Through The Yarny Curtain

Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival 2015

On Saturday, June 6, Stacy and I attended the Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival (website) in Franklin, Indiana. This is a two-day festival, held on Friday and Saturday, but we were only able to make it for the Saturday since we were at Greencastle, Indiana’s First Fridays program on Friday afternoon and evening. We had a wonderful time at the Fiber Festival, and had plenty of time to visit all the vendors. We did not have enough time to take any of the classes at the festival; if we were able to go both days, we would have taken at least one class.

Animals

I love going to fiber events held at county fairgrounds or similar outdoor venues because animals are always present at these events. Hoosier Hills is such an event. When we drove through the gate of the fairgrounds, we saw the alpaca and llama pen on our left. It was the first place we visited. This area was organized by a local 4H chapter. They set up the lawn area as an obstacle course and at three times during the day, the 4H members led their alpaca or llama through the course. My favorite obstacle was the hula hoop. The child held the hoop up and the alpaca jumped through it!

The 4H was raising money by taking pictures of Festival attendees with an alpaca.

Of course, Stacy and I had our picture taken with an alpaca! This one is named Hapi (pronounced happy). He’s about a year old and a rescue. When his owner rescued him, he was quite nervous around people but now he’s super friendly. If you look closely, you might be able to see the little piece of straw sticking out of his mouth.

Hapi’s owner told us he gives kisses. I’m sad this picture is out of focus, but it is still funny!

On the opposite side of the lawn area was a pen containing a one-week-old kid and his mama. This little goat was hilarious. He came running over any time I bent down to take a picture, but didn’t want to be petted. He needed to check out everything in the pen and he was the boss of everything. When a llama in an adjacent pen stuck its head through the bars and started eating the straw in the goat pen, the baby ran over and jumped on top of the bale, like he was the king of the pen!

Food

I didn’t get any pictures of the food, but did want to comment on the available food. I only saw two food trucks: ice cream and kettle corn. This is the kind of food I expect at events like this, and assumed we would have to leave the fairgrounds to find a restaurant in town for lunch. But then we went into one of the vendor buildings and discovered that the 4H was selling food. They had burgers, hot dogs, chips, and bottled drinks. And they had vegan vegetable soup. I was so thrilled! I’m a lacto-ovo vegetarian and fairs tend to be hard re: food. I expect to eat snack food like kettle corn at worst and unhealthy food like greasy pizza at best. Every once in a while, I’ll stumble on to something really worth eating like grilled corn or the various offerings of the Artichoke booth at Maryland Sheep and Wool. I’ve never found vegan vegetable soup at a fair before! It was delicious. It looked like it was homemade, and was full of vegetables like potatoes, carrots, lima beans, peas, and more, all for only $2 for a cup!

Vendors and Shopping

Just over 50 vendors attended this festival. Perhaps 1/3 of these vendors also attend The Fiber Event in Greencastle, which takes place two weeks before Hoosier Hills. The rest were vendors we hadn’t seen before. I had three goals for shopping at this event: Good for Ewe Mirrorball yarn (this is a yarn manufactured in Indiana, which I bought from Nomad Yarns (website, Ravelry group) at last year’s Fiber Event) so I can reknit the Begonia Swirl Shawl that got felted, yarn to knit a shawl for Stacy, and maybe some breed-specific spinning fiber if I happened across any I don’t already have. I did purchase these things and then some!

Yarn

I picked up twelve 1/2 pound (800 yard) cones of Maysville carpet warp (Affiliate link to The Woolery) from Couch’s Little Workshop.

I only bought three other skeins of yarn. The blue skein on the left is the Good for Ewe Mirrorball I needed for my replacement Begonia Swirl Shawl, which I purchased from The Clay Purl booth. The blue skein in the middle is from Knitted to a T. It is laceweight Opulent (70/20/10 Baby Alpaca / Silk / Cashmere) in the Sapphire colorway. At 1312 yards for 104 grams, it’s a very fine weight of lace yarn! This is the yarn for Stacy’s shawl. The brown skein on the right is from Ballyhoo Farm in Kentucky. It is undyed Shetland wool from “Cake.” I love yarn where you know the name of the sheep who grew the wool!

