Holly modelling cream jacket, an early example of our unique 'pacasheena' textiles.
At the Willowmead Alpaca & Craft Centre, (map and directions).
Wednesday - Sunday 10 till 4
Weekends 10 till 4
free entry to shop
free parking
At the Willowmead Alpaca & Craft Centre, (map and directions).
We are Julia & William Denny and together with son James and daughter Holly, we live in the heart of rural Suffolk, a few miles north of Ipswich, England.
Our enterprise began in 2000-01 with the purchase of the 16 acre smallholding and 3 female alpacas. Our little herd has now expanded to 20 (plus 4 sold to the local agricultural college).
Galaxy, one of four males and the daddy of several of our young alpacas.
We have been building a replacement farmhouse on the site and have finally moved in although the oak framed living room is yet to be built.
The old bungalow is now being recycled into our new Alpaca & Craft Centre. This project is supported under the England Rural Development Programme by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund Rural Enterprise grant.
The project is going well, if rather slower than we hoped, and we will soon be ready to welcome visitors.
Come and see how we are getting on this weekend (23rd — 25th August 2008).
The front of our farmhouse.
We have purchased a loom, and a local weaving expert is booked to help us set up to convert our bags of wonderful soft fleece into equally wonderful fabric. We will develop a range of alpaca knitted & woven articles to sell, and would welcome the chance to provide a retail outlet for other alpaca owners with textiles to sell.
A small sample of our woven alpaca.
We are planning to provide the development and training of other arts & crafts as well as those alpaca related.
We have a small stand of different willow varieties which we sell in the winter months for planting as living willow screens or structures, or to dry for woven willow creations.
In the Summer we plan to have craft events where people can visit stalls run by various local crafts people, seeing crafts in action and buying crafts & artwork. We plan to host courses on a variety of crafts, so if you like to pass on your craft skills we would like to hear from you!