First Fiber Festival

This last weekend was my first fiber festival and I was so excited. Thankfully I sort of forgot about it the week going up to it or there is no way I would have been able to sit still at work. I forced my self to set a price limit of what I was allowed to spend and only brought cash. Thankfully my mom and grandma came with me or I would not have been able to eat.

There was so much cool stuff at the festival, I have tons of new ideas. There was one booth that had felted vests (with zippers), these reminded me of performance fleece (ooh its fine, sorry if you had finally forgotten this commercial). I really want a good felting project to try and a hat or bag didn't sound appealing to me as I would never use either. Of course either would work well as a gift but do I really want my first felting project to be a gift? What if it doesn't turn out and then I don't have time to go and buy something because I finally crammed in the last of the knitting one day before I'm to give said gift? The next thing at the same booth was felted Christmas ornaments, I particularly like the dove. (if you look really hard at the picture you can see them) (looking at the book I think she was with Brenway Fibers 895 East Kneeland Road, Mio, MI 48647, 517.848.2012)

The next memorable booth was the linen people. The linen woman was very gun-ho about her fiber of choice. She started telling me what the whole 12/1 or 8/1 meant and I told her that I had done my research the day before and was considering using 8/4 or 8/5 for my first linen project to get my feet wet and decide if I really wanted to invest in linen. This is when she almost attacked me for wanting to use plied linen and how that would ruin it and I was so stupid for wanting to do such a thing. At this point she asked me what size loom I was using and figured out that I wasn't going to weave it but knit it. She got a tad bit less angry at me but then was completely uninterested in speaking to me.

I have never seen this much wool all in one place. I thought for sure I would finally add some wool to my stash. I was leaning toward a wool silk blend or some kool-aid dyed wool from the Minnesota people. I really wish now that I had gotten the Minnesota people's business card. The 'grape' still smelled like the kool-aid it was dyed with! I almost bought it right on the spot but I had promised my self that I would look at everything there before deciding on my one purchase (since I set myself a $40 limit). (looking back in the book I think they were Rach-Al-Paca but I'm having a problem opening their website)

Another group actually brought their Lamas and where shearing them right there too. See one lama with all of its hair and one with out and there is the pile of hair waiting to become yarn.

There was also tons of roving (it this the proper term for all fiber not yarned up? Or is it just for wool?) that I was soooooooo tempted to start spinning. I successfully resisted this year. However I now what to grow cotton in my backyard once I own a house. There was this cotton lady and she took us through the whole process of growing cotton and how it looks (the cotton flowers are lots of different pretty colors) and she even had a few samples of cotton still in the seed. Once I grow my own cotton I will become a spinner.

The yarn purchase that I made was a fiber that I had never herd of before and simply could not live without. CORN!!! I defiantly prefer fiber to be the plant variety and not the animal variety. I do not know why, but I do. I love my soy yarn, desperately want to get linen and am thinking about bamboo after the soy is all knit up. All of my other yarn that is of the natural varieties cotton (and I have a lot of cotton and am planning on getting more soon) Now I have my corn and to get it I very quickly stepped aside the thought officially owning wool (something most would call a requirement to call yourself a knitter).

Their yarn is so cool and I'm going to use it as my next project and am now rushing to finish the hoodie (only the sewing left). I have already picked out a pattern but am not sure if I will have enough to finish, I really should get a measuring thing or a ball winder (note how I don't even know the proper term for either of these things let along have one). I'm thinking that these guys did much better than they were expecting and didn't have any skines wound up left by the time I got to their booth around noon. They where selling what is ~3 skines and a slightly discounted rate. They did have some skines and some people were requesting it wound up in skines before purchase but I was happy with my big loop. (not knowing how much of a problem this would cause for later)

I picked out a gray silvery color that is not actually gray at all. It is a blend of many grayish pinks purples and blues. I normally hate variegated yarns for the same reason that I don't knit with multiple colors in one project. But this color combination really spoke to me.

However I do now own wool yarn despite my prior paragraphs. After all of this me and my mom ran some errands and were next door to the craft store and I needed to get some red fabric for a purse I'm making for my mom so we went in. Well, lets just say that we didn't find any red reminisce but I did find yarn on clearance, and wouldn't you know it but it was wool. I now have two skines of wool that will felt up nicely and enough wool-acrylic blend to make a sweater.