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Stitches West in Sacramento has come and gone. I spent Friday in the Market and Saturday and Sunday in class. Here are the spoils of the Market:
Top row: Shetland fiber from Clemes & Clemes, fish dish from Kunihiro Pottery at the Farm, embroidery patterns from Rosanna Diggs, Shetland/silk/firestar fiber from Goodie Supply Company
Bottom row: orange Mendocino from Bella Yarn, 3x speckled Tosh Merino Light from Madeline Tosh, 2x purple Cormo from Sincere Sheep, green Merino Sock from Lazer Sheep, 2 colors of Annapurna from A Verb for Keeping Warm, green and blue Dude from Schmutzerella Yarns, olive green Smitten from Wonderland Dyeworks
It is just 5,105 yards of yarn (under 3 miles) and 12 ounces of fiber this time. I went in intending to buy the 2 skeins of Sincere Sheep and possibly the 2 from AVFKW. Leaving with only 8 skeins more than planned is good, yes? 🙂 I didn’t plan to get mostly fingering weight, but that’s what I ended up with. No Addi Turbo needles or Jamieson & Smith yarn to be had this year. The Market was small already, and even smaller when it turned out a few vendors could not travel due to the weather.
I have plans for the Sincere Sheep. I have collected 6 colors of Cormo Fingering over several years and this is the neutral to tie them all together into a striped sweater. The Annapurna will be Rosemary Hill’s Mystery Shawl 2023. I didn’t buy the kit because I don’t need another project bag or another shawl pin, pretty as both were, and bought the yarn once I knew I could get the pattern without the kit. The KAL kicks off on April 21.
Leaving the hotel parking lot on Sunday, I noticed a fancy cupola peeking beneath bare and damp trees and realized for the first time that I had been across from the state capitol building the whole time. The joke’s on me for not noticing until then. To be fair, our room’s window had a view of the top floor of the parking garage and the weather was rainy, and I was distracted by yarn fumes, good friends, and tasty snacks. Next year, I need to plan part of Market day to wander the neighborhood. Just an hour won’t hurt, right?
“The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook” never strays far from my coffee table because I find looking at all the sheep pictures is soothing after a stressful day. It also contains so much useful information about spinning fibers that I can’t praise it enough. Manx Loaghtan has an entry, and for the sake of simplicity, I’m going with the spelling used in the book.
I bought this fiber from Woolgatherings when I went to Black Sheep Gathering in 2015. I do try to spin from a variety of sheep breeds and this was a new one for me. The fiber drafted easily and spun beautifully. I had to pick out some guard hairs and that was it. All in all, a very enjoyable project and it made pretty yarn!
Fiber: Manx Loaghtan from Woolgatherings
Color: natural
Finished yarn: 3-ply, 100g of 144 yard
Spun at 12:1 on Lendrum wheel from 1/1-7/31/2019
Plied at 12:1 on Lendrum wheel 8/2/2019
The book explains Manx Loaghtan is a conservation breed that came close to extinction 50 years ago (well, 59 now as the book is 9 years old) and is still considered rare and at risk. It isn’t listed on the Livestock Conservancy’s “Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em Initiative” list, perhaps because it’s a British breed, but the best thing we spinners can do for rare breeds is to use their fiber. What I’ll make with this skein, I don’t know (so typical), but I will enjoy admiring it.
No spinning for me tonight. My right wrist is tired out after hammering 34 nails, evenly-spaced, into a square dowel to build a raddle for the big loom.
Another Stitches West has come and gone, and now that I’ve had a few days to recover (it is truly an exhausting experience when I go all three days), it’s time to share the loot photo!
Um… I may have lost my head a little. I went into it saying I don’t need any more project bags — notice I bought loose yarn rather than a kit for Romi Hill’s mystery shawl this year so I wouldn’t get another bag — and ended up buying two, plus got a kit to sew one and got one as a giveaway. What a pile of work fun that awaits me!
The details:
Top left section: 2 skeins Annapurna for Romi Hill’s mystery shawl, a sturdy needle threader, an indigo-dyed sashiko project bag kit, on top of a free-with-(big)-purchase bag from A Verb For Keeping Warm; 3 mini skeins of sock yarn from Forbidden Fiber Co. and 1 skein Rambouillet from Lazer Sheep (color “Space Sheep”), on top of a blue and orange project bag from Erin Lane.Â
Lower left section: Andy Shawl kit with project bag and yarn from Emma’s Yarns from Beautiful Systers; pins from Forbidden Fiber Co.; owl-shaped embroidery floss holder and small bobbin from Girl on the Rocks, sheep stitch markers and gray Romeldale/alpaca fiber from Sincere Sheep; Valley Yarns Northampton from WEBS; 2 Melanie Berg shawl books.
