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A good day..
Jun. 24th, 2012 08:56 amYesterday I met Amy, Miriam, and Ysuelt at the Black Sheep Gathering for a day of fiber filled fun. I got there about lunch time so we went out to Agate Alley Laboratory for lunch first. The food was quite lovely and Amy bought my lunch as a birthday present. I had a hamburger and Boysenberry lemonade. It was all very yummy. We sat a talked a good while and then came back to the fairgrounds to start my first pass through and their third.
There was so much there that it was quite overwhelming and so I wasn't sure I would be able to figure out what I wanted to buy. My mom had given me $75 for my birthday specifically to spend at Blacksheep so I knew I wanted something special. I'd put aside another $100 so I had a decent but not extravagant budget.
I have noted, now that I have two shawls of my own (the color affection I made and a triangular pink shawl that Ceridwen made), that I had a need for a shawl pin. I also wrote down 4 patterns for which I wanted to find yarn and the correct yardage and weight. Amidst all the pretty pretty yarn limiting purchases to "things for which you already had patterns picked out" turned out to be impossible.
Within a few minutes, I had fallen in love with a beautiful blue Alpaca Silk blend (for which I had no pattern in mind)but being overwhelmed I decided not to purchase it at that moment to make sure I didn't want something else more. But, surprisingly nothing else really pushed my buttons until we reached Wild Orchids Fiber Arts. Wild Orchids sells naturally dyed luxury fibers. She had silk, cashmere/silk, and MINK yarns. I could have just rolled around in the yarn and been happy but after a lot of heavy petting, I decided that I liked the feel of the cashmere/silk blend best. The mink was lovely but tactilely, I preferred the cashmere/silk. I can't explain why because I really liked the mink too. I think the mink just felt slicker/oilier and heavier (although there was no oil after processing) and I liked the more delicate lighter feel of the cashmere. I picked out a 100 gm/ 1000 yard skein of the Swiss Mountain cashmere silk in a white (again for which I have no pattern in mind). I gulped over the price and then debated if I really wanted to spend $69 on a single skein of yarn. Finally, I determined that this was the special present I wanted to get for my birthday. Then I picked out another 50 gm skein dyed with brazilwood, which makes it a pretty rose color (guess what, again, no pattern in mind).
I mentioned to my companions (just Miriam and Amy at this point. We lost Ysuelt shortly after returning to the show) that I needed to get a shawl pin. We found some lovely carved wood shawl pins by a new artisan and I picked out one in the shape of a dragonfly and one in the shape of a kitty. One of the things I love about these kinds of events is that you can support independent artists and not big corporations and get a beautiful useful product.
We were beginning to run short of time and I still wanted those blue Alpaca/silk skeins. So we looped back around to where we started and I picked up two 4 oz/750 yard skeins. I also went back to the Bar-Maids booth to get a Lo-Lo bar. This is a Moisturizing bar that is made with oils that absorb quickly and therefore won't add anything to your fiber while you are knitting. I'm always a bit cautious about what I use because of my sensitivities. So at the beginning of the day, I'd put a little on my hands to see if I could tolerate it. At the end of the day, my hands felt good and I'd had no reaction. I picked up the Vanilla moon bar with the following ingredients: coconut oil. beeswax, grapeseed oil, cocoa butter, hempseed oil, olive oil, sweet almond oil, vitamin E, rosemary seed extract, "Essential or fragrance oils", and zinc oxide. I also bought the cuticle intensive stick since I've got peeling cuticles again.
That being the last purchase of the day, I parted ways with Amy and Miriam and headed to Robert and Carrie's. They had planned a nice salmon dinner to go along with my birthday presents and flowers. It was quite nice and the salmon was very yummy. We finished eating at 8:55 so the proposed trip to DQ was not feasible, but that was the only disappointment. They gave me a lovely bouquet of mixed flowers, a miniature rose, and a Joann's gift card. It was a very nice surprise. We watched a couple episodes of Hoarders which makes me want to clean out my house in a big way and I headed home.
