Fiber Festing

Well so far this weekend I have spent quite a bit of time moving, festing, feasting, and ravelring. I'll save details on the feasting and moving for later (I'm hoping to finish moving later this afternoon and will take "after" photos).

After my last post I spend several hours uploading all my FO into ravelry and then playing around a bit looking at other people's projects. I did get a few ideas for using the alpaca I purchased in Maine and at least started thinking about another project for S.

Friday was spent primarily festing however.



This was my first visit to the Santa Monica Fiber Fest and it was about what I expected. The event was on the smallish size and since it was focused on all fiber arts, knitting related items were only minimally represented. Now I don't want to come off negative here... what was there was nice... but it is what it is -- a relatively small festival.



But do you know what the best part was?



This guy brought 3 of his English Angora rabbits with him and plucked and spun yarn right there in front of us. I suppose I'm easily entertained but I found this simply fascinating! The bunnies were very cute and he made it all look so easy.



Other cute fiber-bearers were also present including these three alpaca and ...



some cute chinchilla. The people who brought the chinchilla said that one of their little ones had delivered babies that morning.

I think I like that actual connection between the animal and fiber product. Perhaps I always have but reading the Omnivore's Dilemma has definitely been driving that message home for me.

So did I buy anything at the fest? Relatively little. I did however begin my spinning quest in earnest with the purchase of this 50% BFL, 50% Alpaca blend (BlissFul) from Knitifacts.



The owner Laura was very helpful and supportive and helped me to pick something out that I might actually have success spinnning into a shawl or stole at some point in the future.

And moving closer to that goal, I have signed up for the drop spinning class at A Mano Yarns this week. S and I drove by the store after the fest so I'd know where it was and went in to take a look around.



I decided to go ahead and buy a starter kit before class. We'll see if I can learn anything on my own before class tuesday. Wish me luck!