Twist 2025 new booths of interest

Some of you have joined me in previous years on the trip to Twist Fibre Festival in Saint-André-Avellin, QC. It’s about an hour and 15 minutes from home, a bit longer with construction detours this year. It is worth the drive in shopping opportunities and usually has lovely scenery. (We had some of the smoke from fires much further west so it was too hazy for the views overlooking the river). Twist is also the largest of the close fiber events to Ottawa.  Please join me as we take a peek, first at the demos and a new booth that I hope will catch your interest too. We will take a look at more of the event in the next post. Don’t forget to meet me at La Toquade restaurant for after shopping Dinner of comfy duck sandwiches.

1)Lining up to get into Twist 2025

Demo Hall way,

There are two halls (Gym and Arena), one on either side of a main hall, which also leads to the back of the building, where more vendors in a large tent were located. The hallway is where the demos from various fiber arts groups are located, including the local weaving guild and our neighbour guild across the river. Let’s take a quick peek before heading into the main hall. I was sure I had taken pictures of the knitting guild, and author and one other group at the end of the hall by the tent but I don’t seem to see them. This year we had examples of weaving, spinning, and a bit of felting at the guild table.

2.1-2.2) OVWSG Demo table

2.3) Guilde des tisserandes de Gatineau; our neighbour guild on the other side of the Ottawa River

2.4) The Lace makers guild

2.5-2.6) Association des Artisans de Ceinture Flechee de Lanaudiere

While at Twist fiber festival, I spotted a few new booths which caught my attention and I thought you would also find interesting. So I am going to focus on one of the booths today but we will look at the rest of the event hopefully in the next post.

New Vendor has felt

At this point, we had arrived, said hi to the morning demo team, and started looking for booths selling fiber or (Needle) felting supplies.  It was close to opening time, and was still quite busy with a rush of shoppers.  I had to wait to get into the booth. The little I could see from outside had me curious as to what else might be in there. I was sure it would be worth the wait.

3.1)I see wool! Yes, that definitely looks like wool. I wonder which booth this is?

As the crowd parted, I could see the signage “Field & Fleece” and “WoolGrown”.  Behind the sign was a 3 foot tall roll of felt!! As well as bags of fiber (I think I overheard the bags of fleece were mixed rideau-arcott sheep fleeces?)

3.2) When the crowd parted and I could see part of the booth!

3.3) Precut lengths of felt, some have holes cut out for planting plants, others are solid.

3.4) There were examples of wool Felt use; Jacket, purses, art, small batts in bags

There were also small strips of wool rolled up on the table. They were selling them to start seeds in. I looked at them and saw name tags!!!

3.5) wool strips  for sale in the booth

The strips were being sold as “Seed starting wool strips the eco-friendly evolution of the innovative seed-starting method known as the “Seed Snail.”” The concept seems to be to un-roll the wool strip about 4” x 4’ long, add moistened potting soil mix, roll up the dirt with wool, making something that looks like a less tasty cinnamon roll. Plant the seeds at the top of the roll, so the roots will grow down between the circles of wool. That sounds like an interesting concept but I still see name tags when I look at these rolls. There were a few different widths so I selected a few of the wider (about 4”) and a couple of the cheaper 3-ish” ones.

If you noticed the little square about an inch thick by about 4 inches, I picked up one of those too. I will try it out as a felting surface later.

Since I had finally got to the front of the booth and had already found a small selection of items, I kept looking.

3.6) OH my! What is that?

Not the prins, look in the cup! I was just apologising to Glenn, as we drove here, that I suspected the booths selling blacksmithing items or supplies would again be rather thin.(ok, None. I am sure it’s just an unintentional oversight that will be fixed at some point in the future.) Those rusty items are square-headed nails, and look like blacksmith-made objects! I asked about them and was enlightened that they were the “nails” from a brick wall that had been taken down and she didn’t have the heart to toss them. She was selling them for dyers to mordant their dye baths. I bought a little bundle for Glenn so his day was not just carrying my packages and taking naps on a bench while I shopped or photographed.

Since you have seen the extreme relaxation (napping) demonstrated at various fiber festivals I should not deprive you of another sighting.

4.1) Fibre festivals are a good spot for extreme relaxation.

4.2-4.3) The Mer-boyfriend got impatient and started to work on his own abbs. I spent too much time explaining why I was making another mer-person to people stopping to ask what I was doing and how did it work? (Yes, I got another voodoo comment too!)

