Tuesday, May 17, 2005

What I bought at Maryland

What do I buy at the Sheep and Wool Festival? Spinning fiber, mostly!




The stuff in progress on the spindle is Blue-Faced Leicester, and the blue-purple lump in the photo below is a blend of BFL and mohair (I'm a sucker for mohair-blend rovings and batts).



(What gives with the Poland Spring bottle? I was spinning in the car when the spindle began to misbehave because I wasn't winding the yarn on optimally, and the only solution was to wind off the yarn and start again, but I didn't exactly have a spare bobbin with me. You know what they say about necessity.) The red roving is 100% Corriedale, and the incredibly bright bits in the middle are soy silk, which I've never tried before. The bright blue-purple-green skein at the bottom of this photo is from Tess's Designer Yarns; it's worsted-weight superwash merino, and I'm hoping that I'll knit a sweater for my kids and they'll actually wear it.



These two big hanks are Primero from Brooks Farm in Texas; they're 100% mohair. You can't imagine from this photo how lustrous they are. The golden one has a mate, which gives me 1000 yards, which I'm hoping is enough for the Litla Dimun shawl in Folk Shawls (but I have to contact Cheryl Oberle, because the yardage requirements in the pattern have a glitch). The other one is actually white with very deep dull purple and a lighter, dustier purple shade, and I think I'll make a Half-Pi Shawl (Grace's Version). The yarn looks quite thin, but like all mohairs, it needs a lot of breathing room--it's going to fluff up a lot.

Oh, and soap, lots of soap from Simpler Thyme. They make wonderful un-flowery scents like Cedar-and-Sage.

Since Carol posted a picture of me and Suze, here's one from Sunday of Eva and Diana.



We go down both days so that the kids can enjoy the festival: they love the animals and the food and all the colors and textures, but it's no fun for them unless the grownups have gotten the whole obsessive-fiber-feast thing a little out of our systems. This may have been our best Mothers'Day ever.

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