The Fiber Festival

So, this year I journeyed out to the Eastern States Exposition in Springfield, MA for the 4th annual Fiber Festival of New England, which happened the first weekend in November.  I went with a knitter friend who is a festival veteran, and therefore my guru - seriously, she pre-screened the vendors & had a list of places to stop; had a project list for "must haves" and "would be nice" for yarn, drove, and brought water for both of us.  I put on clean clothes.  If I ever have to go into battle, I am totally putting her in charge of operational supply lines.  She has four kids, though - and she still has time to knit like crazy.  We should bow down to her incredible time management and innate organizational skills, I think.

There were over 200 vendors.  Most of them selling yarn.  Much of which I bought.  (But we'll get to that in a minute.)  There were also vendors selling animals, like alpacas:



Photo courtesy of my friend Dorothy

Look how cute! They were kind of expensive, though:



Photo courtesy of my friend Dorothy

My friend and I got momentarily silly, deciding that if I bought them, we could stick them in the back of her mini van.  I am particularly enamored of alpacas, not because I think it's the fiber equivalent of farm-to-table (hoof-to-garment?) but because my husband thinks they are a pyramid scheme.  He makes a strong case that people raise alpacas to sell them to other people who will raise alpacas....to sell to other people.  "Where does it end?" he always asks.  Anyway, I went home and told him we could have been the proud owners of two new female alpacas, and he started in with the pyramid scheme theory again.

"A lot of people knit with alpaca," I argued.

"How much alpaca yarn do you have in your stash?" he asked.

"Um, none....but I have an unusually small stash for a knitter, given that I only have stuff in one cabinet and one short rolling cart in the family room."  J's eyebrows went back into his hairline at this point, which is even more impressive than it sounds given he's nearly bald.

"Pyramid scheme," he announced. 

I was going to buy some alpaca yarn to knit him a pair of socks, but got distracted by all the choices and forgot about it before leaving.  Also, he doesn't know what it feels like, so I could buy some crap yarn at a commercial big-box store in beige or brown, knit him some socks and tell him it's alpaca.  But I won't, because I have plenty of good stuff on hand.

The Alpaca Pyramid Scheme conversation served as a nice distraction for the bag full of yarn (mostly sock yarn) that I brought home from the festival.  Seriously, I pretty much spent the year's budget for fiber in 4 hours.  My friend was no help, because after offering to fold down her car seats for the alpacas, she kept telling me sock yarn does not count towards stash.  I took her pronouncements as gospel, because I bought 12 skeins of sock yarn.  But oh, the colors!  And I'm supporting local small businesses!  Right?  RIGHT? 

I also bought yarn to make myself a sweater.  Because I've been so successful with sweater knitting - I've almost finished exactly one, and it needs to be ripped back because my stitch pickup was wrong for the hem and the sweater hangs crooked.

It's a lovely teal color, which doesn't really show since I photographed this before sunrise on my very blue kitchen counter using artificial light.  I'll try to get a good shot of the finished garment, sometime in 2021 when it's done.

I understand that it's a slippery slope with yarn, that your stash starts off small and continues to grow until you're stuffing it in random closets and hiding it from your spouse.  My spouse cares deeply about animal pyramid schemes (not really) and not at all about the yarn.  (He likes to tell me that it's more productive than a crack addiction, and certainly more socially acceptable.)  I have made a pact with myself to use up my stash and not buy anything new until at least June of 2014.  Except the yarn for a baby sweater for our neighbors.  And some for a hat for J for Christmas.  And.....

Since I am semi-restricted from shopping, expect to see lots of sock project photos going forward.  And maybe I can knit J a hat with an alpaca on it.  And a pyramid.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

It occured to me the other day that I don't really talk about the process of starting a project.  Most of my yarn comes in skein form:

Pre-sock

This is the best kind because it means I can pull from the center of the ball, find the end, and begin my project.  Some people prefer to wind their yarn in a ball, but I'm really against doing extra work.  Sometimes, the yarn comes twisted together, like this:

Mmm, Madeline Tosh sock yarn - the BMW of sock yarns

I see this most often with hand-dyed and hand-painted yarns.  The downside of this is that sometimes while storing it, you end up with this:



Sock yarn purchased in 2011 in Watkins Glen, NY - beautiful, but oh, what a mess

I love hand-dyed and hand-painted yarns, but in order to use it properly, you must wind it into a ball.  I've accomplished this at home by asking my beloved husband to hold his arms up like football uprights while I drape the yarn around both arms, find the end, and begin rolling the ball.  This is tedious for everyone involved.  Particularly him, who often gets stuck figuring out where the jam is on the yarn and wiggling his arms around to help straighten out the jam.  He does this out of a deep & abiding sense of love, since it is so boring.  (Even I hate it, and I love yarn.)

So for Christmas, I decided to give us both a gift and ask for a yarn swift:

Instead of Himself being trapped on the couch for half an hour (or more), I can set this one to fit whatever skein of yarn I want to roll into a ball and leave him out of it completely.  Plus, it's a new knitting toy so it hasn't lost its attractiveness to me yet so I now find winding yarn fun.  Go figure.

He also bought me Vogue Knitting, a book on techniques, terminology & all things knitting.  It's ten years old but is considered The Bible of knitting by serious knitters.  Also, it's the only thing with "Vogue" in the title that will be found in our house, ever.