Cashmere and Camel and Lama Oh My! (Color: A Fiber Festival 2008)

For those of you who are not into spinning and fiber, you might just want to pass on this blog posting. The only thing that saved me from utter madness was the fact that I ran out of cash and resisted the urge to break out the credit/debit card. For those of you who are interested, view on :-)

Let's just say that Colour: A Fiber Festival was a lot of fun for me and my sister. Yes indeed! The last three pictures of fiber are my sisters purchases . The orange and orange green roving's were from Girl On The Rocks and I think they are Flame, South African Finn (the orange) and California Poppy also in a Finn (orange/green). The three roving's together are all superwash Merino from Tactile Fiber Arts and the brown/grey roving is polworth from A Verb For Keeping Warm.

At the top of the blog you have a selection of "exotic" fibers that I got to sample/taste which we kept in order with this handy plastic card holder they gave us. You can make notes, keep a sample of the fiber and a sample of the spun yarn. Very neat! Color had classes, some spinning, some knitting and some fiber "tastings" where you could try rare breeds, exotics, etc. Whatever you were interested in. I took the course from Kristine Vejar who was really great. She provided different fibers and we all spun them trying to get yarn to highlight the best characteristics of the fiber. The exotics consisted of cashmere, baby camel and silk tussah, baby alpaca and silk, baby lama and baby alpaca. I did not bring a wheel, I just borrowed a spindle from my sister. Though I have spun all but the cashmere, I did not know that you could get more fluff by spinning from the fold with a larger drafting area to catch the air, that spinning it looser would help maintain the fluff factor and that either long draw or supported long draw would work the best. My singles really came out nicer so I will try to remember this when I go to spin all the stuff I got. It's a small festival that has big potential. there were about 4 vendors. Tactile, Girl, Verb and Pigeonroofstudios. Let me just say, that Pigeonroofstudios sold out of fiber in the first 45 minutes. I was lucky to get anything at all. That said, I did not go begging for fiber!

Now for my haul. The Brown roving is baby alpaca from A Verb for Keeping Warm. The colorful green/pink/yellow stuff is merino from Girl On The Rocks. The two small bundles of roving are two colorways of baby camel and tussah silk from A Verb for Keeping Warm. The "snail" of braided fiber is baby alpaca/merino from pigeonroofstudios. The red/orange roving is Gradient Dyed ie from lighter to darker and is superwash merino from Girl On The Rocks. Below that is BFL that is indigo dyed and then BFL that is Madder Dyed, both from A Verb for Keeping Warm.

Whew!