NY Sheep and Wool Festival, Yarn Crawl

The NYC Yarn Crawl was a great success by all accounts! The stores I visited had long lists of raffle entries and new visitors. I hope everyone who participated made some wonderful new discoveries. It's amazing how different yarn stores can be from each other isn't it? Did you participate? Tell us about your experiences by leaving comments! Check their website for the winners of the raffle baskets and the Scavenger Hunt.

 

In other news, I visited the NY State Sheep and Wool Festival this past weekend at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds. This was my first visit to the Sheep and Wool festival and it was an eye-opener! So many knitters roving around, fondling yarn and comparing their hauls. I had a wonderful time just sitting on a bench after a delicious lunch and watching all the incredible handknits on parade. I also really enjoyed visiting the animal area, I saw the cashmere goats lining up for inspection, and got to see loads

of fiber on the hoof.











There were spinning wheels and spindles and every fiber working tool you can imagine in hundreds of vendor booths, not to mention yarn. And yarn. And knitters. Knitters fondling yarn. Knitters buying yarn. Knitters knitting on the Big Sock.

Of course, I bought some yarn myself. I had been looking for some black merino to make my husband (who will only wear black) a sweater with and you'd be surprised how hard that was to find. There was so much hand-dyed, hand-painted, yarn calling out for attention in booth after booth.  We had to listen carefully for the soft baritone of the black. And after several hours of focused searching we finally found some lovely, resonant black merino from Oasis Farm Fiber Mill.

Once that was out of the way I was able to move on to the hand-dyed variegated breeds. I must honestly say I wandered around in a daze for quite a while, unable to make a choice since I couldn't just take everything home. I did not follow the good advice from Ravelers about making lists of projects to buy yarn for. I did set myself the limit that I would buy from vendors who don't have stores and whose yarn I could only get at an event like this. Luckily, as I was passing the Silver Moon Farms booth a hank of indigo dyed Merino threw herself in front of me and said "Take me home!" So I picked her up and starting looking around at her sisters. The single-color variegations were subtle and velvety, and the hand painted sock yarns (two colorways shown here) are downright inviting. The deeper I went into the booth, the more skeins of yarn leapt into my arms. They cried when I tried to put them back on their displays or threw themselves to the ground. It was Sunday afternoon and perhaps they were getting desperate. Eventually my husband came to rescue me from the assault, but in the process was solicited by a hank of Orchid merino. A color I can only describe more technically as FUCHSIA. This is the son-of-Johnny-Cash who will only wear black (see above.) Of course, Orchid came home with us too, snuggled up with her sisters Indigo, Eclipse and Dragonfly Wings.