yarn

Episode 26: Rhinebeck 2016

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Free Halloweenies

http://www.classiccinemaonline.com

  • Little Shop of Horrors
  • Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
  • House on Haunted Hill

http://www.archive.Org

  • House on Haunted Hill
  • Night of the Living Dead
  • The Screaming Skull
  • Christopher Lee
    • Horror Hotel
    • Circus of Fear

http://www.watchdocumentary.Org

For documentaries about ghosts, vampires, witches, etc.

YouTube.Com

HPPodcraft.com

Weird fiction podcast!

Full Story Readings of HP Lovecraft stories:

  • The Call of Cthulhu
  • From Beyond
  • The Picture in the House
  • The Haunter of the Dark
  • Cool Air
  • The Cats of Ulthar
  • The Hound
  • The Temple

http://www.audible.com

First book is free with sign up and there are tons of audiobooks to choose from.

  • Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber; narrated by Sean Kenin
  • Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith; narrated by  Scott Holst

HP Lovecraft Public Domain Works

http://www.hplovecraft.com/

Project Gutenberg – https://www.gutenberg.org/

  • Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
  • Edgar Allan Poe collections
  • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Dracula by Bram Stoker

 

Life Stuff

Knitting Stuff

FOs –

WIPs –

Fiber Stuff

  • Mystery fleece spinning on the Ashford Kiwi 2

 

Sewing Stuff

WIPs –       

  • Halloween quilt

 

New Stuff

  • Cube Bag from ZigZagStitches – Who got me this so that I can thank them?!
  • **SPOILERS** Once Upon a Corgi – The Bad Beginning – Audrey base
  • Junkyarns – Smooth Socks 75/25 SW Merino/Nylon – Rey
  • Rhinebeck 2016 Haul
    • Loop Bullseye Bump – Cherry Pit – Merino/tussah sil/angelina
    • Into the Whirled
    • Quoth the Raven – Polwarth
    • Ravenswood – English Shetland
    • Mohair Locks from Naumann Angoras
    • Cotswald Locks from Solitude Wool

Other Stuff

Stuff I’m Watching – Stranger Things, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Penny Dreadful

Stuff I’m Reading – (tracking on GoodReads)

  • Relistening to Fatal Alliance (SW:TOR) by Sean Williams (audio) narr by Marc Thompson
  • Relistening to Deceived (SW:TOR) by Paul S Kemp (audio) narr by Marc Thompson
  • Relisting to SW:CW:Gambit:Stealth by Karen Miller (audi) narr by Jeff Gurner
  • Galaxy of Fear series by John Whitman

Fanfic Recommendation –

turn my sorrow into treasured gold by cosmicocean – http://archiveofourown.org/works/7435467

 

Come join the Freakish Lemon Video Podcast group on Ravelry – http://www.ravelry.com/groups/the-freakish-lemon-video-podcast

 

Episode 24: Focus on the Sweater

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Life Stuff

  • Halloweening
  • Tumblr post got reblogged by some fic writers and kind of exploded a little

Knitting Stuff

FOs –

  • C-3P0 Socks – Must Stash Yarn Star Wars Droids Yarn (75/25 SW Merino/Nylon) in C-3P0 – US 0 – 2.0 mm DPNs

WIPs –

  • Redford Sweater by Julie Hoover – Yarn Place Basic Fingering (wool) in Grey (ebay yarn) – US 1 – 2.25 mm Chiaogoo red lace circulars – http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/redford
  • BB-8 Socks – Must Stash Yarn Star Wars Droids Yarn (75/25 SW Merino/Nylon) in BB-8 – US 0 – 2.0 mm DPNs
  • Dissent by Lisa Mutch – Once Upon a Corgi “Zombie Kangaroo” and “Nia” on the Audrey base – US 5/3.75 mm – http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/dissent

Crochet Stuff

  • Steek and edge on a puppy sweater

Fiber Stuff

Sith and Spin Spin-along

Spin while watching/reading/listening to Sith stories, which, frankly, includes about 90% of Star Wars entertainment out there, so there’s plenty to choose from. Watch a Star Wars movie or TV show, listen to a Star Wars audiobook or podcast, or read a Star Wars book while spinning. Anything Sith-related goes, including Star Wars video games, video game Let’s Plays, fanfilms, and fanfiction if you can spin while enjoying those things.

