What really got my attention was this beautiful red combed wool top. Is was so amazingly soft and luxurious and the color is very rich. I had trouble walking away from it, because I just enjoyed touching it so much. I also enjoyed speaking with the seller, because this wonderful roving came from her sheep. This is a mixture of wools from different types of sheep and also from mixed breed sheep. I spoke with her about the processing and verified that there was no harsh treatment involved. My skin is very sensitive and I often cannot wear wool. One of my theories is that the harsh processing roughs up the cuticle, leaving little barbs on the wool and that this is what troubles my skin so. To support my theory, "superwash" wool does not seem to bother me. Superwash has been treated with a fancy chemical (sodium hypochlorite -NaClO, bleach) to remove the entire cuticle and therefore the barbs. Anyway, this wool was minimally processed and feels superb! I bought a whole bunch to spin!
Surprisingly, I didn't buy much yarn. I mostly bought fiber to spin into yarn. The only yarn purchase I made was at the Blue Moon booth. I bought 4 skeins of Socks That Rock. One is destined to be a gift (and therefore not shown). The two pictured are destined to be pedicure socks for my sister, Annika, and my step mom, Valerie, respectively.
I mentioned that I drove down with Jennifer. The second car included Rachel, Emily, Kristin and Shibani. We had two adjoining hotel rooms for Friday night. After some shopping, we all went out to dinner and then returned to our rooms for a belated birthday cake for Shibani. We spent our time wandering the Market Place, knitting, spinning and chatting and then we returned to Seattle Saturday afternoon. Then, Rachel and I drove back down Sunday morning. We met up with her mom, Gretchen, and two friends. Rachel and I were signed up to take the "Three Wild Downs" class. This was a spinning class to introduce us to spinning the downy fur on three animals. Cashmere is the one most people know. This is down or undercoat from a goat. We also played with buffalo down, Yak down and Camel down. Yep, you can count, that makes 4 wild downs! She gave us the camel as a bonus! This class was taught by Judith MacKenzie-McCuin. She is a great teacher, incredibly knowledgeable, totally approachable and down to earth... and on and on. I agree with the Yarn Harlot: I would take a class on flushing the toilet from this woman. She is all that. And the content in this class was great. I learned that I can use the same techniques to spin dog hair. Yes, I have been collecting Denver's soft downy coat for some time now and have plans to spin it and knit something. I have way more confidence for how to do that now.
I would like to give a special thanks to my parents-in-law. Loren and Barb gave me the carrying case for my spinning wheel for Christmas. It was so great to have and made transport of my wheel effortless! Thank You!
I will recap some of the cool fibers I purchased in a future post.
1 comment:
I had a great time at Madrona. I did not buy ANY yarn there, as my stash is just way too big! I hope to meetcha next year. Cheers
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