I wish to go to the festival!

This weekend, Kris and I returned to the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival, where we hadn’t been since 2015. The weather was sunny, which was reason enough to celebrate. But there was also lots of gorgeous fiber!

There was only one thing I was officially shopping for, but of course a few other things fell into my bag. My first purchase was two bags of Romney/alpaca/mohair roving in colors “Leprechaun Suit” and “Wizard’s Spell”:

I am planning to blend these with my handcards so that I end up with a gradient yarn that slowly moves from green to blue, with all the shades in between.

My next purchase was the thing I was shopping for: sock yarn to make Dave’s 50th birthday socks. Dave wants sheep on his socks. This is my inspiration (pattern is Sheep Balls):

I’m going to run a line of sheep around the ankle or cuff of Dave’s socks. Since he has size 11 feet, I knew that 100 grams of sock yarn wouldn’t be enough. I purchased these two skeins to use – the green will be on the foot (like grass) and the blue will be above the sheep (like sky):

These skeins were dyed by Yarn Daze in Indiana, and the yarn is 90/10 superwash Targhee/nylon.

The next booth that really intrigued me was HipStrings, a Pittsburgh-based shop:

I’d never seen them before. Their wall of spinning fiber was different than anything I’d seen and very compelling. Can you see it from a distance?

Let me show you what I picked and see if you agree. This braid is called River Rock. It is 75% merino, 12.5% tussah silk and 12.5% sari silk. It is very muted, but there’s still a lot of color variation:

What will it look like when spun? Well, it depends on how you spin it… but here is a yarn sample on display:

It almost looks tweedy.

I also got this braid, which was a special colorway created for Indie Knit & Spin:

I know it looks a bit garish here, but look a the yarn sample:

Subtle and tweedy! I thought S1 would like a hat or scarf or something made from it. The fiber blend is different – this one is 37.5% BFL, 37.5% Shetland, 12.5% bamboo, and 12.5% tussah silk.

I also got this little wraps per inch tool which seems so much more helpful than the typical ones:

That was day 1, which ended with a wine and cider tasting (yes, right at the festival). Sunday morning began with coffee and a lovely conversation with Margo and her owners – have you ever seen such a stylish sheep?

Then I went off to my class about spinning on the great wheel. There were 5 of us in class, and 3 people brought their own wheels! I used one of the teacher’s wheels… but we all tried many wheels.

Most of the wheels were this “New England style” – very simple. But one was a “Southern wheel,” which contained many turned parts and was really quite fancy.

I’m not planning to get one of these anytime soon, but I’ve always wanted to know exactly how they work, and now I do. Fun!

Kris took a class on painting silk scarves. I haven’t seen the finished, dry scarves yet… but they sure look good in process (I hope it’s okay I stole this from your Instagram, Kris!).

Finally, I couldn’t resist one more skein of sock yarn. This is one of those gorgeous marled skeins from Yarn Hero, in a purple-plummy colorway called Octopus Love. These will be for S1.

We had Thai food for lunch and then headed back home. It was a great weekend at a wonderful little festival that I highly recommend. It has none of the crazy crowds (ahem, I’m looking at you, MDSW) and a lot of really great vendors!