SAFF. . .

Was a blast!
Heather, Jamie and I got up at 4:30 in the morning, and left the house at 5:30 to get all the way across North Carolina to SAFF. We got there just as it opened for Saturday and headed on in. It was amazing. The wool fumes were overwhelming.

There were people spinning.

There was amazingly beautiful wool art.

. . . and Wheel art!

I successfully resisted buying a whole fleece. Mainly because I came to the philosophical realization that I'd rather spend that time spinning or knitting rather than washing and processing wool. It was rather tempting though, as there were fantastic fleeces available.

We also got out to see some of the livestock at the show, and the two cutest things we saw were a blonde alpaca. She kept saying "maah" at us

And a 4-day old pygmy goat. Apparently mama had triplets so the breeder/owner is hand raising the smallest one.

Since I'd been given a little "mad money" as well as having done pretty good at the Ren Faire the past couple of weekends, I got myself a tidy little pile of treats.

The basket was hand-made in New York, and fits on my back! I had fun sherpa-ing stuff for Jamie. I got some natural colored alpaca, in tri-color and chocolate, some irish flax because I've never spun flax before, and a show special mixture of alpaca and bombyx silk! There was a store having a buy 5 get the 6th free deal, so the navy and grey bumps of roving were from that. I can't remember the breed of wool it is (Heather, help!) but it's extremely soft. The black/white rectangle is a tool I've been wanting for a while, a spinner's control card which will help me spin with more purpose than just doing whatever the wool seems to want to do.

Oh, and those little round stones? Well, you'll just have to stay tuned to se what I'm doing with those!

New Spinning content, and an FO

I've started a new method of dying roving, which results in a loooooong color change down a single piece (with a weight in the vicinity of 2-3 ounces of roving). Then I spin it as one single, working my way from one end of the piece of roving to the other. While I haven't gotten a picture of the roving before spinning, I have a picture of two of those rovings in yarn form. And they're just beautiful.

I also finshed Mom K's Spring Forward Socks, in my own hand-dyed knitpicks sock yarn. They were a fun knit!

I hope she likes them :D

Ren faire fun!

One of the great things about the internet is how close it brings people. I've had a few of my handspun items available for sale at the Carolina Ren faire, and of course I knew that the presence of handspun and drop spindle kits would bring two things: gawkes from yarn muggles who don't truly know the value in handspun yarn, and oohs and ahhs from those yarn snobs that do. One lady who fell into the latter category was chatting as I was spinning, and we were talking about our respective spinning wheels, what we like to spin, and other such conversations. As I've always done when the conversation indicates to me I've found a real yarnie I ask if she's on Ravelry. She answers in the affirmative and we share screennames, only to realize that she's turtlegirl76, and we've chatted before on occasion in the forums of Ravelry as well as the forums for Knitty. Small world.

I have photographic evidence, but it's a pretty lousy shot of me. I'm tired and staring almost directly into the sun. She, on the other hand, looks gorgeous. So if you want to see a terrible picture of me, you'll just have to check out her blog!

So what's a fellow Raveler to do? I give her one of my handblended batts! She was so excited, and had said she needed the spinning pick-me up. It feels so good to re-inspire someone to spin!

Yarny Goodness!

The clickable picture has been available for a couple of weeks, but now it has been updated with a direct link to my handspun and handdyed roving available for purchase through Yarny Goodness!

I am super excited about this, and I'm hoping that sales through this website go very well. I'm all for more venues for supporting my craft habit!

Speaking of which, the weekend at the Carolina Renaissance Festival went fantastically. I decided to make up a few drop spindle kits and sell them. They went fantastically well! All 8 which I was able to make sold, and I'm going to go get more supplies and dye some roving for this upcoming weekend. The handspun had a couple of sales and a lot of interest, and I think I probably could have had one more sale, had I actually been there. Not that the adorable boys who are helping us didn't do a fantastic job, but there's just something different about speaking directly with the person who made it. I also have a tendancy to offer discounts to nice people, which will often cinch a sale, and the guys obviously couldn't take that into their hands and offer a discount on my stuff. Hopefully she'll be back though.