Returned from Shepherd's Harvest festival

[jenett]

aka our local fiber festival: four large non-animal barns of vendors, three barns of fuzzy animals (sheep, goats, llamas, alpacas, and rabbits.)

The fiber geeks among my readers will be impressed: I went in with selkie_b on 7 pounds of fleece (still in the grease, but incredibly clean and gorgeous silver Corriedale.) Total cost? $57 for over 7 pounds.

(The non-fiber geeks will like to know that this is an insanely good price - other fleeces were going for roughly double that, and processed roving goes for around $2 an ounce, or $30ish a pound - of course, that's processed, but this fleece is clean enough it may not need processing, and I'll spin it as is.)

I have plans to try spinning bulky yarn this time, and make a nice cozy shawl for next winter. (It's got to be bulkyish yarn, or I'll never get it done by the end of the winter.)

I also got roving from Frabjous Fibers. I got the Moulin Rouge colorway, which made L blink a lot when we met up with her during her break from her dyeing class. And I was really tempted by one that's not on their website right now, Hespera, which is really gorgeous jeweltones of dark red, plum, deep green, deep gold, and a few other things.

And then I ooooohed over Briar Rose a lot.

Comments

[alsatia]

Oooh, neat. I'm always impressed by people who spin, because it seems so difficult and so expensive to get materials to me. I suppose that's the same way other people feel about me knitting, although I continue to insist there's nothing remotely impressive about any of the knitting I've done.

[jenett]

It all depends on what you're doing: I usually spend $20-40 for enough fiber to keep me busy for *months* if I'm spinning remotely regularly, which is a pretty good rate of return.

The mechanical bits of making spinning work are a little tricky at first (much easier if you can get someone to show you a few times), but I find it incredibly soothing. No counting, any problems are really obvious (the fiber breaks, the spindle falls down) and pretty easy to fix.

Knitting's a lot harder for me because I'm not good enough at it to count and talk/do anything else at the same time, and I don't love knitting enough to set aside time when I'm not doing anything else.

(This is part of the reason for the shawl, too, because I want to do a really simple pattern, so I can knit + talk at the same time)