Peer Pressure

Well, this past weekend I took a semi-private spinning lesson (it was me and a friend and the instructor) with the lovely Barbara Clorite. We learned all sorts of stuff about plying, and basically anything we could think of to ask her. We plied some (stale) sample singles we had brought with us then wet them to see if they were balanced, and I was delighted to find that my sample was almost perfectly balanced!

I immediately came home and put some more plying twist into some yarn I had under-plied a week or so ago

She may do a larger workshop later this summer for some of the ladies in the spinning group I go to, but it looks like it will be on a Saturday, so I will be working and unable to attend.

During and after our lesson, my friend clued me in on something that, in her words "all the cool kids are knitting." I finally succumbed to her prodding and joined the Mystery Stole 3 group. What convinced me was that the pattern is designed by Melanie of Pink Lemon Twist, whose Hanami shawl I lusted after blogged about not very long ago. Her Leda's Dream and Scheherazade stoles were the previous two mystery stoles (both final patterns are available for purchase here).

Of course, I will be way behind the majority of the group because I just joined yesterday and the first "clue" (i.e. first part of the pattern) comes out Friday. I'm still deciding which yarn I'll use and whether I'll use beads (they are, apparently, optional).

New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival

This weekend I got to spend my first Mother's Day as a mother at the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, as opposed to last year, when I went during a torrential downpour.

First things first, we went straight in to cheer on our friends participating in the Sheep-to-Shawl competition. There were very few participants, in fact there was only one adult division team and one kids' team. It was a shame, since that meant there wasn't really any competition, other than against the clock. Of course the kids won the people's choice award, but I voted for the adult team anyway, since I knew some of the participants, and they really went all out with themed costumes and a "mad tea party" setup, as well as battling some serious loom issues. Here's a picture of them removing their shawl from the loom:



I wish I had gotten a shot of the kids weaving on their hand-made loom which was built from giant pixie stix containers, but there were a lot of people around their team's area when I was there and I didn't try too hard to get a shot.

I got a lovely partial Cormo Romney cross fleece from This & That Farm. Last year I hit my budget limit before I got to their booth, but they had some lovely fleeces, and my friend who was with me (and has a larger fiber budget) bought a hogget fleece from them. After seeing how lovely her fleece was, and the sample they sent her this year, I made it a point to seek them out. And this year I really had to, since they didn't have much fleece left by Sunday. I bought 2 1/2 pounds of fleece from a sheep named Connor:



Then I got an awesome black alpaca fleece, unfortunately I don't remember the name of the guy's farm since it wasn't very prominent in his booth as far as I can remember, so I'll have to ask my friend Kelly. I'll probably come to find that his name was plastered everywhere and I was just oblivious.

We had a late lunch, in which my husband got a lovely shot of me chewing. This was just before the baby tried to grab and eat the book.



Pardon the color adjustment, my husband never looks at the camera settings and this picture originally had me looking very much like Violet Beauregard, pre-juicing.

I also got some lovely soft angora from Chris of Woolybuns. She was very nice and now that I see her blog it will definitely be on my "to read" list. We hit her booth at the end of the day when I reviewed our day and found we had skipped a building, so I didn't get to see any cute bunnies since they were all gone by the end of the day, except one who had had enough of the crowds.

Of course my raw fleece buying led to my digging out several other bits of raw fleece I've accumulated, and now my craft room is even more trashed than usual:



Anyway, I dug out 3 pounds of what I *think* is Romney, but I can't remember since it wasn't labeled. I decided to scour this first. This stuff was REALLY dirty. The below pic was taken after 3 washings and a few rinses. The tips really had the dirt locked in. I'm going to let it dry a bit and tease the tips open before washing again, and after reading a bit online, I'm going to use a ridiculous amount of Dawn next time.



Also after reading a bit online last night about the problems I was having scouring the Romney, I learned that I'm probably ruining my septic system by scouring fleece in the washing machine. Don't tell my husband. So now I need to go out and get some five-gallon buckets.

Whew! I need to blog more often if only to avoid insanely long posts like this one. There's much more, but I'll save it for later since the baby has had enough of me spending time at the computer.