In Which the Pirate Goes to Sheep & Wool.

The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival signified the break in my yarn and fiber diet. I drove up by myself, wandered around for a bit, and bought this rainbow skein of Trekking XXL before meeting up with Veronica. We goaded each other into buying stuff. After she left, I met up with friends Angie and Joel, and Joel’s parents. We shopped the rest of the festival together and I bought some more yarn. I also picked up a handmade broom of real straw. A log house needs a real broom!

First I bought this roving, and I was so excited that I forgot to note what booth I got it from. Drat! It’s grayish green with purple and blue. The colors are so subtle that the camera ate them. I hope that they’re not so subtle that they get lost when I spin it up. There was some matching purple roving that I decided not to buy, but my original thought was that I could ply them together for a barberpole effect. Then I thought that might be a bit ugly, and it was still early in the day, so I didn’t buy the purple.

…the next thing I remember is picking up this eight ounces of merino roving from Yarn Barn of KS in the “sandalwood” colorway. I think it would make awesome tall socks to go with blue jeans, though with eight ounces of it I could even think of a larger size project!

“Cranberry Bog” merino and “Autumn” BFL, four ounces of each from Cloverleaf Farms. At this point in the shopping, I had the idea that I was going to try to sell some of this handspun on Etsy and perhaps recoup some of my expenditures. I know people do it, but I have no idea how successful they are at it, if at all.

Although I was trying to keep from buying too much of the same color families, I didn’t realize how similar the color of this merino from C*EYE*BER Fiber was to the BFL above. Ah well, it’s a whole different fiber, right?

While this one is superwash, I think for the sake of not felting *any* socks I’m going to start handwashing all of them, even the ones which can be machine-washed. Pirate-Husband suggested that I put a little basket by our regular hamper for the handwash items, and I think that’s a fantastic idea. I’d be so mad if I felted a sock that I’d spun and knit! (And I’d probably be even more mad if Pirate-Husband did it, though I’m not worried. He’s better with the laundry than I am.)

This stuff is bright, bright, bright green. Pirate-Husband suggests that I should design a scaly sort of sock with it, something lizardy or dragonesque. It’s from Ellen’s Half-Pint Farm and is a full 500 yards – how great is that? I did say I wanted solid or semi-solid sock yarns, but I wasn’t expecting to get something quite so bright. Gotta switch things up every once in a while!

The last purchases of the day were these three skeins of sock yarn from Tess’ Designer Yarns. I plan to use the silvery-gray ones for Clessidra socks, but I have no plan for the amber color yet. Each skein is 450 yards, plenty for my oversize feet.

But the biggest, baddest, best purchase of the day… I bought a Strauch Finest drum carder. I’m sure you all know by now that I’ve been wanting one. With Pirate-Husband’s goading, I was able to buckle down and spend the money. He helped me set it up when I got home and we ran some practice batts. It is freaking awesome. I can’t express how amazing this tool is, and how much pain it will save my wrists now that I don’t have to hand-card eight pounds of alpaca fleece. I did take out the fleece to card, but it had a little too much vegetable matter in it. I’ll have to pick that out before carding, I think.

All in all, Sheep and Wool was a great time! I skipped the Ravelry meetup but I did meet several other Ravelers. And, aside from the drum carder, I even managed to stay within my yarn and fiber budget! Now, of course, I’m back on the ‘diet’ until I use some of this stuff up.