Shepherd's Harvest Festival 2014

The Shepherd's Harvest Festival is an annual event held at the Washington County Fairgrounds near Lake Elmo, MN and I have gone for the last four years. It was me and my mom hitting the festival again this year. I like to get there when it opens on the first non-class day so I get to see the most amount of yarn and wares from the vendors. (Greedy little yarn diva that I am - I don't want to miss a thing with building up my yarn stash!) 

This year we decided to start in the last building first as that building tends to get high traffic and is hard to maneuver, and that is all because of the gentleman above who graciously welcomed me and my mom when we walked in the door. That is StevenBe who is also known as The Glitter Knitter and he is just the warmest, kindest person. He is doing a tour this summer across America with Stephen West and my head kind of explodes to even think of that level of awesome combining. (Ok - Enough with the fan girl!)

So the festival this year had three buildings set up for vendors rather than four, so it did feel a little scaled back to me. This is also the first year that they charged for entry, so I thought that was interesting. Frankly I think they should have charged all along as it is such a wonderful festival, and anything that they can do to sustain it is good with me!

There were spinners here and there, like this gentleman from the Blackberry Hills booth. So fun to watch! This was a busy booth and is you can see behind where he is spinning, they had some gorgeous handmade shawls for sale along with their other items. The shawls were just beautiful!

This is another example of a vendor booth. So much yarn and fiber goodness! This was at the entrance to one of the buildings and had great light and you pretty much just walked right in to an explosion of color and fiber fun when you walked into the building. So awesome.

Although I am not much for fleece, I do appreciate what it gets turned into, so that makes me like the fleece even if I have no use for it. (I WILL NOT SPIN! If I keep saying that it will be true, right?) It was pretty much impossible to walk buy a bag of fleece and not plunge your hands into it.

Here is a picture of me holding the reins of Lonnie the Llama. Lonnie is about 8 years old according to his human and he was so majestic. We were walking across the fair grounds and I spotted him and had to go meet him. My mom snapped this shot of me grinning wildly up at Lonnie. I just wanted to hug him and take him home!

After meeting Lonnie we headed over to the critter barn and got to see some llama's and alpaca's. It is always so fun to get up close to these guys and see them in touching distance.

 

Next we were off to the Sheep shearing which was just impressive. This gentleman can shear a sheep in no time and we watched him shear several breeds of sheep and learned a lot about the sheep as well.  Really neat!

So I managed to control my splurging this year better than years past. This is the haul I came home with. Some ridiculously reduced price yarns at one booth - like the Boku and the Nashua yarn. The white skeins are 100% alpaca from a vendor that I search out for at this festival every year. Really nice guy and the yarn is like touching heaven. Am quite pleased with my stash enhancements this year and also proud that I controlled myself a little bit.

My other bit of wonderful I picked up is this mug. Both me and my mom got the same mug and I use it all the time. It makes me smile every time I see it and it's just a fun addition to my festival memories.

All in all it was just a wonderful time. I love going to this festival and it was great fun spending the day with my mom and touching fiber and talking yarn and eating deep fried egg roles while sitting in the grass and watching the people with all their hand knit items being worn (quite a fashion show!) while they walked the fair grounds. I look forward to this every year and it's just something special.

Fugly Update

I thought I would update on my Fugly blanket this week. I spent a couple hours last night weaving in the ends and tacking down the fugly seams I created when I crocheted chunks together. Today I pulled my blanket our and measured it and took a few pictures. It's currently 56 inches by 52 inches (142 cm x 132cm). I feel like if I make it too much larger it will hit "blanket" or "afghan" level rather than throw. I wonder if there is a real division in the those or if that is just my feelings? Anyway - I don't want a HUGE blanket. I want a mini blanket for throwing over my shoulders in bed at night or wearing on my lap while I knit. My internal voice told me I was there.

My next challenge is picking out the color I want to edge it in. I THINK I have it figured out now, but honestly I have changed my mind three times this morning already, so.... Yeah.

