Knitter's Fair

Yippee, Hooray! the Knitter's Fair this past Saturday was not only loads of fun, but also a great success! My little booth was abuzz with yarn and fiber lovers; I was so happy to see familiar faces and to meet some new knitters as well. And can't wait to see some new Viola projects pop up on Ravelry :)

I took loads of pictures of my booth - sadly there are all under icky fluorescent light - but hopefully you'll get the idea...



My sister Sarah, adjusting something important, I'm sure...


Roasted Carrot sock kits (remember those?!) design by the lovely and talented Kate Atherley!





There's me, knitting away on my chickadee cowl (now finished :))



Cute! Socks supplied by my sweet friends who also helped out in the booth for the day!

This bittersweet was green in the morning, but the heat of the building caused it to pop and reveal these lovely orange berries! I love bittersweet so much that I'm planning a tattoo...details to follow...



...The booth design and layout was so much fun to come up with! My family and friends helped out so much, and we managed to get everything assembled quite quickly in the morning. All in all great fun, and I could not be happier with my first-trade-show-ever-experience!

More Spinning...

So I think I'm completely hooked; I just about picked up the spindle in favour of writing this post! I've spun up 2 of the 3 braids of Fleece Artist BFL that I mentioned in a previous post. I plied the one bright skein with a pale (cream, bronze an gray) braid...and it looks super cute, like cotton candy, or superkid ice cream, or anything else that's bright an fun!


I do think that I didn't twist it enough while I was plying, but I guess that I'll get the hang of that (The skein is setting right now, so I hope you can excuse its twistiness in the photos...I couldn't wait to take pics and post about it). There is another subdued braid of BFL waiting to be spun up, but my attention has begun to drift to the baby alpaca roving that I've had stashed away since last winter...its about time that I spin it though...this stuff is so pretty and soft! The yarn that I got from the BFL looks like it will knit to a worsted weight (which is lovely) but i'd really like to spin something thinner, so that'll be my goal for the baby alpaca.




Now that I have the bright skein spun and plied I like it better than I expected to, but I'm not sure about using it to knit the yoke of a sweater...I held it up against a few colours of Malabrigo worsted, and was not thrilled. I'll chech again before I decide, but at this point it looks like this yarn will become a hat.


In other fiber news, here's a look at my most recent dye job...there was another skein, but without thinking I gave it away before I'd had a chance to snap a photo. I've also got a huge (580 yards!) skein of sock yarn cooling on the stove right now, and it may just be my favourite colour so far...I won't forget to take a picture of this one before I give it back to its owner, its waaaay too pretty!




Ishbel is into chart B, and is also looking great! Malabrigo lace has to be one of my favourite yarns; its soft and fluffy, and I just love how it "swells" once its knit. Beautiful! The pattern is so lovely to knit that I may want to make a few more of these...I don't want to get ahead of myself or anything...but the knitting is good, and I keep picturing all of my stash knit into 1000 ishbel shawls...that may be a bit excessive though...