Two years ago in September I took a drop-spindle class and finally “got” spinning.  As the days grew cold and grey, and the leaves began to change, I bought my first Golding Ringspindle and some Louet light Coopworth roving and got to work.  After class I sat by the Merrimac River to practice with a spindle, some wool,  and a pumpkin-flavored coffee.  Ever since, autumn puts me in a spinning mood like no other time of year. 

Despite a cupboard full of roving and a dresser top covered in spindles, my thoughts this week have turned to scouting the internet for all things spinning.  I looked in on the usual retail websites for something new and fun to buy, but everything there was like the stash I have sitting around, unused, as it is.  It was then I turned to indie suppliers. Ravelry has been my best source of information and my fellow Ravelers have been my biggest enablers! I checked in on the Spindle Eye Candy group this week and, well, one thing led to another.  New discoveries have turned into new obsessions.  Suppliers I never heard of until last Friday are now the object of some serious internet stalking on my part. This in turn has led to my bank account suffering a little bit, but I’m sure I’ll be able to forgive myself once I start playing with my new tools.

Since I have some time to kill before my packages start to arrive, and stalking my mail carrier will do no good, I’ll vent some steam by telling you about my new fibery purchases. Because I know you can all relate.  I’m sure some of you actually do stalk your mail carriers.  I’m not ruling that out personally in the future.

I made three online purchases last week, and out of those two were companies I had never heard of.  The package I’m most looking forward to is from Bristlecone’s Artisan Heirlooms.  I was totally unaware of the beauty of their spindles, glindles, and twindles, but now they’re all I can think about–and apparently they go fast.  Glindles, as I found out on Friday, are GLass-topped supported spindles.  Twindles are topped with Austrain crystal (they’re TWinkly spindles). They’re basically Russian support spindles with fancy tips. I first spotted their work on Ravelry’s Spindle Eye Candy group.  Intrigued, I checked to see if there was a group devoted to these beautiful objects. There is. Now I’m like a little kid with a sugar high waiting for my twindle to come in the mail.  I have to admit that until recently I had zero interest in learing to spin on a support spindle.  Mike, aka the Spanish Peacock changed that with his gorgeous Tibetan spindles (also very hard to get a hold of).  Until my twindle comes I’ll hop onto YouTube for some helpful support-spindling videos. I wanna learn how to flick it!

Spindles need fiber, right? I feel a brand new spindle deserves brand new fiber. A lot of Ravelers were talking about a woman named Ginny and her company Fat Cat Knits. As with Bristlecone, it was love at first site. Again, I blame Ravelry. How could I resist the before and after photos? Her colors are amazing, and the finished spun yarns are absolutely breathtaking.  Fat Cat Knits offer their colorways in a variety of fibers, including superwash. I picked some Bluefaced Leicester in two colorways: Curry, a blend of deep yellows, gold and light greens, and Bugaloo, a cream, brown and turquoise mix.  Fiber? Check. Support spindle? Check.  Now all I have to do is learn how to use it.

During my fiber frenzy (hey-what a great name for a fiber festival! I wonder if anyone’s using it) I browsed one of my favorite online shops, Blue Moon Fiber Arts.   My problem is this: when I can’t decide on one color, I end up buying two.  This time I bought two skeins of lightweight Socks That Rock yarn from their new seasonal line.  I chose Blackbird, a black and grey yarn with hints of orange, and Currier And Ives, a festive holiday blend. So now I’ve got Halloween and Christmas covered, I may use Blackbird to finally knit the Jaywalker socks that have been around for years.  I’m saving Currier and Ives for something out of Cookie A.’s Sock Knit Love book.