The fourth skein, the pink one, was a door prize. It is a skein of Bartlett Yarn, provided by Copper Centaur Studios (website, Facebook). I rarely win anything, so was excited to get a door prize! I didn’t know until I was writing this blog post that Bartlett Yarns is a family-owned mill in Maine that’s been around since 1821. That’s pretty cool!

Tools, etc.

I got these notecards from Ballyhoo Farms. All the photos are from their farm. I got to sort through a stack of cards to pick 10 for my set, and it was truly hard to pick! The one on top is Cake, the producer of the wool that became my skein of yarn.

I was about to order some more Knit Picks cables, so was glad to run into a booth selling them. Now I won’t convince myself to spend $50 at Knit Picks, so that I can get the free shipping. I got the Wacky Woollies umbrella and the two buttons at the same booth as the cables. I bought the two shawl pins at The Clay Purl booth when I bought the Mirrorball yarn. They are handmade by Lisa Thyr of Wool’s End. Her business card doesn’t have a website and I couldn’t find her on Google Search, Etsy, Ravelry, or Facebook. Her work is beautiful and I had a hard time picking just one or two shawl pins!

The three remaining items on the right hand side of the photo — the Christmas ornament, pen, and earrings — are all from Bur Oak Studio (website, Facebook, Etsy). The artist is Jennifer. She makes all kinds of beautiful items from metal knitting needles. She has signs for identifying plants, bracelets, necklaces, magnets, bookmarks, and more. Stacy bought me the pen as a gift; I bought her a Christmas ornament as a gift.

I’ve seen some knitting needle jewelry before, but Jennifer had some unique items and an eye for putting everything together. Even her containers of pieces and tools were pretty to me. (I took these pictures with permission of the artist!)

At The Fiber Event last year, I bought 4 hand-turned crochet hooks from Sistermaide. This year, I bought 5 more. I love these hooks. They are well made and pointy, which I find helpful since I still crochet very tightly.

Fiber

I bought 7 new-to-me breed-specific fibers from Dyed in the Wool. Sandy and Benita (host of The Fiber Pusher Podcast (website, YouTube, Ravelry Group)) are incredibly organized. They had many different kinds of fiber (at least 50), and the best way to buy it that I’ve ever seen. I wish I’d taken a picture of the set up. They had a couple of poster boards with rectangles drawn on them with a sharpie. Each space on the board was for a different kind of fiber. The name and inventory number of the fiber was at the top of the space. The price per ounce was on the bottom of the square. In the middle of the box, they attached two samples of each fiber, one unspun and one spun. When they sold out of a fiber, they taped a piece of paper marked “out of stock” over the space. Inside the booth, the big bags of roving and top were arranged by inventory number. I took some time looking at the board, then read off all 7 inventory numbers for the fiber I wanted. Benita went into the booth and weighed out the 4 ounces of each fiber, as I specified. Each fiber went into its own grocery-style bag and Benita wrote the fiber name and weight on the outside of the bag. She wrote all the bags first, before she started weighing, and passed the list of fiber to Sandy so I could pay while Benita was weighing.

Stacy and I were joking that it looked like I was carrying around a miniature flock of sheep, so I took this picture of the flock out in the grass. I had to leave them in the bags, though. It’s summer in Central Florida, which means it rains for an hour or two every afternoon. It seems as though the grass is never dry! A few of the fibers I bought were single-animal. The name in quotes after a breed name is the name of the sheep!

Back, l to r: Baby doll Southdown, Fresian “Poppy,” Dorset. Front, l to r: Romeldale, Suffolk “Gavroche,” Polypay, LincolnFolk “Marshmallow Jr.”