This will be a casual 3-month-ish spin-along. A thread will be open in the Freakish Lemon Podcast group. Post a photo of what you’re working on and let us know what you’re watching/reading/listening to. This will also be a chatter thread. Spinning projects don’t have to be finished and your Sith entertainment does not have to be finished by the end of this spin-along; just spend some time with both over the next 3-months-ish, ending on October 1st. You can enter multiple times (photo and a blurb about your Sith story) to show your progress.

There will be prizes! Custom made batts and mini-batts from me!

FOs –

  • Mini-skeins from samples and mini-batts

WIPs –

  • Classy Squid Fiber Co – Exploding TARDIS rolags – Turtle Made Turkish Spindle
  • Mystery Wool Fleeces – Scouring, Carding, and Spinning

Sewing Stuff

WIPs –       

  • Halloween quilt

New Stuff

  • Legacy Fiber Artz – Mary Sanderson and Spellbook
  • Must Stash Yarns
    • Boba Fett
    • Chewbacca
    • Han Solo
    • Leia
  • Wollelfe – Gunmetal Grey – 80/20 Merino/polyamide

Other Stuff

Stuff I’m Watching – Stitching the High Notes by Joana, BrownBerry Chronicles by Marce

Stuff I’m Reading – (tracking on GoodReads)

  • Star Wars: Galaxy of Fear series
  • Darth Plagueis by James Luceno (audio) narr by Daniel Davis

Fanfic Recommendation –

Snakefic version II – user name Esamastation – http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/117713349156/snakefic-version-ii

 

Come join the Freakish Lemon Video Podcast group on Ravelry – http://www.ravelry.com/groups/the-freakish-lemon-video-podcast

Follow me as freakishlemon Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and Ravelry

Check out my shop at freakishlemon.etsy.com     

   

Episode 22: In My Bones

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Life Stuff

  • Giveaway – What fiber festivals are you planning on going to? Which ones would you love to go to if money/travel/etc was not an obstacle?
    • Post #7 – lsimon1 – Linda – Went to Stitches Midwest and might be going to Rhinebeck
  • Stitches Midwest – Did a haul/vlog video for this one, so if you missed it, check it out
  • NY Renaissance Faire – temps in the mid 90’s with 74% humidity (about 35 C) – not sure what the Feel Like temp for Tuxedo, NY was, but Hartford was Feels Like 110F (43.3 C)
  • Project Bullet Journal – blaming Ally from Get Lit and Knit for this

Knitting Stuff

FOs –

  • Eldfjall Cowl – knit from Eldfjall handspun – US 4/ 3.5 mm

WIPs –

  • Redford Sweater by Julie Hoover – Yarn Place Basic Fingering (wool) in Grey (ebay yarn) – US 1 – 2.25 mm Chiaogoo red lace circulars – http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/redford
  • Cozy Memories Blanket using the Memories Blanket tutorial by Georgie Hallam – sock scraps – US 1/2.25 mm Chiaogoo circulars – http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/memory-blanket
  • Worsted Weight Cozy Memories Blanket – US 3/3.25 mm circulars
  • Dangling Conversation by Mindy Ross – Bitsy Knits The Case of the Silent Six Handspun Single – US 2 – 2.75 mm – http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/dangling-conversation
  • C-3P0 Socks – Must Stash Yarn Star Wars Droids Yarn (75/25 SW Merino/Nylon) in C-3P0 – US 0 – 2.0 mm DPNs
  • Movie Socks 2 – Vanilla socks – Patons Kroy Socks Stripes (75/25 Wool/Nylon) in Bramble Stripes – US 1 – 2.25 mm Chiaogoo needles
  • BB-8 Socks – Must Stash Yarn Star Wars Droids Yarn (75/25 SW Merino/Nylon) in BB-8 – US 0 – 2.0 mm DPNs

Crochet Stuff

FOs –

WIPs –

Fiber Stuff

Sith and Spin Spin-along

Spin while watching/reading/listening to Sith stories, which, frankly, includes about 90% of Star Wars entertainment out there, so there’s plenty to choose from. Watch a Star Wars movie or TV show, listen to a Star Wars audiobook or podcast, or read a Star Wars book while spinning. Anything Sith-related goes, including Star Wars video games, video game Let’s Plays, fanfilms, and fanfiction if you can spin while enjoying those things.

