Madrona 5

Hello,

We had an absolutely beautiful day today.

I spent it knitting.  Well, I cleaned house, too.

Stinks. 

The house cleaning part stinks, the knitting was great.  I had to frog my Smaug socks back to the heel flaps, yet, I am almost to the toes on the right one.  I gave in and am finishing them one at a time.  Because the yarn is light fingering, and I am knitting them on size 0 (2.0mm) needles to have decently tight fabric, they are very tight.  I might have to give them to my daughter, Moogie.  I might actually make this pattern again with slightly thicker yarn so I can keep a pair, as I really love the look. I will have to go through my sock yarns and look for something suitable.

I don't have any photos of the latest progress, but I do have a photo of my spinning.  Last night, my good Stitch Bud, Wajio, came over, and we had a spinning night.

She had just gotten a new Russian Spindle, and brought it over.  It was really beautiful.  I had so much fun chatting with her while we spun,  I have now finished two spools of singles.  I was thinking I would spin three, then try a 3-ply.  But, as these singles are still very uneven, it is probably best that I just ply these up.  I want to try to turn in yarn for one of the HPKCHC classes, but I am not sure if I meet any of the prompts.  Also, because I started the singles in January, I don't know if they would count.  I will check and report back.  Maybe plying counts.  The other idea I had was to ply up the yarn, then dye it.  I know that dying yarn counts for most class prompts.  I have never tried dying yarn, just a bit of tie-dying with my kids in summer day camps.  It might be fun.

On to my continuing reports of the vendors at the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival in Tacoma, WA.

There are more than fiber and yarn vendors at Madrona.  One such booth was  Jewelry by "K."    She had some beautiful shawl pins.

She also had glass beads.

I wished I was knitting something that needed beads.

Jewelry by K was sharing a booth with the dyer, Dicentra Designs. 

Very beautiful colors.

Carolina Homespun had a really big booth.  They had fiber for sale, but what was more interesting in their booth was all of the fiber tools.

I was tempted to buy some hand carders.  I think I need some.  Two of my friends have drum carders.  I'm sure they will let me use them, if I get a fleece.  But what about if I get some fiber that just needs a bit of combing.  Right?  I might need hand carders. 

Jennie the Potter had hand crafted mugs, stitch markers, jewelry, and buttons for sale.

The mugs have such cute motifs.  Many have sheep on them.  Skeinherder bought a mug.  I envy her.  Jenny also makes yarn bowls.  These are really special.

The last booth I'm going to talk about tonight is Just Our Yarn.

They carried hand-painted yarns of various fibers, as well as kits. 

I almost can't describe these yarns.  They were so different from most of the yarns I have seen before.

They had some sweaters knit up in these really strange yarns.  They were like pieces of art.


That's all for tonight.  I hope to get in an extra post tomorrow about Madrona (yes, there are MORE vendors) before heading out to stitch night with my Eastside Stitchers.

Until then,
Peace,

f1bercat
shaping the planet with some spools of spun singles.

Brenda Dayne demonstrates her spindle technique for me.