Day 2 started off with us sleeping in late due to our movies, wine and knitting the night before. While we waited for everyone to get ready (Sara let me use some of her shower gel, shampoo and conditioner though I think that the fact that we would all be sharing a car for another 2 days prompted that more than anything.)
The night before we became well acquainted with Pablo (Pabs for short), one of 2 birds in the house who loves flying around the living room and scaring Sara half to death. All night long (and again all morning) Sara would be minding her own business, busily knitting away on her washcloth and suddenly, out of nowhere, Pabs would start zooming around the living room at top speed (usually directly above Sara). Meanwhile, Sara would shreek obsenities at the bird and cower in the corner of the couch while the rest of us laughed at her misfortune. It was immensely entertaining. We're such good friends. ^_^
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| The terrifying Pabs is obviously just acting adorable, he is secretly plotting how to best attack Sara when she reaches for her knitting. |
We made it back to the fiber fair where things were well underway: the spinners were spinning, the knitters were knitting, and all the vendors were open. Being the fiscally responsible people that we are, we immediately hit up the vendor booths. All the previous day I had been watching one booth in particular (iLOOMinated yarns) that had skein after skein of gorgeous hand-dyed fingering weight yarns (one of my biggest weaknesses)!! I had been trying to find the perfect tonal fingering weight to make my second version of Ysolda's Follow Your Arrow shawl. The first time I knit this pattern last January, I chose all the technically challenging options and now I need to make one using all the lacy options (hence wanting a fun tonal color). I found the perfect yarn at this booth: iLOOMinated yarns' Opal Base in the colorway: Lettuce Cup. It's a fingering weight 50 Merino/50 Silk blend in a non-repeatable colorway that came about from the dyer using up the last little dregs of color in the dye-pot. I can't even tell you how much I love this yarn!! It's super squishy soft and the color is a slightly tonal pale neon green, perfect for a lovely, lacy shawl!!
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| iLOOMinated yarns had one of my favorite booths at NCFF. This loveliness will soon be my second Follow Your Arrow by Ysolda. |
After we exhausted ourselves (and our wallets), Sara convinced Katie and I that we really should all take one class together, so she signed us all up for arm knitting. Since we were late at signing up, we also weren't prepared with yarn for the class, so back to the vendor booths! We all found some really lovely colors of bulky yarns to use in class and after some shenanigans (which may have involved all three of us attempting to wind 4 hanks of yarn into a ball while, literally, running to class), we finally made it. The class was super fun and was taught by another of our knitting buddies, Lindsey. I'm so glad that we all got to attend together and be completely ridiculous in the process.
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| My leftovers from the Arm Knitting class. If you need to burn up some stash, this is the perfect project! |
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| Katie busily working on her arm-knit scarf after dinner. (Because, though we tried, we weren't able to wind all 4 hanks of her yarn before class started.) |
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| From left: Katie, Sara, Lindsey and myself showing off our arm knit scarves. |
I don't really remember how, but somehow we ended up back at the vendor booths (I have exactly zero willpower when it comes to hand-dyed yarn, apparently) and I may have ended up purchasing this amazingly soft and gorgeous skein from The Dyeing Arts. I've been really trying to expand the colors that I have in my stash because I always gravitate towards shades of green (see my iLOOMinated yarns purchase above) so I thought that this colorway would be perfect for that. Then I realized that it had the exact same colors that I picked out for my arm-knit scarf (also, see above). I'm obviously not good at getting out of color-ruts, lol. I'm still completely in love with this yarn, though and will be making some sort of scarf-thing so that I can snuggle it close to my face and enjoy it's drapey amazing-ness.
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| My attempt at going outside my usual color range with this gorgeous baby camel/silk blend from The Dyeing Arts. |
The evening ended with the the delicious banquet dinner. If you've never gone to it, just sign up now. The food was great and there were tons of door prizes given away, like this amazing hand-dyed roving that I won from Shay Huhta! (Did I mention that my hand-dye addiction extends to roving... and basically anything?) This is definitely on the agenda for my #Spin15in15 goals!!
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| I love the color blend in this roving, it's very autumnal with a couple pops of salmon pink here and there. I can't wait to see it spun up! |
We ended the night back home and watching Stardust while knitting/spinning till we passed out.
Next time: Day 3!! ^_^