LincolnFolk is a breed I hadn’t heard of before. It is in development by Richert Ranch, crossing their Suffolk x Hampshires with Lincoln. On her blog, Benita has a post about visiting the farm to buy fleeces. That blog post includes a picture of raw fleeces from Marshmallow Jr., Poppy, and Gavroche. Marshmallow Jr is the second raw fleece you’ll see as you scroll down the post. Poppy is in the middle, the last of the black fleeces pictured. The very last fleece pictured on the blog post is Gavroche. I don’t know if any of the pictured fleeces are the source of the fiber I purchased, but it’s fun to see raw fleeces from the same sheep!

I recently finished spinning Cotton Candy Corriedale dyed by Sassy Bee Fibers (website, Facebook). I bought that fiber at The Fiber Event last year; this year, I bought three fibers from Sassy Bee.

from top to bottom: Corriedale, Nylon, Tencel blend in Poseidon (3.8 ounces); Merino, Inego silk, Mohair lock blend in Aquaman (4.0 ounces); Corriedale, Bombyx Silk, and Nylon blend in Lotus (4.3 ounces).

We thought we were done shopping for the day. On our way out of the fair, we stopped back at the competition table to see who won the various prizes. Many of the fleece entries were gone, either sold or picked up by whoever entered them. One of the remaining fleeces was a beautiful, black Alpaca. The woman at the competition booth told us the fleece was so stunning that the judge wanted to buy it! The person who entered the fleece did not plan to come back to pick it up. Her son was in a car accident; she dropped the fleece off at the festival and went straight to the hospital. As a result, we weren’t able to get much information about the fleece. Neither Stacy nor I wanted an entire Alpaca fleece, so we decided to split it. We bought the fleece, and I carried it over to the Ohio Valley Natural Fibers booth and dropped it off for processing. Before I dropped it off, I took a quick picture, but this really doesn’t do the fleece justice! I can’t wait to get the roving back from the mill, but it will take a while. Their current processing time is about 3 months.

FO Friday: June 12, 2015

FO stands for Finished Object. Since I started blogging, I’ve been posting WIP Wednesdays and posting individual posts for finished objects when I finish one. Many craft bloggers write FO Friday posts, so readers know when to expect posts for finished objects. The FO Friday posts I’ve seen aren’t usually as detailed as the posts I’ve written for my finished objects and they almost always include multiple items.

I have so many blog posts planned that I thought I’d go with FO Friday posts for a while. I’m going to include multiple projects in a single post, but include many of the details that I’ve included in individual post. The “About the Project” section will be shorter. If I have a pattern I want to discuss in greater detail, I’ll write a separate post about it rather than including it in the FO Friday post. I’d like to hear your thoughts on FO Friday posts versus a post per project. Which format do you prefer?

Clapotis

Official Stats

Date Started: March 28, 2015
Date Finished: June 1, 2015
Pattern: Clapotis by Kate Gilbert (Ravelry, Knitty.com)
Yarn: 872 yards 100purewool Merino Worsted
Needles: U.S. 8 / 5 mm
Finished Dimensions: 22″ x 54″
Made for: ?
Ravelry Project Page

About this Project

Knitty published the Clapotis pattern in 2004. It seems like everyone’s knit it — Ravelry has more than 22,000 project pages for this pattern. I’ve had it on my list of things to knit forever, but never gotten around to it. It’s not a difficult pattern to knit, but as many have noted the middle section seems to go on and on and on. The pattern has three sections: increase section, knit straight, decrease section. The “Knit Straight” section is a 12 row repeat and you are supposed to knit it 13 times. I only knit it 8 times. I tried to knit it 9 times, but ran out of yarn before finishing the decrease section and bind off. In order to knit the entire 13 repeats the pattern prescribes, I would have needed at least one more ball of yarn. The yarn I used is discontinued and the company is out of business. No one on Ravelry had the same yarn in their stash, so I couldn’t try to trade or buy another skein. I didn’t want to rip out the entire project, and it looked like it would be big enough, so I forged ahead. I ripped out the entire completed decrease section (more than 3/4 done) and the 9th straight section repeat so that I could reknit the decrease section and bind off.

