Dreaming Spirals

As I type this, we are still on holiday but on my only access to the internet yesterday, Windows Live Writer didn’t want to publish my last post so I doubt if you’ll get to read it until we get back.  But I thought I would write a few posts while what we have seen and visited is still fresh in my mind.

Wales has lots of hills.  Lots of hills with lots of sheep.  So it has – or had in the past – lots of woollen mills to process the wool from those sheep.  We visited one of them near Llanwrst in the first week of our holiday.   

Trefriw had lots of different sections.  I forgot to photograph them all – there was a lady hand spinning on a spinning wheel and several buildings where the different parts of the process such as carding, dyeing and weaving, took place.  I took a photo of this warping mill as I had heard a lot about them and couldn’t quite visualise them.

And here is a mechanized loom.

We saw this one being operated:

One of my favourite parts at the mill was their Dyer’s Garden. 

As you can see, it is well labelled and organised.

Here is a general view from the side of the mill.   It was all powered by hydro electricity using their own generator – we could see the stream of water and the engine which ran it. 

There was also a good sized shop with clothes, woollen bedding, wool, and also woven tweed woollen fabric by the metre.  Definitely well worth a visit!     My haul consisted of a couple of balls of wool spun in the mill, a natural dyeing book and a book on Textile Machines.