And Away We Go . . .

Remember last week I promised not to knit premie hats and dared you to out-knit me? You have until October 13 to beat my number (currently 15) and try to win the prize package which consists of, to date: 2 skeins of Socks That Rock in positively delightful colors, a large pink ceramic mug with red hearts completely filled with various flavors of Stash tea, and some Moonstruck chocolate. I'll be adding to the prize up to the last minute, so get those needles working! Those babies need hats!

Since I couldn't knit premie hats, I practiced some more on the spinning wheel which I borrowed from Chrispy, and made these:



On the right, a pretty decent sport weight; in the middle is some thick/thin similar to Colinette, and on the left is a very small skein of almost sock weight. Not too bad. So I decided to pull out that little bundle of navy heather roving from Woodland Woolworks. It only weighed about 1 1/2 ounces, but after spinning two singles and plying, I got this:



186 yards of navy heather sport weight. I don't know if I'll actually make anything with this, but I like the way it looks in this chair the guestroom, with the blue walls and the Pendleton blanket.

Then, on Saturday, it was OFFF. The day had barely gotten started when the Kidnapped Can Opener made it's appearance. If you don't know the back story, go to the link and read up on it; I'll wait.



It was a fiber festival, after all, so Kidnapped Can Opener acquired his own knitting project; see his little scarf in progress and ball of yarn?



He also posed with Judy and the PDXKB sign.



Then on to other fiberly pursuits; like seeing what everybody's working on and what they just bought.



We had beautiful weather; mostly sunny, not too hot, and just a little breeze now and then. People stopped by our area to ask about the sign or what we were working on, and occasionally someone came by to introduce themselves because they'd been reading our blogs. So some of us handed out blog cards and collected business cards.



Then, we had a visitor without a blog card or a business card. Instead, she was handing out these:



It was our own Marta McCall, handing out postcard with that great bag on it. I've totally had a crush on that bag since she published the pattern, but I haven't wanted to tackle it because I think I'd cry when I put that knitting in the washing machine. (I didn't notice until I was writing this post, that I bought all the colors of roving to make that bag. It must be a sign.)

It was great being on the lawn in the middle of it all. We were surrounded by buildings with vendors of all things fiberly, the tents outside full of more vendors, the spinning competition right in front of us, and the kids activity tent right beside us.



If you really want details, then go read MonicaPDX, or Cindy, or Judy, or Duffy's blogs because they wrote about it way better than I can. I just enjoyed a whole day of knitting, gabbing, laughing, and buying fiber for spinning.

On Sunday, I decided to photograph my treasures and put it all away in plastic bins until I'm ready to spin it. Of course, doing this with a Parson's Jack Russell terrier in the house usually poses a whole new set of problems.


"Here Mom, let me help you unpack the goodies."



"Inspected by Number 37"

Andy Rooney really liked the polworth roving that Barbara brought me, along with the spinning wheel. He kept putting his head in the bag and inhaling deeply. ToolMan called it "dognip."



Andy stayed close by while I unpacked bags, set up pictures, and marked stuff for storage. See how happy the wool fumes make him?

The first thing I bought was this superwash top from Butternut Woolens. I fell so in love with this that Shelly had to remind me to pay for it before leaving her tent!



It's snuggling up to those sock blockers (courtesy of ToolMan), 'cause that's what I intend to make with it. I just love these sock blockers; he made them of western red cedar, about 3/4 inch thick, then he cut out the free-form holes and rounded all the edges with his router. He's going to add about a foot of rawhide between the them so they'll hang over the deck rail or shower curtain rod to dry.

Then Barbara told me about this great buy on roving at Ronnie's Handspun. Ronnie is sadly without a website, but if you want her contact info, ask me and I'll share it. The light one is a little too yellow for me and the darker one is a little to "blah", but I think if I ply the two together, I'll come out with plenty to make a sweater coat.



Then, I found what I considered my find of the day. At the tent for Mountain Shadow Ranch, there was a laundry hamper labeled, "Dragon Waste, $14/lb." Mixed superwash fibers in beautiful colors that you pick through and choose whatever you want.



I bought two pounds; mostly for socks, but who knows what else will come out of that 2 pounds. I really liked that yellow and brown twist; we all said it reminded us of some candy from when were were kids that was banana and chocolate but none of us could remember what it was called. If you know, then please leave me a comment with the name; you might be rewarded with some handspun. ;)


"What do you mean 'That big ball doesn't belong to you.'?"

ToolMan has been saying he'd like to have an alpaca cardigan, so I bought that pound of natural-colored alpaca from Mountain Shadow Ranch for the main body and 6 ounces of heathered roving from Aurora Colony FiberArts to do some fair isle or mosaic patterning on the yoke area.

I also bought this Colonial top from Aurora Colony. I don't know what it will be yet, but I couldn't resist the coloring. You can't really see it in the pictures because it's got a slight shine, but it's peacock colors: blue, teal, green, purple, and burgundy. I think it needs to be done in some fair isle patterning.



I thought Andy was behaving pretty well while I was busy doing all the photographing and stashing. Until I looked over and saw this:


"I totally don't know why you think I've been in your roving. Why would you think that I'd do a thing like that?"

Yessiree, that's my boy; Mama's little helper.