour of how we created this year’s MOW special, Mineralogy, then Sonja’s just added a recording of the talk that she and Helena gave at the Open Weekend to our YouTube channel. They talk through each step of the process and just how they went about creating those surveys to enable all you fab folks at home to become honorary Mill Folk! We hope you find some time to enjoy watching it with a cuppa and some crafting!
If you look closely, you might also see some brand new Tour de Fleece Tops Specials for all you spinners as you gear up for the annual Spinning/Cycling event. Find out more about them here.
We love to invite Guest Vendors to come and join us and this year we were delighted to be in the company of Jo from Lilliput Wight , Eleanor of Eleanor Jane Studio, Rachael of Daughter of a Shepherd, Sinead of Gullrock Fibres, Vanessa of Magpie and Butterfly and Melissa of Simply Vintage Designs. Every time we passed by their stands, something new caught our eye! They’re all such talented folks and we were thrilled to have them with us.
We’re also joined each year by members of local Guilds of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers who love to sit and spin our tops while entrancing passers-by with the gentle motion of their wheels! Thank you to all our Guild friends for inspiring our visitors each year.
It’s not just about the shopping at the Mill Open Weekend, we love to find any excuse to chat and learn about fibre in all its forms. Along with Sonja and Helena’s discussion about the creation of Mineralogy, we were treated to an inspiring talk on the art and science of natural dyeing by Sinead from Gullrock Fibres and enjoyed a packed-to-the-rafters panel Q&A with designers, Laura Penrose of Penrose Knits, Anna Dervout of Along Avec Anna, Sophie Hemmings of The Knit Purl Girl and Fay Dashper-Hughes of Provenance Craft Co. Don’t be too sad if you missed these wonderful talks—they’ve all been recorded and will go up on our YouTube channel in due course.
Our fab workshops this year included knitting socks and custom-fitting sweaters with expert knitting tutor, Amanda Jones along with spinning sessions with Becks of Tiny Fibre Studio.
This year marked our first in-person Craft and Natter. We have a virtual one on Zoom once a month, but since South Molton is a small world and is crammed full of crafters for one weekend only, we thought it would be lovely to give everyone a chance to get together, make new friends over dinner and show off their amazing creations. Everyone had a brilliant time, sharing pattern suggestions and exchanging tips. Thanks to Laura for hosting the Show & Tell table full of inspiration!
That’s just a tiny taste of the beautiful projects we saw at this year’s MOW. Next week we have a monster of a blog post for you, showcasing the wonderful creations we saw at the Open Weekend. We just know you’ll be as enthralled as we were!