This will be a casual 3-month-ish spin-along. A thread will be open in the Freakish Lemon Podcast group. Post a photo of what you’re working on and let us know what you’re watching/reading/listening to. This will also be a chatter thread. Spinning projects don’t have to be finished and your Sith entertainment does not have to be finished by the end of this spin-along; just spend some time with both over the next 3-months-ish, ending on October 1st. You can enter multiple times (photo and a blurb about your Sith story) to show your progress.

There will be prizes! Custom made batts and mini-batts from me!

 

FOs –

  • Mini-skeins from samples and mini-batts
  • Darth Venge batts spinning – Ashford Kiwi 2

WIPs –

  • Classy Squid Fiber Co – Exploding TARDIS rolags – Turtle Made Turkish Spindle
  • Mystery Wool Fleeces – Scouring, Carding, and Spinning
  • Into the Whirled – Wibbley Wobbley Timey Wimey – Polwarth

Sewing Stuff

WIPs –       

  • Hawkeye^2 Quilt
  • Star Wars Aurebesh Sampler by AdLeones on Etsy

New Stuff

  • Gale’s Art Halloween Sock Blank
  • Ren Faire yarn – Reyen Design Studios
  • Must Stash Yarn – Yoda and Obi-Wan
  • Legacy Fiber Artz – Winnie Sanderson
  • Halloween fabric
  • Slotted ruler
  • Hiya Hiya Sharp needles

Other Stuff

Stuff I’m Watching – Podcast catch up

Stuff I’m Reading – (tracking on GoodReads)

  • Jedi Quest series reread – series by Jude Watson
  • Lords of the Sith by Paul S Kemp (audiobook) narr by Jonathan Davis
  • New Dawn by John Jackson Miller (audiobook) narr by Mark Thompson

 Fanfic Recommendation – Lineage series by Ruth Balding on FF.net – https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8075573/1/Lineage

Stuff I’m Playing – Pokemon Go, Lego Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars

 

 

Special Episode: Stitches Midwest 2016 Haul

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Stitches Midwest 2016 Haul

EPISODE 12: THE FORCE REKINDLED

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Life Stuff

  • STAR WARS
  • Christmas
  • New Year’s
  • Resolutions
  • Read/listen to 24 books this year
  • Monthly step goals on Fitbit – January – 5000 steps per day, will reevaluate each month depending on what my numbers were
  • Yarn Diet/Stash busting – will not buy yarn from Feb 16 – Sept 16, excepting CT Fiber Festival and Stitches Midwest
  • Podcast Goals
    • Streamline my process
    • Dropping the pop up segment titles – I tend to listen right through while editing and then have to find where I said them again, so it’s taking up too much time when you add them all together
    • Currently dropping closed captioning – if anyone has a quick and easy way to do it or is willing to write up transcripts of my episodes, I’ll bring it back but right now it just takes too much time
    • Craft room tour video
    • Video about how I make a podcast episode
    • Reevaluate in June for possibly moving to biweekly schedule

 

Knitting Stuff

Frogged –

FOs –

  • Gift Knitting Montage

WIPs –

 

Crochet Stuff

WIPs –

  • Granny Square Odds and Ends – Based off of a square seen on Attic24 – misc acrylic worsted weight yarn – H/5.00 mm

 

Fiber Stuff

FOs –

  • Hedgehog – needle felting
  • Gnome Wizard – needle felting
  • Loop Bump
  • Phoenix Fiber Club June – Turtle Made Turkish spindle
  • Supercoil Art Yarns – Fondant Fiber Fuzzlings
  • Test Spin Autumn
  • Green/White/Gold rolags

WIPs –

  • 3 ply BFL/Merino – Highland Handmades BFL in “The Rom”, Merino Top Green
  • My mystery bag o’ wool – combing progress and second set of samples spun

