Fun at the Fiber Festival!

Generally, the only shopping I do is for groceries. I don't especially look forward to grocery shopping, or most other types of shopping. But every once in a while, I get giddy about shopping; fiber shopping. Like last Sunday. Tina, Suzanne and I headed north to Torrance for the Southern California Handweavers' Guild "Weaving and Fiber Festival" (WeFF for short). Its a great little one day show, with yarn and fiber of all types, books and tools, buttons, beads and this and that, to touch and consider and purchase. Or not.

This time around, I was fiber hunting; no yarns need apply. Very recently inspired by watching spinning videos of Judith MacKenzie, I'm all about learning techniques new to me, and refining the techniques I think I already know. (2 of those down loadable DVDs are on sale at Interweave Press right now.) I already have lots (and lots and lots) of fleece to play with, but wanted more roving and top to practice with. Here's what I brought home;

From Redfish Dyeworks, two 4 oz. hunks of 50/50 silk/fine merino (they have such gorgeous silk yarns!),

and two 1 oz. bags of silk hankies, (I only took a picture of one, they are similar)

another 1oz. hunk of organic cotton from New World Textiles, I had so much fun spinning the first one,

two 1 oz. packets of sort of pale lavender soysilk (to maybe ply with the silk above)

and these cool Crosspatch Creations batts that I won in a raffle. Wow, I usually never win anything!

Apologies for the batts in the wrapper, I'll take better pictures later. 

Here is a picture of the finished Meandering Vines Scarf. After blocking it is about 71" long and 7 3/4" wide. The yarn is soft soft soft, and the pattern is fun and easy enough to memorize.

Next project: Raglan Top-Down Cardigan using some of my hand-spun yarn. Here is a yarn pic.

Two different batches of hand-spun yarn, alternating every 4 rows gives a subtle (at least so far) striped effect. I'm using the guidelines in Wendy Bernard's  Custom Knits and have no idea how it will turn out, or if I'll have enough yarn. But I can always add in more yarn so we'll see what happens. I sort of wish I was knitting a pullover, because then I'd be knitting in the round and that always seems faster, but here in coastal Southern California I think a wool cardigan is (somewhat) more practical than a pullover.