A virtual gathering of people sharing their knitting, books, thoughts, and random threads of conversation!

Live ~ Laugh ~ Knit

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

It is all about the yarn

Beautiful day to take pictures of the yarn I got at the New England Fiber Festival. Although we made sure to visit just about every booth, these are the yarns/booths we favored.

We met The Kangaroo Dyer, aka Gail Callahan, she has wonderful hand dyed yarns. As if that wasn't temptation enough, she had a special deal running for the festival. Lois and I took full advantage of that! The skeins pictured above are Poet Seat Yarn: fingering, 50% superwash merino/50% silk and 431 yards. What could be better?

She also was introducing a new product called Color Grid. It's a fantastic tool for color selection and the possibilities are endless! Here's a link to an article about it. Fair isle knitters, it's going to knock you out!
We discovered Rue of Kama Suutra Fiber Arts (gotta love creative names). She takes handpainting yarns to a whole different level with stripes, ombres, and optical tweeds (to name just a few). I have a skein of Avaze Sock: fingering, 80% supermerino, 10% cashmere, and 10% nylon, and 390 yards. The yarn feels fantastic and it was very difficult to pick a colorway.
The yarn is doing all the work in the sock, isn't that amazing! I'm looking forward to seeing how the stripes play out in my skein.
Every now and then (more often for some of us) I find myself completely smitten with a yarn. Ok, I know, it's more like almost all the time. This was even more so. This is Ellyn Cooper's Yarn Sonnets, Rayon Tencel, 3 skeins with 200 yards each. I absolutely love the rich tapestry of colors in these skeins. I've got some plans for this yarn.
Lois was so excited about what she put together, that when she saw Regina, she had to show her immediately! We are certainly not lacking in enthusiasm!
And of course we spent a lot of time at Creatively Dyed Yarn's booth. Dianne is one of my favorite dyers. I wanted to pick out yarn for Wrap Me Up by Chris de Longpre.
I had seen this version in Dianne's booth at Rhinebeck. The pattern calls for it to be knit with worsted weight yarn. She knit it in fingering weight yarn. I liked it, it was light and drapey. I have some deep purple fingering weight that I might pair with it. The pattern looks like fun.

No comments: