Hello All,
Such a nice,
nice weekend. The weather turned
gorgeous and buds are popping open all over the place.
Carol
arrived early Saturday morning – enough time for coffee and avocado toast
before we took off for the Steel City Fiber Festival. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The festival is much, much smaller than MDSW
and, for me, it was perfect. I did miss
seeing a lot of animals – only a few here.
Here is Carol with a friend:
And here are
some little babies with their mother chowing down in the background.
These were
the only animals we saw other than angora rabbits (HUGE) that some women were
holding as they used their spinning wheels.
I imagine the festival may grow each year (this is only the second year
for it).
I believe
there were around 90 (give or take) vendors.
No big names like there are at MDSW, but lots and lots of independent
dyers. There was one pottery person, several
soap-makers and some selling beads, etc.
So proud of myself – I did not go overboard and came home with more
money than I spent! (very unusual for me
– lol). I’ve been wanting to make a
shawl with some gradient yarn so I bought this skein plus the colorful sock
yarn skein.
I also
picked up this set of tiny skeins for making a pair (or two) of Squad Mitts
(Mason Dixon) I should have taken the skeins out of the bag before taking the picture - sorry!
There were a
number of vendors selling project bags too, but sadly (or fortunately??) I didn’t
see any that I just had to have.
The venue
itself is very easy to get to – just 5 minutes or so off the PA Turnpike and it
only took us an hour from my house. We
even ran into a friend of Carol’s whom I had not seen in probably 30
years!! The Merchants Square Mall where
the festival was is an older building, and not the cleanest. The main part of the festival was in the “showroom”
– the rest of the indoor space is filled with flea market type vendors. I believe they also have a train display
somewhere. Fletch loves flea markets, so
he said he would go next year – something for him to do while I walk around
fondling yarn – lol. There were no long
lines and it was easy to see each vendor’s offerings. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming. One vendor described the festival as much
more laid back than MDSW. I would
agree. Though I enjoyed MDSW the two
times I have gone, I probably won’t go again for a number of years (I hate the
traffic jams and the crowds).
I will
definitely go back next year. We arrived
around 10:30 and stayed for about 2.5 – 3 hours. That’s plenty of time for me to shop. Who wants to join me next year???
The BBQ shrimp
dinner turned out great Saturday night.
I did not teach Carol how to knit socks.
Turns out she had completely forgotten how to knit, how to purl, even
how to cast on. So, I showed her those
things and she played around with some yarn I gave her (she did buy a gorgeous
skein of sock yarn, but I gave her yarn to practice on). She’s going to try to knit a scarf first
which I think is smart before she tries to tackle socks.
I finally
got a bit of time to work on Sigla Sunday afternoon. I finished the colorwork at the top – I love,
love, love the blue. This picture makes
the neck look strange, but it was starting to fold back on itself. I just wanted all the colors to show in this
picture.
Both socks
and the Match and Move are in my bag to work on at lunch today…hoping to
accomplish something!
How was your
weekend?