Sewing Stuff

FOs –

  • Christmas Cross Stitch – The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery
  • Star Wars Project Bag

WIPs –       

  • Hawkeye^2 Quilt – #sewfor20

 

New Stuff

  • Jumbo Flyer kit and Bobbins
  • Blackfoot Spindle
  • Fiber Project bag from Gabby
  • Lights for core spinning from Gabby
  • Rolags from Gabby
  • Buffalo Wool Company mini-skeins
  • Needle Felting supplies
  • Roving for needle felting
  • Package from Andi/AndreSueKnits Podcast
  • Package from Mary/ The Yarnaceuticals Podcast
  • Lion Brand Scarfie
  • Perfection by Kraemer Yarns – 30% Domestic Merino, 70% Acrylic in “Fieldstone”

 

Etsy Stuff

  • Progress keepers and snagless stitch marker sets should be up
  • Snagless Stitch Markers
  • Pony bead stitch markers

     

Other Stuff

Start Something New 2016 KAL

Start something new! There are two threads on Ravelry for this KAL – a chatter thread and an entry thread. You don’t have to finish the item, but you have to show the project in progress, at least. This can be knitting, crochet, spinning, weaving, or any other fiber craft that you’ve wanted to try. You can post multiple entries, but only one entry per project, even if you’re doing multiple new things with that project.

This KAL will run from January 1st to March 31st and I will draw for the winner during my April episode.

If you’re posting to instagram, you can use #lemon2016KAL so we can all see your projects.

We have a KAL sponsor! RsislandCrafts is supplying a project bag as a prize for this KAL and have a coupon code of LEMON15 from now until the end of March for 15% total purchase – https://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/home/rsislandcrafts

 

Stuff I’m Watching – Doctor Who, Murder She Wrote, STAR WARS, Elementary

Stuff I’m Reading – Necronomicon (audiobook), Planet of Twilight by Barbara Hambly, Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber (auidobook), The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster (audiobook)

Stuff I’m Playing – Lego Marvel Superheroes

Podcasts – Ewe University Live by Dr. Kelly (Halcyarn on Etsy) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr1bI6qOoR95A1xDFxeUAiA

 

Come join the Freakish Lemon Video Podcast group on Ravelry

Follow me as freakishlemon Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and Ravelry

Check out my shop at freakishlemon.etsy.com     

 

     

EPISODE 11: UPGRADES AND HIDDEN KNITTING

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Stuff on Sticks

WIPs –

Stuff on Hooks

WIPs –

  • Granny Square Odds and Ends – Based off of a square seen on Attic24 – misc acrylic worsted weight yarn – H/5.00 mm

Stuff on Spindles and Wheels

FOs –

WIPs –

  • Phoenix Fiber Club June – Turtle Made Turkish spindle
  • My mystery bag o’ wool – combing with lanolin in, combing without, working on a sample spun with the lanolin in
  • Loop Bump

 

Stuff with Thread

WIPs –      

  • Christmas Cross Stitch – The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery
  • Hawkeye^2 Quilt – #sewfor20

 

New Stuff

  • Mac Mini
  • Apocalypse Friday Kickstarter Rewards
  • “Soft Teal” Merino – Done Roving Yarn Frolicking Feet
  • Classy Squid Fiber Co – Washed Leicester Longwool Locks and Washed Cotswold Locks
  • Undyed Wool Roving from FashionTouchSupplies on Etsy
    • Corriedale
    • Shetland
    • Merino Silver

 

Stuff for Etsy

  • Coupon code SNOWFLAKE for 15% a purchase of $30.00 or more until the end of 2015
  • Edited the photos for the stitch markers and progress keepers, so those should be up in the shop soon.

   

Other Stuff

Winter Holiday Giveaway!

What is your favourite winter holiday story?

 

I have a lot of winter holiday stories rattling around in my brain, but I’ll tell you a Real Life Story that my family likes to tell.

 

We love Christmas and we decorate everything. When I was little, we used to do just the one tree in the living room. We had this sort of fake in-law suite/den type room that was just storage until my dad decided to redo the room to make it into a family room. Once we had a family room, my parents quickly realized that we could double the Christmas tree action in our house.