Super Secret Shawl

Official Stats

Date Started: April 7, 2015
Date Finished: June 1, 2015
Pattern: Self-designed
Yarn: 880 yards Knit Picks Gloss Lace in Winter Night
Needles: U.S. 4 / 3.5 mm
Finished Dimensions: 23″ x 47″
Made for: Me
Ravelry Project Page

This is my first attempt at designing anything. It’s straightforward — a single stitch pattern and a rectangular shawl. My single biggest snafu was estimating yardage. I measured and weighed the swatch to calculate the yardage I used to knit it. I used that information to calculate final dimensions and yardage for the shawl. These calculations were off by a significant margin. I probably needed another skein of yarn to get the dimensions I wanted. I cannibalized my swatch to get a couple extra inches. I will be doing some research on yardage calculation and trying again!

WIP Wednesday: June 10, 2015

For the last week, I’ve spent my crafting time working on the two test knits that I cast on last Wednesday. Both projects traveled to Indiana and back. On the way there, I knit on the shawl. On the way home, I knit on the scarf. I worked on them while I sat in Stacy’s office on Friday. I worked on them as we drove to and from the Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival. I’ve made great progress on both projects, and hope to finish both this weekend.

Sand Tracks Scarf

I love this project. I love the yarn. I love the pattern. All the love! I’m about 1/3 of the way into the second ball.

Raindrops on Roses Shawl

I’ve finished the first of three lace repeats. I’m probably halfway through the shawl at this point.

Greencastle, Indiana: June 2015

Last year, I attended The Fiber Event in Greencastle, Indiana. I planned to attend this year also, but then Chris and I got to go to India. The trip to India was at the same time as The Fiber Event 2015.

My primary reason for going to Greencastle is to visit my good friend Stacy, who moved there a couple of years ago. We put our heads together to come up with a new date, and discovered the Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival (a separate blog post is in progress; I’ve got to take pictures of my purchases), held about an hour from Greencastle on the first Friday and Saturday of June. I changed my tickets from April to this past weekend. I arrived in Indiana on Thursday afternoon and flew home Sunday evening.

At Work

Stacy was working on Thursday and Friday. I spent most of my time, hanging out in her office, knitting. She has these adorable sheep sculptures in her office.

I especially love their happy little faces.

Weaving

Stacy did attend The Fiber Event 2015. Her mother bought her an early birthday present: a 10″ wide rigid heddle loom from Couch’s Little Workshop, an Indiana-based family business of handmade looms. Stacy had not warped the loom yet and wanted to do so before we went to the Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival. Couch’s Little Workshop was going to be at that Festival also, and she wanted to ask them questions or resolve any problems she might have with the loom. On Thursday night, I taught her how to warp the loom and how to weave.

Stacy took a three-hour rigid heddle weaving class two years ago, at The Fiber Event, but she hasn’t woven anything since then. Her selvages are spectacular!

First Fridays

During the spring, summer, and fall, Greencastle has a “First Fridays” program. The downtown business group, of which Stacy is President, helps to organize First Fridays. The town closes off a road next to the courthouse. Vendors sell their wares and there’s music on the steps of the Courthouse.

This month, a vintage car club came for the event.

Several local clubs and civic groups attended this month also, including the Putnam County Spinners Guild, of which Stacy is a member. I helped set up and take down the tables and chairs for the Guild. The original plan was that I would finish spinning the Cormo and bring the bobbins with me so I could ply them on one of Stacy’s wheels during the event. I didn’t get the spinning done, so I knit instead.

