The Naked Sheep

The Naked Sheep
Originally uploaded by cob_web

So, yesterday my mum took me to the Naked Sheep, along with my sister and brother-in-law. Matt stayed at home to watch tennis. Anyway, it was a lovely little place!

I went to school in Buckingham, but haven’t been back for years, and it is a nice little town now. The shop is near Stowe Landscape Gardens, so if you are into that sort of thing the two combined would make a nice little day-trip. If not, Buckingham has some nice little shops now, there was a quilting shop with some yarns in, and some gifty/boutique/gallery type places.

Its a nice drive out of Buckingham to the farm, as you drive up the road towards the gate to Stowe, which is impressive.

Once at the farm, we had to negotiate the free range chickens (they have 6000, and some are more free range than the rest and just roam around the farm as they like). Once parked we decided to do the Naked Sheep first incase the others had to leave me there while they went to the farm shop! On the way we got sidetracked by the Alpacas, who were gorgeous! You can buy a bag of feed to give them, but some small people were already doing that. Then the owner of the shop came out and told us all bits about the Alpaca and all their names and what they are like. One had a punk hair do as his fringe kept going in his eyes so they have to tie it up!

Then we went into the little shop, which was lovely. They do all their own spinning, and keep each fleece separate. They have a small team of knitters, who handknit all sorts of items which you can buy. As you can imagine they are not cheap! The owner was lovely, and spent quite a while chatting to us, and let me take photos.

Apparently at the moment they have 6 knitters, but she said that they have casual knitters too, who will knit a garment like a hat or scarf for them in exchange for yarn. Sounds like a good deal to me! Sadly I had to explain I didn’t live nearby any more (I think she was trying to recruit me). I was able to show her photos of my shawl though, which she liked!

She would have even let us look round the spinning room if we wanted, but time was limited so we didn’t.

I bought 50g of alpaca yarn (£8 - promptly confiscated by my mum as I couldn’t think of anything I wanted for christmas!) and was given a hat pattern to go with it.

As well as alpaca and sheep yarn from the farm they sold Jamisons, and a few other UK-based spun yarn.

She had some things knitted from Buffalo and Qivit (or however you spell it), and it really is as soft as the people say. Luckily she didn’t have any yarn for sale, as it is the second most expensive yarn in the world!

Then we went to the farm shop, where there was lots of lovely stuff, and they have a cafe/restaurant as well.