 

Our town is one of those nebulous little places that’s somewhere between suburb and rural. This means that we have Christmas tree farms around every corner. December rolls around and you’ve got cardboard signs on every telephone pole indicating where you can cut down your own Christmas tree. There’s this one Christmas tree farm down the street that we used to go to all the time as kids with acres and acres of trees. We would go explore other tree farms every couple of years, but this one was a favourite.

 

One year, we were going through these trees at this farm that we love and we found a good tree for our living room. Those aren’t hard. That’s a 7 foot ceiling, so a lot of trees are grown specifically to be cut down at around that height out here. But our family room? It’s a 9 foot ceiling, I think. It’s tall. We need a taller tree.

 

So we were walking around and there was this perfect tree. Just perfect. Perfect shape, perfect height, nice and full branches, needles that weren’t prickly…. It was the dream family room tree.

 

But it was tagged as reserved, which means we couldn’t just up and take it. We were disappointed, but we kept looking. But we couldn’t find any trees that could live up to that tree. We were just about getting ready to leave, just lingering near the tree, and my dad noticed that the tag was kind of old. He said that maybe if it was an old tag that’s been forgotten about, we could talk to the tree sellers about buying it. He reaches up, flips the tag over, and his name is written on the tag.

 

We had tagged that tree three years earlier.

 

And the winner is…

 

lsimon1!

 

New Year’s Resolution KAL

 

I’m holding a knit-along! Start something new! Use a new technique, a new fiber, a new designer’s pattern that you’ve really wanted to use before… I will open two threads on Ravelry for this KAL. There will be a Chatter thread and an entry thread. You don’t have to finish the item, but you have to show the project in progress, at least. This can be knitting, crochet, spinning, weaving, or any other craft that you’ve wanted to try. You can post multiple entries, but only one entry per project, even if you’re doing multiple new things with that project.

 

This KAL will run from January 1st to March 31st and I will draw for the winner during my April episode.

 

If you’re posting to instagram, you can use #lemon2016KAL so we can all see your projects.

 

Stuff I’m Watching – Doctor Who, Murder She Wrote, Agents of SHIELD, The Flash, Arrow, Supergirl, Jessica Jones

Stuff I’m Reading – Necronomicon audiobook

Stuff I’m Playing – Lego Marvel Superheroes

Podcasts – Gabby hosting Once Upon a Corgi – https://onceuponacorgi.wordpress.com/, Spicy Homemaker podcast hosted by Melissa – http://www.spicyhomemaker.com/

.

August Dye Experiment

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I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about this yet. Where have I been all summer?

This post is about the Great Dye Experiment that The Gabbers and I had at the end of August. I’ve talked about it on my podcast, but it just feels weird not to have also blogged about it.

So back in August, The Gabbers was playing around with dyeing. She had bought some naked, undyed yarn and some acid dyes and was playing around with both natural and acid dyeing. She invited me down to come play with the dyes to see what we could make, since she knew I had grabbed some undyed fiber from the GnomeAcres fiber stock sale over the summer. I had taken a Friday off to play with Penny (the adorable corgi) because both of my parents were on vacation and she had some separation anxiety over their leaving, so we figured I’d bring my fiber and the dog down to my sister’s apartment. The dogs would wrestle all day and we would dye yarn and fiber.

We actually started out with some yarn and not the fiber we’d been talking about. We’d looped our fiber in the recommended fashion (I’m not sure what book we were using) and were soaking it in vinegar to hold the dye later. She had already soaked the naked yarn she had ordered, so it was ready to go.

The first yarn we dyed was very experimental. We weren’t sure the concentration of dye and how saturated those colors would be, so the first skein was really for us to find our feet. We started out by hand painting the yarn to see how the colors would work. I decided to drip the dye onto my first skein to mimic the speckled yarns that are popular right now.

 

I think both of us were surprised at how low the saturation was when we dyed the yarn this way. I like the result, but it had looked much more saturated before we set the color. We then tried some more hand painting and ended up with a much more saturated yarn.

 

 

 

 Since I’m not intending to replicate this yarn for sale, I’ll explain how I did the color. I arranged my skein on the plastic into a square (ish) shape. I started adding color to the corner sections, then to either side of each corner, and then filled in the straight sides. I have no idea how this will knit up, but I’m excited to see what kind of variegation that created.