All in all it was a very nice Saturday. I got a little knitting done between this and that as well as having all the pleasant company. My shawl is growing very large but, although I'm almost done with the pattern, my skein still has quite a ways to go. My goal is to knit until I run out of yarn or am close enough to doing so at a convenient place to stop.
My yarn acquisitions for the day (the flash washed out the colors slightly they are all a bit darker):
There was so much there that it was quite overwhelming and so I wasn't sure I would be able to figure out what I wanted to buy. My mom had given me $75 for my birthday specifically to spend at Blacksheep so I knew I wanted something special. I'd put aside another $100 so I had a decent but not extravagant budget.
I have noted, now that I have two shawls of my own (the color affection I made and a triangular pink shawl that Ceridwen made), that I had a need for a shawl pin. I also wrote down 4 patterns for which I wanted to find yarn and the correct yardage and weight. Amidst all the pretty pretty yarn limiting purchases to "things for which you already had patterns picked out" turned out to be impossible.
Within a few minutes, I had fallen in love with a beautiful blue Alpaca Silk blend (for which I had no pattern in mind)but being overwhelmed I decided not to purchase it at that moment to make sure I didn't want something else more. But, surprisingly nothing else really pushed my buttons until we reached Wild Orchids Fiber Arts. Wild Orchids sells naturally dyed luxury fibers. She had silk, cashmere/silk, and MINK yarns. I could have just rolled around in the yarn and been happy but after a lot of heavy petting, I decided that I liked the feel of the cashmere/silk blend best. The mink was lovely but tactilely, I preferred the cashmere/silk. I can't explain why because I really liked the mink too. I think the mink just felt slicker/oilier and heavier (although there was no oil after processing) and I liked the more delicate lighter feel of the cashmere. I picked out a 100 gm/ 1000 yard skein of the Swiss Mountain cashmere silk in a white (again for which I have no pattern in mind). I gulped over the price and then debated if I really wanted to spend $69 on a single skein of yarn. Finally, I determined that this was the special present I wanted to get for my birthday. Then I picked out another 50 gm skein dyed with brazilwood, which makes it a pretty rose color (guess what, again, no pattern in mind).
I mentioned to my companions (just Miriam and Amy at this point. We lost Ysuelt shortly after returning to the show) that I needed to get a shawl pin. We found some lovely carved wood shawl pins by a new artisan and I picked out one in the shape of a dragonfly and one in the shape of a kitty. One of the things I love about these kinds of events is that you can support independent artists and not big corporations and get a beautiful useful product.
We were beginning to run short of time and I still wanted those blue Alpaca/silk skeins. So we looped back around to where we started and I picked up two 4 oz/750 yard skeins. I also went back to the Bar-Maids booth to get a Lo-Lo bar. This is a Moisturizing bar that is made with oils that absorb quickly and therefore won't add anything to your fiber while you are knitting. I'm always a bit cautious about what I use because of my sensitivities. So at the beginning of the day, I'd put a little on my hands to see if I could tolerate it. At the end of the day, my hands felt good and I'd had no reaction. I picked up the Vanilla moon bar with the following ingredients: coconut oil. beeswax, grapeseed oil, cocoa butter, hempseed oil, olive oil, sweet almond oil, vitamin E, rosemary seed extract, "Essential or fragrance oils", and zinc oxide. I also bought the cuticle intensive stick since I've got peeling cuticles again.
That being the last purchase of the day, I parted ways with Amy and Miriam and headed to Robert and Carrie's. They had planned a nice salmon dinner to go along with my birthday presents and flowers. It was quite nice and the salmon was very yummy. We finished eating at 8:55 so the proposed trip to DQ was not feasible, but that was the only disappointment. They gave me a lovely bouquet of mixed flowers, a miniature rose, and a Joann's gift card. It was a very nice surprise. We watched a couple episodes of Hoarders which makes me want to clean out my house in a big way and I headed home.
All in all it was a very nice Saturday. I got a little knitting done between this and that as well as having all the pleasant company. My shawl is growing very large but, although I'm almost done with the pattern, my skein still has quite a ways to go. My goal is to knit until I run out of yarn or am close enough to doing so at a convenient place to stop.
My yarn acquisitions for the day (the flash washed out the colors slightly they are all a bit darker):
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