Friends & Fiber - Part 1

I love the "epic" part

A couple of weekends ago I went to the mountains for the Friends & Fiberworks Summer Retreat with my friends Roxie and Michiele.  As usual when the 3 of us go somewhere, we had a great time, did a little shopping, and had a lot of laughs.

Friday afternoon Michiele & I took a class on Photographing Your Fiber with Franklin Habit.   This is the 2nd class I've taken with Franklin, and I just love him.  If we didn't both already have husbands I'd ask him to marry me.  But back to the class, although it doesn't show in any of the pictures in this post, I did learn a lot about how my little point and shoot camera works and tips for lighting, etc. that I can use even with my iphone.  Hopefully one of these days I'll sit down and go through my camera manual and really learn how to do something with all he taught us.

Miss Babs was also attending the retreat as a student and was in Franklin's class too.  She's a fiber celebrity in her own right because she dyes the most gorgeous yarn and fiber, so I had a double fan girl moment.

That's the only class I took, but there was a small market there, so I did a little shopping as well.  I bought my Cricket loom (the subject of yesterday's post) there as well as a little yarn and fiber.  But of course the shopping didn't end there.

We went into downtown Asheville where there are three shops that sell yarn, count them, three in one downtown!  Only one of them is exclusively a yarn shop, but the other two have more than just a small amount of yarn.  I managed to curb my spending and not buy anything at any of them except for a couple of pairs of needle tips I needed.

Check out the cute sock monkey ninjas!

And sock monkey pirates too!

The perfect accessory for UNC football games dontcha' think?  If I could find a pattern for this my entire family would get them for Christmas!

Also while we were downtown, Michiele proved that I am not the only person who has become obsessed with crafts.  When we were at the Carolina Fiber Frolic in March she learned how to eco-dye using plants and flowers.  As we were walking around she noticed some marigolds at the end of their life and couldn't resist deadheading them all so she could use them to dye.

I'm sure the Battery Park Apartments thanks her.

And all that was just Friday!  I'll tell you about the rest of the weekend tomorrow.