My only requirement is that it be in my stash. I have a whole bin of cotton - so that's really not an issue I don't think. This whole blanket is an experiment and since I have declared it FUGLY from day one there really is nothing I can do to it to make it worse. That really takes the pressure off.

In other news, my weekly weight in was pretty successful considering how much I consumed over the 4th of July holiday! I gained about half a pound this week and I was pretty happy with that since I was sure it would be much worse.

Another blessing is our heat wave finally broke. We hit 102F (38.88C) yesterday and it was over a week of temperatures like that. Last night we had storms roll in and today we are a bit cooler - so yay for that!

Is anyone doing the Stephen West KAL that starts next Friday? Lord help me - I signed up for it! I don't work with small needles  - like ever - and I am thinking if I am lucky I will be knitting this up on a size 4, but the yarn states size 1-3 needles so I may end up smaller than I think. Uffda. What have I gotten myself into?!?! My other concern is that this KAL will only be halfway over when the Olympic Games starts and I have a project geared up for that as well! So.... Yeah. We will have to see how this goes!

A Public Service Announcement (3KCWDAY2)

I thought today would be a good day to talk about the dangers of knitting and crocheting. I am not talking about what happens when you go for that second glass of wine while knitting a lace shawl. And I am not talking about the dangers of losing a needle in the couch and then finding it when you sit on it. (I seriously have a friend who had to PULL a needle out of her leg. NOT. JOKING.) And I am not talking about the economic impact on you and the people around you. (Do you know how long a person can knit one ball of sock yarn? Verses... say.. going to a movie? Sock yarn wins thank you very much!)

Nope. Today I want to talk about SABLE: Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy. Now I am personally PRO-Sable. I think ...nay... I KNOW the person with the most yarn wins. The problem that comes with massive yarn acquisition is where do you put the yarn? We would all love to have our yarn contained and categorized like we had our own little yarn shop, but the reality is yarn gets away from us.

It starts our rather innocently. You think - nobody will notice these two little skeins of yarn here on the DVD cabinet. They kind of blend in with all the bold colors of the DVD cases and the yarn is so PRETTY!

Pretty soon you convince yourself that you can put yarn on display in the china cabinet as long as you only use yarn that matches the dishes. It's artistic! It's a creative display! Maybe even all your yarn friends will think this is really clever and will do it too! (You already know all your non-knitting/hooker friends will just roll there eyes at you on this one - they just don't get it.) You could be a trend setter like that Hildi chick who glued Straw to people's walls on Trading Spaces! Although, thinking back, people pretty much broke out in tears when they found out Hildi was going to be "designing" in their home. But hey - it's looking good. You have fun kind of arranging it all "ironic" and fun. Bonus that your husband doesn't notice it for months and maybe never would have if your knitting friend didn't suggest in front of him that you knit mittens out of the yarn in the China cabinet.

And then we have the closets. They start getting a little... uncomfortable. You start off being all "I am organized and I have my yarn in bins and totes!"  But then there was the time you barely beat your husband home from a little yarn spree and you had to kind of ditch the yarn in your closet. And then you realized you had a lot of stray balls of half used acrylic so you needed to put those in another bag and they wouldn't fit in a tote so they kind of have to sit on the floor. And there are the projects you have organized and all ready to go - but you have to finish some of your other WIPS first, so you stuff them in the closet until you are ready for them.  My point is that closets like this just sort of happen. You are fine until you can't close the door as far as I am concerned.

Now this one is a little iffy. I think if you are a single person you could probably get away with Medicine Cabinet Stashing. Watch out for that toothpaste though. I hate to think what the Whitening Toothpaste would do to that rich red Cascade yarn.

And my final shot - Which I think is quite clever and daring, is Fridge Stashing. Now, if you have a mate who doesn't eat lettuce I think you could totally get away with this. This Cascade Yarn Eco + looks so much like lettuce it's crazy! Make sure to clean the drawer out first of course. And if you want to be really sneaky about it you could ball some of that red cascade up and it would look like tomatoes.

