What A Weekend!

Hello All!



We made it thru another weekend at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I just love going. I met some extraordinary people, Laurie and her daughter, Rem, Ellen and Marge. All of whom asked as their second question - do you have a Ravelry name? We sat in the shade, all strangers, sharing our fiber finds, knitting mishaps and upcoming projects. Such wonderful open people -the sisterhood of the wool.



The crowds, the classes, the food, THE FIBER! It was everywhere you looked. After my fiber diet, I was starved and can honestly say I went a bit nuts. Binged, would be the correct parlayance.



My trip down was bad, 6 hours in a Buick Park Avenue (OLD ONE) with no radio. Yup that is what I said, no radio, no CD, no cassette tape, no nothing!!! I spent the entire time talking or singing to myself. Thank god, most of the people passing me probably thought I was on the phone. Oh yes, and pass me they did, you see because to get the best gas mileage on such a long trip, I was required to go no faster that 70 mph. So there I am, grey haired, sunglasses, trying to see over the wheel (because the seat goes back to the lowest setting after about and hour and you have to re-set it) griping the wheel ( because this huge car floats all over the road), with a spinning wheeel and bags of fiber strapped in the back seat like precious children, talking to myself. Oh yes, I was quite a sight.




We went, like last year, with a group of like minded women, 6 total. That is an experience in itself. The weather was perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. Definately not the steam bath of last year. I took two classes. One with Maggie Casey on Making My Old Wheel Do New Tricks, and any one who read this knows that this is my new wheel and any tricks I could learn would help!
I learned tons!!! What a wonderful lady. I know all sorts of things to tweak on my wheel to get it to make the yarns I'm going for. I evenspun some thin stuff! I was the only one in the class interested in fat singles. Most of the other women were working on fine, cobwebby stuff.




My Second class (on Sunday) was with Jacey Boggs and was Thick and Thin and Coils. If I had not taken the class with Maggie I would have been so far out of my league. Jacey is a fun teacher. By the end of the class I was able to produce a fairly consistent thick and thin and was working on plying (!!!) my coils. Again, I learned masses. Jacey has a way of chanting the steps to help you not only keep your rythm but to remember the steps.

Jacey was very nice to pose for this picture.

Fiber, Fiber everywhere!

Look at all the beautiful colors!

mmm Merino Tencel!

Tess' yarns - Love this vendor!

This is what the workroom looked like when I got home........

Starting from the back of the work table: a box from paradise fibers with merino (2 lbs) and merino-tencel (2.5 lbs), sitting on top of that box is the silk hankies (3 pkg) I bought, and in the paper bag is superfine alpaca (1.5 lbs) and alpaca/angora (1.5lbs) the baskets are left over from the Yarn crawl, I need to find a place for them to live. The smaller box is from Gritty Knits and is merino-tencel (3lbs) and merino (1 lb) and a HUGE hank of foot fetish undyed stuff! Snuggled in there are 16 hanks of Aslan Trends undyed yarn for me to work with for my up-coming TRUNK SHOW at Fresh Purls (more to come on that). The two plastic wrapped balls are Romney (2 lbs) and that ginormous bag inthe sink is some dyed and undyed fleece from my mothers sheep - yes VERY old - with two beautiful hand carding paddles. So when I have some down time (!!!!!) I'm going to try to card some of the fleece. What is that 15 pounds????? Heaven

Oh yea almost forgot the SCORE I made a Kraemer with that fat Bear Creek yarn. It's that brown stuff left hand corner of this picture. I can't wait to overdye it!

OK this is the workroom now, everything put away, everything inventoried and all ready to get to work. We started our Merino Fiber Club this month, I have some custom colorwork to do and get in the mail by Monday. No worries, I have fiber and I couldn't be happier!!!



Comming soon some up dates on the Trunk Show and I'm hoping to have a tutorial up on dyeing. For any of you in the Rhode Island area, I'm teaching a class about dyeing on June 4th if you are interested there are two spots left........



Happy handcrafting!