"We are here for the fibre confused"

I tell the bewildered looking person on the other side of the information "desk". 

There is a wry smile and yet another person asks another question. All this is hard work but good fun too. People have come to enjoy themselves.

Middle Cat and I spent the day at an event known as the "Fibre Feast". It is there for the purpose of buying and selling that all important commodity known as "yarn". It is vital to the life of those who knit, crochet, weave and work other miracles with long, thin, flexible strands of fibre.  

The event itself is a particularly well organised one. The people running it have been doing it for a number of years now. They put an enormous amount of work into it. Middle Cat and I went along to be an "information" stand. We were there to talk to people about the event itself, where to find things and who they should be talking to about the things they wanted.  

I had put in hours of work getting information together about patterns and where to find them because most of the stands sell yarn but they don't sell patterns. The sellers are often farm people, wool growers who sell their own yarn. Some of it comes from special breeds of sheep with their own special wool qualities. There are alpacas of various types too. This year there was someone who owns three camels and had some camelhair yarn. She had also imported some possum yarn from "across the pond" - New Zealand. There was silk and mohair and of course more and more wool mixed with all these things. 

"How much yarn do I need for....?" People kept asking this question. The answer to that often has first to be, "How long is a piece of string?" I talked people through, telling them where to find likely patterns, showing them the lists of likely sources. 

Middle Cat neither knits nor crochets - she draws and paints - but she can still encourage people to enter the RAHS Show. We both did all we could to encourage the men who expressed an interest. There was one cheerful young man in a wheelchair. He told us he had a disorder that we know is progressive but crochet is good therapy. He is also enthusiastic about it as he tells us what he has tried and wants to try. Put something in the RAHS Show? He had not thought of doing that - but if what he was wearing was any example then he should be showing things for the rest of us to see.

I caught up with some old acquaintances, people I only see at such events. My good friend W... who is almost 90 borrowed my walker to sit on for a while and showed someone how to solve their problem. Middle Cat distracted young children and dogs while their humans talked to me. Someone wandered through with two large parrots - one sitting on each shoulder. Another person came through with a guide dog in training. Later we provided "rest break" services to several stall holders who were there alone. 

By late in the afternoon the crowd started to thin out. I was almost hoarse with providing so much information. I left Middle Cat talking to someone about temper tantrums and alpacas and bought some yarn for a friend who could not get there. On the way back I stopped for a moment to talk to one of the organisers. Will we do it again next year? We looked at each other. Of course we will!