Carolina Fiber Fest Day 2!

First, I want you all to know that I didn't buy anything. It was a struggle, but I made it through with my bank account intact! Phew! Mind you, Jackie arrived and bought us each one of those awesome canvas knitting bags I talked about yesterday. She also picked us up porcupine quills which were being sold as shawl pins. They're really cool but also absurdly sharp. Stand by for stories of me impaling myself on my own shawl. xD

She also got herself a lovely skein of 50 Shades of Gradient in Patina, from a shop called Yarns to Dye For. I love terrible puns like that and I probably laughed like an idiot after I read it.

Patina colorway. Gorgeous, gorgeous.

The skein is a 100% superwash merino 2-ply, in something like a fingering weight. You could definitely make socks out of it, though the merino would might wear fast. It cost $32 but it's 560 yards which is pretty generous for that kind of (I think) hand dyed yarn. There were all sorts of samples knitted up and one skein can make a lacey shawl very easily. I'm not sure what Jackie's going to make but I'm excited to see. Even though there was a gorgeous silver to blue to black gradient skein I didn't drool too much. I take a certain amount of pride in that. 

The Sheep to Shawl was very interesting.

When I originally joined it I thought it was going to be a competition type thing where you start with a sheepie and it gets sheared in front of you and a small team of devoted workers card, spin, and weave that fleece into a shawl, right there on the spot. It turned out that this was more of a demonstration event and no one expected to finish the shawl that day. Still, a whole bunch of folks worked their treadling feet off to make it happen. We had a lovely Jacob's fleece and every bit of it got spun and plied. It wasn't frantic or stressful, we just worked at our own paces, all together, for four hours straight.

It was especially educational and a bit challenging for me. I'm very picky about my fiber prep and my spinning. Nothing goes through my carder fewer than 3 times and when I spin up something bumpy and lumpy I get pretty grumpy. But at the Sheep to Shawl people just... loosely carded and then spun whatever they had, lumpy gnarls and all. At first I felt uncertain about my spinning around all these much more experienced spinners but after I took a break to look around I realized everyone else was just... accepting all the imperfections that popped up. A bit of an eye opening experience for me, I'll tell you!

Afterwards, I drove up to my parents house and introduced my fantastic boyfriend Jaime to them. That went great - I beat Jackie at cards for the first time in my life with him as my partner! That's never happened! I gave my stepmother an easter basket full of little bits and pieces I'd picked up for her along the way...

Including that awesome sock yarn so we can make matching socks.

I gave my dad a copy of Sid Meier's Civilization so he'd have something to do while Jackie and I babble about fiber... and that was fortunate because Jackie had an easter basket for me too. I tore it apart so I haven't got a picture yet, but it had some bamboo sock yarns, orifice hooks she made herself, and other awesome things. The bamboo sock yarn is perfect for this lace sock pattern, Summer Slice, I wanted to knit.

Meanwhile I need to find a pattern for Jackie and I to do our matching socks in - anyone have any ideas? :D