Fiber Obsession Strikes!

Fiber Revival Part Deux was held this past Saturday at the Spencer Pierce Little Farm in Newbury MA. The weather was incredibly beautiful and the place was packed! We had alpacas courtesy of Alpaca Kathy (the little guy in the center is just 3 weeks old!!)















Fiber, of course (that's Heather's booth in the front with Amy Boogie's on the left)















We even had a Turkey-In-Residence (turkeys love spinning)















I had every intention of taking more pictures, but I got enthralled with spinning some of Heather's awesome fiber on my new wheel, and when I finaly looked up, I saw this















As lovely as it is, this does not bode well. We delayed as long as we could but eventually we knew it was time to act, (possibly it was the distant thunder) so the crowd scattered to their cars to put away their own toys then came running back to help the vendors pack up their trucks before the rain started. That was quite a site I can tell you! People packing goods, breaking down tents and tables, packing everything into trucks - I think half of us had no idea who we were helping, but I tell you it went so smoothly we'd have made an army drill team proud. It certainly looked to me as thought we got done just in time - the sky opened up just as I was walking back to my own car with my last minute fiber purchases! ;-)

The obsession part of this post is all Heather's fault. She's the devil, truly. I adore her fiber and yarn (just look in my Ravelry stash - good heavens!) and I just can't seem to get enough. In this case, it was fiber. I had been watching Kelly and Cheryl spin her Wild Side colorway for months, and was intrigued. So I finally dove in and bought a hank for myself in a superwash merino, along with a hank of a gorgeous merino/tencel blend in Gothic Rose. It's a lovely rose/hydrangea blue/lilac color that I was just unable to capture well, so you'll just have to trust me when I tell you how entrancing it is in person. I loved it so much, in fact, that I went back at the last minute and bought a skein of laceweight merino/silk in the same color so I could knit it sooner! There's plenty in a skein to make a shawl and the price is fantastic. You just can't go wrong in Heather's shop!













So... the Wild Side Obsession...

I bought the fiber and immediately went back over to my wheel and started in. It's addicting - the colors are so bright and the superwash merino so spinable - I just couldn't stop. I chatted here and there, waved to Julia and other friends passing by, stopped to chat with Blogless Sarah and Mister Onion, spotted a few famous knitters (I'm not sure, but I think most of the TwistCollective brain trust was there, yes?), went for a couple of wanderings around the grounds to say "hey", but mostly I just sat and spun. And spun. And spun! Joined the collective hive mind to get everyone packed up before the rain, went home, trundled my goodies into the house, and sat and spun some more. Gave up when it got too dark to see (we have serious lighting issues in our home. Bah!). Woke up at 6am Sunday morning still thinking about that fiber. Crept out of bed, fed the cat, and sat down to spin some more. By the time The Mister got up I was plying. By the time we'd finished coffee, I had the yarn in a hank and soaking in the sink. By noon it was hanging on the front porch in the sun to dry, and by evening,... I had this




















It's awesome. Approx 144 yards of awesome.

I tried so hard to split the roving lengthwise just so and to join the strips just so so that the colors would line up when I plied... but I guess I'm just not there yet. I got long stretches where they did match, or close enough, but then there's at least as many long stretches of random barber pole-ing (is that a word??). It's lovely and squishy and I totally adore it. I was cooing over it so much that the Mister finally looked over with a grin and said "well - you have to swatch, don't you?"

Isn't he marvelous?

So swatch I did. I didn't save the result as I was off by 2 needle sizes from the fabric I think I want, but it felt good and looked really intense. I'm pawing through Rav now looking for hat patterns that might do. Maybe something with a herringbone pattern like My So Called Scarf would show off the colors nicely. What do you think?