Down the middle: “On 5th” patttern, 4 Polwarth/silk fiber braids from Wonderland Dyeworks, mixed BFL fiber from 2 Guys Yarn. The Shetland section: Bougainvillea vest kit and 8 random colors of Jamieson and Smith Shetland from Lost City Knits.Â
Far right: Red Heart yarns, top two from the Pajama Party and bottom one as a gift from Marly Bird when I was in her class.
Believe it or not, it all fits into two medium-size tote bags. I confess I spent more than I intended, but not more than I should or than I could afford, so it’s all good. The Pajama Party on Friday night was fun but loud (must bring ear plugs next time so I don’t need to stuff torn bits of paper cocktail napkin in my ears), I took 3 classes (more on those later), and ran into fiber friends: stayed overnight with 6 of them and kept bumping into them and other friends and spinning guild members in the Market. A huge part of the fun of wandering is seeing everyone’s hand-made creations, proudly worn; we crafters have some amazing skills! I planned my daily wardrobe around what I wanted to show yarn vendors and pattern designers, wearing 1 or 2 things each day that I could show them at their booths.
Last night, I felt ready to tackle the goodies and catalogued everything into my yarn and fiber spreadsheet (8,164 yards of yarn, 27.2 ounces of fiber), and this morning printed the 3 patterns and wound a mini skein of Forbidden’s sock yarn for the next pair of fingerless mitts. Onward!
P.S. This was the view outside the convention center on Friday evening.
Urban Fauna Studio had a 3rd anniversary open house / sale / fiber afternoon. I partook of the social scene and of the goodies (closet cleanout + consignment store = yarn money!).
The blue and green fiber is from Sincere Sheep. The other fiber and the yarn is from Girl on the Rocks. It’s sock yarn but held doubled will make a nifty hat. The color is “International Orange.” In my head I have a plan for a knit hat with the Golden Gate Bridge in purl stitches. My head has lots of plans. It’s the execution that’s lacking.
Not too much to tell on the knitting front. I have a too-big sock, a too-small sock, a sweater with the body slightly too wide and the sleeves significantly too short (how did that happen?), and just general gauge badness despite swatching. To make up for all that I made a shawl and some hats which will make their appearance here once I finally take pictures.
Ravelry has a Flash Your Stash 2011 thread going on. I’ve never photographed my entire stash… until today. I realize “small,” “medium,” and “large” stash sizes are all relative: mine is both huge and tiny when I compare it to other Ravelers’ stashes. Personally, I call this one large. And perhaps even frightening.
This took me a couple of hours because I also reorganized how everything is stored and got rid of all opaque bags. I culled several skeins to give away to my Monday night knitting group and lots more partial skeins went into the sack of yarn I’m collecting for my co-worker’s daughter’s school’s weaving program. I photographed what was left.
Kicking things off with sock yarn (I opened the little zipper pouch I keep sock yarn in, then gathered together all the random skeins that are not intended for socks from other bags of yarn, then realized I have lots more than I thought I did and had to up it to the next size zipper pouch):
If you want to read the notes on a photo, click it so you go to it on Flickr.
All the laceweight together:
All the Brooks Farm and Artfibers yarns. The rubber band on the black Kyoto had broken down, forcing me to throw away several outer layers of the yarn. I removed all rubber bands when I put everything away again:
Apparently I live in great fear that the Brown Sheep Yarn Company is going to disappear off the face of the earth without warning:
Fuzzy, fuzzy mohair:
Kid item yarns (mostly Dale of Norway Baby Ull and Wolle Rödel superwash merino) and some sport weight:
The novelty skeins (I can finally say “not so many”):
All the worsted weight that was not already in a category above:
This is the yarn I received from my great grandmother’s stash after she died. The cream-colored rectangle is a cotton sweater she was working on. The light blue and dark brown are wool with old labels (“made in Western Germany”). The thin little mercerized cotton in center front is a representative sample of the about 100 skeins of it I got from her.
All in all about 50 miles of yarn according to my Excel spreadsheet, not counting the mercerized cotton or the many remnants in the under-the-bed bin. It will last me about 9 years provided I buy nothing else. Sheesh.
I then arranged all my handspun, and as I sit here I realize I did not include the skeins on the left side of my desk that are awaiting photo processing and blogging before I add them to the stash. So there’s more than this but you get the idea:
And lastly… I need not worry about running out of spinning fiber. I mean, seriously? I had no idea it was this much. It is now stored all together in one place so I can see it, and again with nothing in an opaque bag.
So. There I have it. I am also happy to say I now have photographic evidence for State Farm that I do indeed have this much yarn on the premises, should I ever have need to put in a claim against my renters’ insurance. Even better news: I found no wool-eating critters in any of it. Whew!
Mmm... Yarn 