The Loot

Happy Veteran's Day! Since I'm currently a federal employee, I should theoretically have the day off. In practice, though, I'm here in the office, starting a regular work day. Why not start it with a post about all my loot from Kid 'n' Ewe?

Kid 'n' Ewe was a lot of fun. As I said before, it's no Rhinebeck or Maryland Sheep & Wool, but I think it was a good first fiber festival. (I think I would have sensory overload if I went to Rhinebeck or MS&W right out of the gate. And I would also end up in the poorhouse.) There were some angora bunnies (so cute!) and alpacas (so fleecy and soft!) to pet, and there was also a cashmere goat competition while we were there. GPG took some pictures of the animals, so I'll try to post some of those later this week.

There was also a ton of fiber and yarn, plus lots of spinning wheels and spindles. I didn't actually find a niddy-noddy I wanted; I found some smaller ones, but nothing reasonably sized. So instead I bought some fiber and yarn.

I actually can't remember the farm this red fiber is from, but it's four ounces of beautiful, soft merino. The red is shot through with blues and purples. I've been gravitating towards reds and bolder colors in all my yarn purchases lately, and this weekend was no exception!


I also bought two rovings from Lynn's Texas Fibers. Lynn is actually based in Pearland, a city/suburb on the outskirts of Houston, which is dangerous information for me to know. She had a lot of beautiful things for sale, including some gorgeous wool/tussah silk blends, but I stuck with wool since I was afraid anything with silk would be a little too challenging for a newbie spinner.

She had two cheerful multi-color rovings that I snatched up because they were the only ones left of their kind. Four ounces of Corriedale (I think):


And 3.5 ounces of some more rainbow Corriedale goodness:


Lynn also had some beautiful golden yellow wool/silk rovings that I really coveted. But I will have to get those the next time, when I'm a better spinner.

As you can gather, for some reason I was really drawn to the rainbow-dyed things over the weekend. My yarn purchases were no different. See, e.g., 800 yards of single-ply yarn in the "Magenta Variegated" colorway from Plain & Fancy Wools:


And 400 yards of the "Primary" colorway:


I intend to make a Clapotis out of the magenta stuff, and I've already started on the Primary to make an unbloggable Christmas gift. It's beautiful stuff. Plain & Fancy is a terrific mom & pop shop based in Henderson, Texas. Knitters Review mentioned them in a write-up of the Taos Wool Festival here. Ken and Grayce, the owners, were really nice--I'll have to write them and find out if they have color cards, because their yarn is something else! They have some beautiful semi-solid yarn that would make great sweaters . . .

All in all, I think I made some reasonable purchases. The rovings were all much cheaper than any of the other things I've bought on-line, and I tried to be disciplined about buying yarn. Brooks Farm had a beautiful, beautiful array of all their yarns, dyed in amazing colors and all deliciously soft. But I couldn't think of a good project I wanted to make from any particular yarn, so I exercised some restraint and didn't buy anything from them.

Anyway, we had a good time at the festival; the time just flew by. I was worried that GPG might be bored out of his mind, but he seemed to have enjoyed himself, too. We had a great weekend. Hope you did, too!