The fiber in the box is llama that Stacy recently got back from processing. The fiber in the white bag on the right is unprocessed llama. The yarns on the table are all handspun. The full-size hanks are Stacy’s handspun and I believe they are all Nerd Girl Yarns fibers. The smaller samples were handspun and dyed by another Guild member.

Guild members Sarah (spinning with a Turkish Spindle), Joy (spinning with an e-spinner) and Mary (spinning on an Ashford Joy wheel).

Stacy chatting with a visitor to the Guild’s space.

The girl in the middle of the picture came back to the Guild space several times during the event. She went to each spinner and asked questions about the method each was using.

The weather was perfect for this First Fridays event, though the sun was so bright that we had a hard time looking at people while we talked to them. Stacy’s boyfriend, Lance, came to our rescue with Florida Gators baseball caps! The vendors and tables part of First Fridays was from 5 to 7 pm. We were going to stay for longer, but we had to move out of the way for the Antique Cars to leave, so packed up shortly after 7 pm. The music continued until late, so after packing up we stayed and listened to music, and I got to meet several of Stacy’s friends. It was a wonderful evening!

WPHS 9th Grade Center Shakespeare Festival 2015

Winter Park High School’s 9th Grade Center holds an annual Shakespeare Festival. For several years, the Weavers of Orlando have participated in the Festival, doing spinning and weaving demos. This year, the Festival took place on May 28. It was my first year participating in the demos. We were required to wear a period costume!

Bev, Nancy, and I at the WPHS 9th Grade Center.

The English Department organizes the Festival. In past years, the entire event took place in the gymnasium. This year, they tried something new. The event took place in the English Building and the auditorium. In the English Building, different classrooms had different themes. The Weavers of Orlando, for example, was in a room with a pottery booth and a face-painting booth, for an artisan theme.

The school provided the banner for our table.

The students had their usual class schedule for the day. During their English period, they came to the Festival. They started by meeting with their English teacher, who gave them a passport. In order to receive credit for the class period, students had to get 8 stamps in their passport. The students obtained stamps by participating in the various activities.

An English teacher (on the left, in the knight costume) explaining the passports to a class.

In our room, a student could potentially get 3 stamps: one for getting their face painting, one for signing the large pot on the pottery table, and one for either listening to us explain the process of getting from raw fleece to finish fabric or for weaving on the floor loom. Other rooms had games, palm reading, and much more. During their Geography period, students went to the auditorium to see the performances. Some study skills teachers also allowed students to come to the Festival instead of their usual study skills period.

In order to participate in the event, students were required to wear a costume. This requirement was loosely interpreted. Some students rented or purchased costumes. Some made the costumes as part of a class prior to the event. Others used their ingenuity and their existing wardrobe to create a character. I overheard more than one student ask another about their character. I extrapolated from this that the students had studied Renaissance social roles and were to pick a particular role for their costume.

I was rather amused by the backpacks with the period costumes!

Since I was demonstrating, I didn’t get a chance to walk around and see the other rooms. When I first arrived (at 6:30 am!), someone was setting up games outside, including archery. I was amused to see the fake sheep used as rests for the bows and “arrows.”

One room was the King’s Court. Students could fence with Nerf swords, for the King’s amusement and approval.

At lunch, I ran into the royal family. The King and Queen are a real-life husband and wife. The girl in the Beefeater costume is their daughter. She was a 9th grader in this school last year, and the parents volunteered as King and Queen. The family reprised their roles for this year’s festival.

I loved this Blackbird Pie sculpture on the lunch table.

I’m not sure how many students we had come through our booth. We weren’t doing the Kumihimo disks or any other takeaway at this demo, and that’s usually how we know the number of students. We had a steady stream of students throughout the day, without ever being inundated. We were at the event from 6:30 am to 2:30ish pm, including the set up and take down time. I spun about an ounce of Cormo during the event!

I expected to be exhausted after this event. I was up far earlier than usual and it’s a lot of talking. I was tired, but not as tired as I expected, and I had a lot of fun. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do it again next year!