the yarn addiction (with a side of fabric)

I've been adding to the yarn stash recently...my friend Holly gave me a slap on the hand yesterday after guild meeting when I confessed to having bought a few skeins of Noro off of one of the other guild members. The yarn has pretty colours, is a wool-silk blend, and there were three skeins for $10 total. Kind of hard to resist. Although I should have, given that I'd bought a dress length of fabric yesterday as well (on sale, sort of a girly steampunk print, planning to make it up for a wedding in August).

We're smack-dab in the middle of organizing Yarn Harvest 2012 (by we, I mean Jenny, the guild PR person, and myself). I have a feeling I'm going to be sick of yarn by the end of the summer. We're starting our in-store visits next week, and I think it's going to be good, but I won't want yarn anymore after this. Which, naturally, will be a good thing, since I should probably knit the stash down a bit.

My stash isn't that bad, especially compared to other people, but I have to take into account what's good and bad for myself. Fortunately, J. doesn't mind the yarn infestation, and the books are just as much his addiction as mine (I'm just more likely to buy more books than he is). His board game addiction isn't a problem. I like that he has his own interests and hobbies. But I do feel a bit guilty about the yarn and fabric stashes. Time to work on decreasing them, I think. 

Sadly, I don't have pictures of these, because the camera's out of batteries right now, but I got some fun fiber yesterday during Yarn Harvest.

My team (Team Grand Tour) made it to seven stores. My budget being limited, I was only able to purchase a few things. At Black Sheep I got some hemp yarn. I'm excited about this. I haven't knit with hemp in a while and I like its texture. It is cinnamon-coloured. Then, when we went to Sweet Georgia (it was like walking into a rainbow!), I got 50 grams of Wensleydale roving in blue and green. I had to have it as soon as I saw the word "Wensleydale" on the tag. It reminded me of Wallace and Gromit. And then, at our next-to-last stop, Knitopia, I picked up about 125 grams of BFL (Blue-Faced Leicester) roving in cherry red with hints of white and black.

And with that final purchase, that was my budget for the day. I didn't really want to spend a lot--I was more interested in seeing what the shops had, since I don't usually travel very far afield to buy fiber. I would have liked to buy something at Penelope Fiber, because she has a fantastic selection of roving, but that'll just have to wait for the next time I get out to White Rock. And last time I went to her shop, I bought some merino that I haven't finished pre-drafting yet (I'm turning into a pre-drafting maniac---it makes spinning a lot easier). Turns out a couple hundred grams is actually a pretty good-sized amount of wool.

So in the meantime, I've started the BFL roving on my spinning wheel, and the Wensleydale roving on my top-whorl spindle. The Wensleydale is, of course, a longwool and has a decent amount of crimp in it. It spins up very easily, and my goal for this is to ply it so it will self-stripe fairly well.

And with that, I'm off to bed. I'm tired.