I filled in at the OVWSG Demo Friday afternoon, as the demo started to pack up, I “rushed” back to buy the roll of felt but they were unfortunately closed…. Drat. Ok almost everyone is faster than I am at the moment.

While we are still in town, we can go enjoy the comfy duck sandwiches at the La Toquade Restaurant. It’s part of the enjoyment of going to twist, and I think about this sandwich for a year between twists, so let’s go see it they are still as memorably delicious as it was last year. (Oh yes it was!!)

5)“Club sandwich au confit de canard- Servi dans un pain abricot-raisin-tournesol garni de bacons, oignons, pommes vertes, céleris et mayonnaise maison et un choix de frites ou de salade mesclun” / (Google helped and translated the above to English for me: “Duck Confit Club Sandwich – Served in an apricot-raisin-sunflower bun topped with bacon, onions, green apples, celery and homemade mayonnaise and a choice of fries or mesclun salad”.  the dip for the very tasty french fries was “choix de mayonnaise maison” and the small salid had a fabulouse rasbary baslamic vinigret. Desert was Mousse au chocolat (I think that has to be one of the best types of Moose). If you make it to twist, this may tempt you to stay in town for dinner or a late lunch.

After a delicious dinner, we headed for the highway, through rolling hills and past a very picturesque stream, which I keep meaning to stop and take pictures. Unfortunately, shortly after getting on the highway, we found the highway was closed, so wound up enjoying rock cuttings and farm land while following a very round about detour. (We eventually found out the road was closed for paving.)

6) I suspect I have been watching/listening to too much US political news on you tube. We saw this in front of us on the detour. Can you guess my first thought as to who must be having a quick getaway visit to Canada?

We did make it home after enjoying parts of Quebec we had not seen before. I spent the rest of the evening reviewing Fridays photos and posting some on the OVWSG Group FB page, I did a bit of investigating on the internet since I regretted not buying one of the rolls of felt.

WoolGrown Company web site: www.woolgrowncompany.com

WoolGrown Company on Face book: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61568471715075

This is a Canadian company, based in southern Ontario. It is a lot closer to drive to Twist (Just over 1 hour east), than to drive west, well past Toronto (Over 6 hours south-west of Ottawa). (Which is why I was trying to get back to twist on Sunday.)

As I heard at twist and saw on their web site, they were looking at ways to diversify their farm production (sheep farming).  On their web site i found links for Wool pellets for mulch, Garden & Horticulture Felt (which was the felt I purchased on Friday, but not the option with holes precut in it for plants) and Sheep Tea Pouches. In their booth, were also examples of; felt art, Felt Jackets, Felt Bags and felt Pots as well as the felt itself.

I tried messaging the company on their Facebook page (but they were likely very busy recovering from day 1 of twist) since I knew going back on Saturday was not an option. I would have to hope to be up and running… er, walking… ok rolling on Sunday.  Glenn said he was up to joining me again, (he was hoping for more Comfy duck), so off we went back to Twist early Sunday morning.

7.1) 3 foot tall roll of wool felt!

Ah good they have not sold out, but as I got closer, there was a lot of stock missing. The 10 foot by 1 foot rolls were gone and so were the other sizes I had seen on Friday (Drat). Luckily, Sunday morning at opening was not as busy as Friday, or I heard Saturday had been, so they said they could cut me a piece from the big roll.

7.2-7.3) I got 4 feet of the big roll.

I am hopeful I will be able to use this with my picture felting students. I need cut pieces that are a bit bigger than 5”x7” finished picture size.  I want my students to feel the difference 100% wool felt feels, when compared to the cheap part wool, to full acrylic non-woven options for picture felting bases.

8.1) “Horticultural”, as you can see there is some kemp and a bit of VM. Even so, it looks like it will make a good base for picture Needle felting.

Let me show you some of what I wound up with from this vendor, I will show you the rest later. I am looking forward to investigating this wool felt, hopefully soon.

Today (which will be yesterday as you read this) we headed south of Ottawa to Kemptville for a much more intimate fiber festival. I had wonderful chats about felting and fiber and thoroughly enjoyed myself. (Glenn read a book and had another nap, I told you fiber events were extremely relaxing, soon all husbands will want to attend with us, just for the quality napping!!) I would like to show you a couple of interesting displays and booths there too, but let’s finish off visiting Twist next. Don’t forget to save a bit of virtual or actual money for shopping at Almonte Fiberfest on Sept 6^th 2025 if you are in the area!!