Fibres West, part 1: the yarn

While I did manage to go to Fibres West last weekend, for some reason it took me a while to get around to writing about it. This will be a two-part post, because I haven't taken pictures of the fiber yet.

What I typically do at events like this is walk around for a bit--make the rounds, get an idea of what's out there. Then I start buying things. I had brought a bag, a limited amount of cash, and a list. While I did stick to the list (sort of), I did buy a few unplanned things. For example, it was mostly fiber on my list, not yarn. I think the only yarn-thing on there was the vague "solid-coloured sock yarn." Then I went to Fun Knits, which had everything on sale, and saw this:


It was so pretty. I knit a shawl with Kauni last summer, using the colourway that goes from red to darker red. It's good shawl yarn, and the skeins are fairly generous in size. So I bought a skein of Kauni, unplanned. I don't know what shawl it's going to be yet. I have a few things in my queue on Ravelry. It'd be awesome for the "Heere Be Dragones" shawl, but I don't think it's enough yarn, and I think I want that one to be a single colour. It might end up as another Estonian lace shawl. We'll see.

Fun Knits also had sock yarn. I like to try new brands of sock yarn, so I bought this. It's solid in colour, and it's a nice shade of teal. It's actually a little greener in hue than the picture makes it out to be.

Later, on another walk-through with some friends who had just gotten there, I noticed something that I had missed my first time through the Fun Knits booth. I wound it up in balls at the Guild's table, so you can't see how it looked in a hank (but it was pretty). This is Hacho, by Mirasol yarns. It's wool, it's DK-ish weight, and I loved the colours, even though I'm not usually a fan of variegated.

It being so pretty and all, I just couldn't resist casting on, so it became this:

That's right. I knit a Multnomah in about a week. It's good bus knitting. Because of the yarn weight, I did fewer repeats than the pattern specified, which is good, because I nearly ran out of yarn while casting off and had to take out my bind-off and do one that used less yarn.

Other cool things about Fibres West: I got to watch someone making bobbin lace. Gorgeous. Amazing. Apparently there are two basic movements in bobbin lace, not unlike knitting. She said the pattern she was working on was easy, but then I asked her how long she'd been doing this. "Fifteen years," she said. It's something I'd love to learn but I don't have time for now.

I drooled over a spinning wheel with a lace attachment--it was cheaper than you'd expect, but still out of my price range. Then I drooled over a Knitter's Loom. Still out of my price range. I looked at some hand-carved Turkish spindles, the small, light-weight kind. More than I wanted to spend for a single spindle that day. I love my Turkish spindle, but it is heavier than I'd prefer sometimes.

Then I drifted over to Knitopia to look at their spindles. And with that, I'll stop until I have more pictures.