Of course some of us are loud and proud of are yarn stash. There is no sneaking around or hiding our insane fiber addiction. But I can remember when I just started out collecting my stash. It multiplies faster than bunnies on Viagra and you just have no idea it's going to happen that fast! So take these as suggestions. If nothing else - it will desensitize the people around you to the yarn and pretty soon they will just expect to open their sweater drawer and find it half full of Malabrigo.

Swatch it!

When I was new to the knitting world I purchased a fairly large quantity of yarn on eBay. Almost all of what I purchased came from the same vendor and was 100% New Zealand Wool in various weights and colors. I purchased A LOT of this yarn. I mean a HUGE quantity. I decided recently that I should really use some of this yarn. So I grabbed out a ball in Bright Orange and started making a swatch.

I decided to use this as an opportunity to really try and understand gauge and swatching, and found a few useful links online I thought I would share. The first is on Knitty.com and is an article called "Swatch it!" Really good article on how to swatch and how to read your swatch. After I read this article I decided I would cast on 50 stitches and pretty much knit a washcloth in the wool yarn to get an idea of how it works up. I am knitting this on size 7 needles because the notes I have on this yarn tell me it's a DK/Worsted weight. My notes also tell me I have 2lbs 6 oz of this yarn, that it's 2 ply and that it comes in at about 1100 yards per pound. I decided that I wanted to understand a little more about what yarn weights really mean and found a page by Spinderella on yarn weight. Really interesting! This told me that a worsted weight is 900 - 1100 yards per pound and that DK is 1000 - 1400 yards per lb. Neat. So I can see why this comes in at DK/Worsted Weight.

I am knitting it up and I am feeling like it's close to Cascade 220 or perhaps Lion Brand Fisherman's wool in weight. I will be curious to see if this yarn blooms at all in the wash and block stage of this yarn. I will also be curious to see if it gets any softer as this is the scratchiest wool yarn ever created. Seriously rough! If it comes out of the wash and block process and still feels like it could remove a callous from my foot I will have to think about how I want to use this yarn. (Probably slippers, handbags and rugs rather than sweaters you wear against your skin.)

It's feeling good to pull some of this yarn out and think about what it could be used for. Also, if I can work it with some cascade 220 or fisherman's wool in various projects that could be really fun. I am anxious to see what the stitch per inch count comes up as when I am done swatching.

Mail Call! Mail Haul!

OOOH! Look at the pretty thing waiting for me when I came home today!

I present "Enchanted Evening" which is a Superwash sock yarn I purchased at wooliebullie's Etsy shop. Here is the description from the web page:

Enchanted Evening is now available in our new line of RAZZLE SOCK handpainted yarn. Deep and rich teal, black and blue - it will light up your night with the bit of twinkle.This yarn is beautiful and a luscious and easy care blend of 70% Superwash Merino, 20% Nylon and 5% Razzle.   

This yarn is SOOOO awesome looking. I am tickled to add it to my stash and wondering already what wonderful thing (shawl) I will make with this.

There was a lot of temptation on this etsy shop!

Mail Call!

When I went on to Etsy to purchase my shawl pin a couple weeks ago I ended up spending some time looking at other stuff too. Etsy is so addictive! I somehow (heh) ended up finding someone who was destashing. (Squee!) And so I ordered one of her lots which was Brown Sheep Handpaint Originals Yarn. I picked up 4 skeins of Onyx, 2 skeins of Cranberry, and one skein of Chestnut.

I am a BIG fan of Brown Sheep yarn. I use it a lot. Love the feel of it, love the finished products I have made from them, and I really like the colors the yarn comes in. I used my flash on these pictures so the colors are bleached out here, but these are wonderful colors.

I have been enjoying thinking about what I want to make with this yarn. I originally thought a shawl would be very warm and wonderful, but I read that this yarn felts really well, so now I am toying with the idea of making a bag out of it. Not sure which way the wind will blow on this, but the thought process is a joy!