So there you have it, my impulse shopping confession.  I apologize for the pictureless blog post. 🙂

Yesterday the Newburyport Spinners held the 7th annual Fiber Revival, a small-scale one-day fiber festival held on the beautiful grounds of the Spencer-Pierce-Little Farm in Newbury, MA.  The weather cooperated; it was sunny and a bit cooler for a change, a perfect day for an outdoor gathering. I’ve been looking forward to this event for months and not even my sister bailing on me at the last minute could dampen my enthusiasm.  My plan was to bring beach chairs so we could sit and knit together, which is a huge element of the day.  Friday night my sister informed me that she would rather go to the mall instead so she could pounce on the Yankee Candle Company for more Boney Bunch collectibles before they sell out.  For those of you not familiar with the Boney Bunch, they’re an annual series of creepy cute candle holders featuring skeletons in Victorian costume.  Each year they sell out quickly and brand new items pop up on Ebay at inflated prices literally as soon as Yankee Candle puts them out.  Swayed by the lure of buying candles during the Massachusetts tax-free weekend, she headed out to catch the bus instead of a ride with me.  Whatevs.

Suddenly single, I nixed my plan of bringing a beach chair and a WIP.  Once I got to the festival I regretted my decision.  The farm’s setting is gorgeous and there are so many huge, shady maple trees there was plenty of room for everyone to relax with their craft.  I arrived at ten in the morning. The festival started an hour earlier and there were already dozens of spinners, knitters and crocheters taking advantage of the museum’s beautiful grounds.  Look at all these spinners in front of that beautiful 305-year-old farmhouse!

With no project in hand there was only one thing to do–shop! I made a beeline over to the Spunky Eclectic booth, eager to get my hands on some of her hand-dyed spinning fiber.  I’ve placed a couple of orders on her online shop but sadly, a trip to Maine is not in my foreseeable future (not that there’s anything wrong with Maine). There’s nothing like being able to shop in person, especially when being able to see accurate colors is key. Amy King had tons of gorgeous fiber and yarn, as well as some nifty project bags and a variety of spinning wheels.  I didn’t see any copies of her book Spin Control on hand, and that surprised me.  That book helped me to understand my wheel a lot better, and it’s a great primer. Despite being surrounded by spunky goodness, what did I put my hands on first? A project bag.  Because I am a Bag Ho. I’m obsessed with bags/totes/zippered pouches, you name it. Seriously, it’s a real problem. I need help. I chose a spindle bag in a beautiful blue and mustard kimono print. This was quickly followed by a cute little zippered pouch with a chicken-and-egg print.  Once I got around to the yarn and fiber I had a hard time choosing what to get. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t go overboard with the spending (ha!) so I finally decided on a 4-ounce braid of BFL in a colorway called Sex On The Beach.  The name made me giggle–not because I’m an immature idiot, though opinions on that may vary–but because it reminded me of Sex On The Beach shooters I used to drink when I was in college.  I spent several minutes handling the variety of Greensleeves spindles Amy had for sale and seriously debated whether I really needed another spindle.  I’ve never seen Greensleeves in person and the woodworking and colors were beautiful.  I was torn between a large purpleheart and a smaller spindle with a checkerboard red and natural pattern on the whorl.  I put them both down and left the booth “only” $50 poorer and congratulated myself on my remarkable self-restraint.  More on that later.

In addition to Spunky Eclectic I was also looking forward to visiting The Woolen Rabbit shop from New Hampshire.  She had a lovely selection of sock yarns but what caught my attention were the big 8-ounce bags of natural undyed spinning fiber.  Let me tell you, this stuff is like buttah! There were two colors, white and black.  I hugged a bag of white fiber for five minutes before falling in love with the black.  I’ve never spun natural black fiber before and it beckoned to me.  The fiber is a blend of Romney wool and alpaca, and the 8-ounce bag was $15.  You know I grabbed one at that price.  Not only was it twice the amount of fiber than a standard braid or bag sold for spinning, it also contained luxurious alpaca.  I’m looking forward to getting started on it and I am already envisioning some sort of elegant winter hat.  Or a cowl.  It’s hard to say, since stitch details will be hard to see.  In the meantime I’m just going to put the bag under my head when I sleep and use it as a pillow. 😉

