Royal New Zealand Show

The second week in November is Carnival week in Canterbury and it saw me spinning at the Canterbury Agricultural & Pastoral Show (A&P Show) which this year is also the Royal New Zealand Show.

Invited by Southern Alpacas, a large Canterbury alpaca farm to spend the three days of the Show demonstrating the art of spinning in their marquee, spinning and discussing alpaca fibre was my focus.

The first day, Wednesday was children’s day with thousands of young people released from school attending. While many of them were aware of spinning most were surprised to discover that it was not sheep’s wool that I was spinning but alpaca fibre. There were plenty of smiles when they all left the site stowing away samples of raw fibre to impress their friends and families with.

The following day was more relaxed allowing many to try spinning for the first time and also giving spinners a taste of spinning alpaca for the first time. Many of them found it easier than anticipated and went away with supplies of raw fibre. A lot of the first timers had been looking for an opportunity to have a go at spinning as a hobby and many of them hope to be joining spinning groups in the near future.

The Friday is known as Peoples Day and being a public holiday I found myself surrounded by an interested throng of people asking a lot of questions about spinning and alpacas and sitting at the wheel having a go.

All in all while it was a busy and quite tiring week I found it most rewarding exposing a large number of enthusiastic people to spinning with the added interest of having the still somewhat novel alpaca fibre to spin.