Then the fiber was ready to play with. We started out trying hand painting the fiber, since that’s what we had been doing with the yarn. That was kind of a mess. The fiber just drank the dye and stuck to brushes, even when only dabbing straight up and down. I ended up just pouring dye into the fiber and squishing it down to distribute the dye in that section. Luckily, I wanted most of the color to blend well instead of clear color changes in this fiber and I think it worked out pretty well for my pumpkin fiber.

 

By this time, it was getting late and we knew we needed to speed things up if I was going to go home that night, which was my preference since I hadn’t brought anything with my but the dog and some fiber. So then we started working on some immersion dyeing stuff.

I started out with a braid of fiber in some hot water and just dumping some red mixed dye into the water and letting that cook in. When the fiber had absorbed that, I pulled out that fiber and tied some big, loose knots in it. I dumped it back into the water and poured some blue dye in. When that was absorbed, I pulled it out again and tied the whole thing into one loopy knot, put it back in the water, and poured some darker purpley blue dye into the pot. The goal was the same principle as tie-dye. The first layer of dye would be covered in the knots, so other parts of the fiber would have the blue over-dye. Then both those sections would be covered in the big knot and the purple-blue dye would over-dye only part of the fiber. And this was the result:

 

I like the way the colors played, but I don’t think I’ll do that with fiber again. The fiber was so sticky when it was wet and I had to be super careful when I untied those knots. I didn’t want to pull the length of fiber apart and I know I partially drafted parts of it when I was pulling the knots out. Luckily, it fluffed up when it dried, so it’s not that noticeable. 

The I did some more immersion dyeing with my last bit of fiber. This one I mostly just played with the amounts of dye in the pot. I had some of the blue and then some of the purple-blue and I actually got a pretty cool effect due to the fiber being too fluffy for the dye pot. Some of the color really concentrated where the fiber touched the pot and the pot strainer and the parts that weren’t touching the pot or pot-strainer has a much softer color dye.

 

 

 

Then I rushed through dying the last bit of yarn, which actually turned out really nice. I threw some yellow into the dye pot, but there was still a little bit of the purple-blue in the pot, so it ended up a light, soft yellow-green. I tied the yarn in a few knots and tossed in some green, tied it into another big knot, and threw in another shade of green. It ended up being this nice sort of light, tonal green that I really like.

 

And that was my part of the yarn dyeing experiment! Will I do it again? With the space, time, and some money to get started? Sure! It was fun and I liked the yarns I ended up with. I’d love to play with the color dyes more and how they mix with each other, but I don’t think I’ll be able to do it again any time soon. Because of where I live, I cannot block off the kitchen to dye and I do not have the dedicated space for the actual dyeing or the drying. If this is something that I’m really interested in pursuing while I live here, I may pick it back up in the spring and summer and see about using the burner on the grill outside to do the heat setting and the clothesline for the drying.

The only thing I can really see myself doing anytime soon would be natural dyeing with foods. I know onion skins, cabbage, and black beans are among the food items that can dye yarn and I’m sure there are other things that I’m not thinking about right now. I’m definitely interested in doing some more research for that. 

Until then, I’ll just have to enjoy the products of my experiment.

.

Stitches East 2014

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This past Friday my mom and I headed to our final yarn event of the season, Stitches East 2014!

(I say last, but I’m pretty sure I’m still heading up to the New England Sheep and Wool Festival in November, so… we’ll see.)

This is our second year going to Stitches and I think we managed to plan a little better this year.

– We planned to eat lunch at the Arch Street Tavern this year. We managed to skip lunch entirely last year due to being overwhelmed and running on crazy adrenaline.

-We printed out maps of the show floor and, on our first tour of the show, marked down the booths that we wanted to return to for purchases. Last year, we had to split ways and run around in opposite directions because we couldn’t remember where we saw things we wanted.

– We brought snacks. I guess you’re technically not supposed to do that, but when we sat to munch on a couple of granola bars, a lady raised a sandwich out of her purse in solidarity. I have a tendency towards blood sugar issues and my mom was hurting through some flu shot side effects (she gets sick after them every year, but she’s a nurse so she has to get them), so we wouldn’t have made it through the show without snacks.