Shopping can only get you so far.  I was still insanely jealous of everyone who was spinning and knitting,  Only one vendor had knitting needles for sale but in a rare moment of retail self-control I decided I truly didn’t need to buy any more yarn. *ducks flying knitting needles* I wandered the grounds instead, which are beautiful and serene and should be visited by anyone able to make the trip to the Merrimac Valley.  The fields go on forever, and there are lots of animals to visit who live on the farm in comfortable retirement, all MSPCA rescues.  For the day of the festival Historic New England included free house tours (of the first floor only) with the price of admission to the grounds. I guess the house tour is normally a separate charge? Because we paid the full HNE $6 admission fee in order to enter the site.  Maybe they limited the tour due to the higher number of people normally on the site at any one time for the entire day.

There were a lot of spinning wheels for sale and for demonstration and I had a great time trying some of them.  Not a lot of LYS’s have wheels in stock so Fiber Revival is a great opportunity to try out spinning and weaving equipment. I had an hour to kill for the next tour and it was too early for lunch, so I had a Fresca (so refreshing!) and decided I needed another spin around the vendor booths. This brings me to Spunky Eclectic, Round 2.  I headed back to her booth lured by the call of the Greensleeves.  This time it really wasn’t that hard to talk myself into buying one.  The purpleheart was large and had a heavy whorl and shaft. I like smaller spindles because I try to spin as fine as possible for sock/sport/worsted weight yarn. So the checkerboard spindle it was.  This model is the Tom Foolery, and the checkerboard work is like a court jester’s costume.  The whorl is made out of pink ivory and pommel and the shaft is made out of bubinga.  The label didn’t list the weight but Amy held it and figured it was between 1-1.5 ounces. I bought a small 3-ounce bag of cotton in a gorgeous cinnamon color even though I don’t have a tahkli.  By then I didn’t want to go looking for one so I’ll put cotton-spinning on the back burner for now. But this little bag of cinnamon-colored cotton was too cute to pass up.

As I left with my new spindle–which brings my collection to ten by the way–I realized the irony of what I had just done.  Earlier that day I chided my sister for going out and buying more Yankee Candle collectibles because she already had a large collection of them. They were things that looked basically the same and did the exact same thing, and she was going out to buy more…Yeah.

This year there was an added event taking place.  Several teams of men in vintage 19th-century uniforms played a triple-header baseball game, 1861 rules (no mitts. Ouch!) Go Ipswich Brewers! Speaking of Ipswich Brewers, they had a mobile beer truck at the event. Because nothing goes better than knitting and drinking, am I right?! I don’t know how many people imbibed or how much they imbibed but I didn’t see any beer-related incidents that I know of.  Fiber enthusiasts are a responsible crowd.  I was tempted but man, one beer makes me incredibly sleepy and I was driving.  It’s really sad.

All in all Fiber Festival was fantastic. I had a great time, picked up some nice things, and met a lot of nice people, including a woman from Nova Scotia.  Let’s see…There was

Amy King, aka Spunky Eclectic. I don’t know what I’m more jealous of, the fact that she plays with yarn for a living or her awesome tatts!

cute, curious, smiling alpacas!

this little guy, my new friend for the day. His name is Appleton. Don’t you just love that? He was surrendered to the MSPCA while still being bottle-fed and is four-months old now.  He was the star of the show, led around on a long leash but was allowed to roam wherever he wanted.  He jumped up into this wheelbarrow and nuzzled my hand.

There were chickens…

…and chickens.

I ended the day with a stop at the Tendercrop Farm store down the road.  I wanted to make a veggie stir fry for dinner. I promised myself I’d keep it healthy until I saw the Biggest Bag Of Tortilla Chips in the world.  It was like they emptied two bags of those round tortilla chips and packaged them into one giant one.  Next to the giant bags on the shelf was this:

I think we all know what I had for dinner last night.