more about knitting & the Wool Fair

I’m home today, with a bad cold, This translates to lying on the couch, watching old Star Trek episodes (this one is about “the Traveler”), and knitting socks and stockings for my internet friend-list… I have made good progress:

Holly’s are all done and very happy Little Ducky socks they are, too. (sadly, when I packed them up, I couldn’t find the little finger puppets I knitted so long ago, only their knitted bag, so I’ll have to send those when I find them…)

Carina’s socks are all done, and they are lovely, soft Van Helsing Candleflame Socks…in a colour like candle flame dying at midnight to where you can barely see it…

Minbutterfly’s socks are all done and they are butterfly blue Trailing Vine socks

Snarkysneak has one whole sock done and hers are such soft stockings with DNA cables,

Karen has one sock done and hers are very cute and perfect Peaceful Feelings Yoga socks,

Tethy’s socks are the ones I’m beginning on today, and hers are in a hand painted yarn called Coral Bells. I think I’ll use the lace pattern called Elfin, because by the time I finish, she’ll be in Erin, the land of the fairies….

For Daniel’s chapel socks, I decided to start again with a softer yarn, which I found at the Sheep & Wool Fair last weekend,

Julie will have some dark teal socks that I think will have a vine like deadly nightshade (not sure – this design subject to change right up until actually started),

And Nathalie will have black silk stockings to wear with her professorial boots, if I can find the yarn I’m looking for, If I don’t find the yarn I’m looking for, then I’ll make her a pair of black house slippers (heavy socks to wear without shoes around the Dungeons) instead…

Nadine’s socks are from a special yarn bright with New England leaf colours: deep crimson, orange, yellow, and green…and will have a maple leaf on them in a very clever pattern….

I really love them all. It’s so much fun when they’re finished.

Given all the yarn that I picked up at the Sheep & Wool fair, I think I can now join the “Knit from Your Stash” crowd. Did I tell you about it all?

Well, first, there was the buffalo and some “bunny yarn” from Zellinger’s Wool Co

Then, one of my favorites, A Touch of Twist, where I got some silk in natural colours and some lace-weight soy silk in dyed colours from a company called Conjoined Creations…

French Hill Farm, in Maine had some wonderful hand-dyed sock yarn and I scored two skeins, one pink and one deep blues and burgundy... This yarn is very similar to Socks that Rock Yarn on the west coast. It may be the same base yarn. But French Hill dyes it themselves and someone there has a wonderful eye for bright and subtle colour changes. They didn’t have a website but they do have email contact: frenchill@TDS.net

Ball and Skein had some sock yarn that was 50/50 silk and wool for $15 a skein. I got a deep midnight blue. We had a nice talk and she showed me some roving she got in silk that she will spin her magic with….

I got a nice skein of dark teal merino/mohair blend called “pulled taffy”, from Decadent Fibers. They had a wall of wools, but somehow, not much appealed to me. They seemed to be out of the most enticing colours that I had craved last year…

Spirit Trail has beautiful yarns, many with silk, and they are starting a sock yarn club, where you pay a set price and they mail you yarn and patterns throughout the year. But they are pretty expensive (no discounts at the fair) so I only bought a little half skein of purple dyed silk that had been damaged and so was discounted. I can wash it gently and knit some thing lovely and small from it…

The Green Mountain Spinnery – whenever I’ve been to their website, I feel uninspired by their yarns. But whenever I see their yarns in person, in yarn stores or at fairs, I am amazed by how beautiful and perfect they are and what gorgeous, unusual colours they’ve dyed them! Maybe the colours and the softness just don’t show up right on the monitor. I bought some sock yarn from them in a colour they call ‘antique bronze’. It is a gold with copper burnishing – hard to describe.

With my last $20, I bought a set of hand-made rosewood sock needles from Goldings. They had the most incredible needles and shuttles and spindles and a weaving loom that had sheep carved into it. But they were the people who mocked me when I asked if their needles were historically accurate.

I think the time has come to say goodbye for now. I want to make a pizza!