-We both came to this show with a stronger resolve to buy for specific projects instead of just whatever we found to be pretty. Last year was pretty haphazard, in terms of purchases. I ended up buying more spinning roving this year than yarn for that reason. You generally know what you’re going to do with roving and there’s plenty of time for me to figure out if I want to use it or sell it while I’m spinning. Last year we were immediately blind sided by a booth with Lord of the Rings themed color ways, so budgets were pretty screwed from the start. The only I bought without a clear plan is the clearance yarn I’ll show you below and the only thing my mom bought without a clear plan is some of the Lord of the Rings themed color way from the same booth left over from last year (in Bree, which is a gorgeous auburn variant).

-We made a stop on the way home to buy loose leaf tea from Teavana at the mall. This doesn’t sound like much, but when you spend hours doing nothing but walking and then have to drive the hour home, it can wear on you. It does on me, anyway. Getting out to check out the new Disney store and buy some fancy tea worked out some stiffness in my legs. My mom bought her very first loose leaf tea (pumpkin spiced brulee), which was exciting.

And now the part that everyone likes, the stuff!

 

1. The Buffalo Wool Company

I bought a set of mini-skeins from The Buffalo Wool Company. This booth was really cool. And by booth, I mean a big travelling van set up to be a store that spilled out onto the show room. The lady running the joint had tons of information about buffalo wool and its properties and there were a handful of really interestingly textured buffalo wool and buffalo blend wool. 

A lot of it was pretty pricey, but I couldn’t leave without something buffalo. This set of mini-skeins was only $20 and there were some fantastic cowls on display with them. I’m planning on a striped cowl, which will easily use up all of the yarn without leaving very much left over.

2. Holiday Yarns

This booth was lovely. Lots of beautifully dyed yarns, but what caught my eye was the sock kit display. There were almost a dozen mannequin feet with fantastic superhero kits socks. I didn’t see all of the superheros from the models as kits on the racks, but the Wonder Woman kits were there and I really liked how the Wonder Woman yarn was dyed up. So I bought a kit. Can’t go wrong with too many socks, right?

3. Swan Hollow Studios

 

 

My hands ache to touch this stuff just looking at the photo. Swan Hollow Studios had a big sprawling booth filled with incredibly soft fibers for spinning and silky yarns. The fibers were all piled around in these huge open sacks, like giant bean bag chairs, so you could just stick your arms in the wool and touch it. I kept walking in circles in the booth coming back to this beautiful mass. It’s a blend of camel, tussah silk, and Shetland sheep wool. It’s so soft that some of the more calloused parts of my fingers could barely feel it. I’m am very excited about spinning this up.

4. Ummm…

 

 

I’m terrible. In my excitement, I forgot to get the name of the vendor at the booth. Also, this was a skein I pulled out of the clearance for $9.00 bin, so it doesn’t have a label. The receipt doesn’t have the vendor name and I paid in cash, so there’s no electronic receipt. It’s mystery yarn that’s worsted weight (I’m guessing). All I know for sure is that I love the colors and it’s soft.

5. Highland Handmades

And more roving. These are colorways The Rom and The Edge of the Inferno from Highland Handmades. They’re both braids of BFL, which is a wool that I consistently have enjoyed spinning. It’s soft, but sturdy. I find that the fibers aren’t smooth enough to pull loose if I spin the wheel too fast, but are very soft and don’t irritate my dry hands while drafting.

I also love the colors that she uses in her dyes. All of the braids in the booth were beautiful color combinations and it was hard to pick just two of them. I hope to buy more from her in the future.

 

And that was Stitches! I didn’t manage to really get any photos of the show floor or anything. I was too excited to be putting my hands all over all the yarns and things, and there were too many people around for me to feel comfortable taking photos. I don’t mind taking photos around a lot of people, but I feel very uncomfortable taking photos of strangers when you can see their faces clearly. It’s a thing. Maybe I’ll get some photos of the booths and things next year. All in all, a great event that I’m glad to say is probably going to be an annual thing as long as it’s in Hartford.

 

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