Fun with Friends and Fiber

I spent a long weekend in the mountains with my friends Michiele and Roxie at the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair (SAFF) where we engaged in our idea of fun... yarn, fiber, and classes on knitting and spinning.

Roxie picked me up Thursday morning and I was so excited I had all my stuff piled in the driveway waiting. 

Note the essentials: Cherry Coke Zero and wine

 We stopped a couple of hours up the road to add Michiele to the journey.  After a stop in Black Mountain for lunch and a little wander through a couple of shops, we made it to the place we were staying in Hendersonville about 4:00.  Roxie had reserved us a nice room in some one's house through Airbnb, a site I had never used before, but will definitely check out the next time Rob & I are looking for a place to stay.

Friday the fiber fun began!  We were at the Ag Center at 9:00 when the doors opened.  I wandered around all morning looking at all the great stuff for sale in vendors' booths and buying lots of goodies.  As a new spinner I wanted to get a variety of different fibers to try out, but I also couldn't resist some yarn as well. 

My total haul from both Friday & Saturday

Friday afternoon I had a class on working with antique and vintage knitting patterns with Franklin Habit.  He is not only a great teacher, but is hilarious and absolutely adorable!  I highly recommend any of his classes, but being a bit of a history geek myself, I love his passion for the history of knitting.

Franklin modeling a traveling cap

The "real" Franklin

After class I wandered around and saw some of the animals.  There were alpacas, llamas, sheep and goats, and I could have sworn I took some pictures, but apparently not.  I met back up with my friends and we finally left a little after 6:00 to head to dinner. But first we made a pit stop at a local yarn shop that Roxie and I had never been to.  What?  You think we should have had enough yarn by that point?  Never.

Saturday morning all three of us took a class on designing a triangular shawl with Vithard Villumsen a designer from Denmark.  Another great class, and instructor.  Vithard is so cute, we all wanted to take him home with us.  He was wearing one of his new designs, the1sleeved, and we all fell in love with it.  He let us all try it on and I'm not kidding when I say it fit and looked great on everyone.  He was such a good sport too, because we dragged him after class to the Miss Babs booth to help us all pick out colors to make one!  Unfortunately, none of us remembered to take a picture of Vithard, because we were too busy acting like 12 year old fan girls, but if you follow the link for the1sleeved pattern, you will see him modeling the design.

My yarn for the1sleeved

After another hour or so of wandering and shopping, we were all starving, so we headed in to Hendersonville for a late lunch/early dinner, a quick visit to another local yarn store, and then headed back to the room early.  Of course we had to show and tell, and wind our yarn to start Vithard's pattern before bed, but it was another great day.

Sunday morning Michiele had a class, so she got up and left, and Roxie and I sat around for a while before finally getting on the road mid-morning.  I got home Sunday afternoon, tired and glad to be home, but it was a fabulous weekend and I can't wait for next year!

Pleasingly Imperfect

 Look what I made!

After years of knitting and accumulating yarn, I've finally taken up spinning. Because you know, you can really never have enough yarn.  Right?

This yarn is imperfect.  There are thick places and thin places.  There is too much twist in the singles and probably not quite enough twist in the plied yarn.  But it makes me happy because it's the first yarn I've made on my new Ashford Joy spinning wheel.

So now I just have to figure out how to rearrange the yarn closet to make room for all the fiber!