Craft Fair in Lisbon

The craft show is wonderful. There is so much to see. As I arrived this morning the ladies from Peniche were already making bobbin lace. They use a completely different method to my Mum.
It is so fascinating to watch them work the bobbins, See the shape? Mum's are delicate and slender with glass spangles to keep the tension. These 'Peniche' bobbins are slender too but have only the wooden ball shape to give them a little weight. You can see that these ladies are in their senior years, but in Peniche they do teach the children how to make lace, to keep the craft alive.

These ladies keep silk worms and spin their own silk. Also fascinating. They put the silk worm coccoons out in the sun, to kill the poor creatures, then boil them up to realease the silk strands, they are fed together to make thicker strands.. I stayed here for a while.....

This is the loom that spins round making the thicker silk threads, when the silk is wet, you can hardly feel it but on the loom, where it is dry, it is quite hard. In the background you can see some of the things the ladies make with the silk.

This is a busy moment on Paula's stall, we have had lots of very busy moments this weekend, everything has been very popular, especially the fat quarters.....

These ladies are digging in the fat quarter basket for their own selection.

There are lots of cross stitch kits to choose from too.