Adventures in fiberland

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Paulette and I have spent quite a few weekends at county fairgrounds. That might seem strange for a couple of city girls, but, that is where antique auctions are often held. You can count on fair food being available and sold by eager Boy Scout troops. But, this time, we were heading to the fairgrounds for a Market Day, sponsored by the Black Swamp Spinner's Guild of Bowling Green, Ohio. I'm relieved to tell you we didn't encounter any black swamp. However, we didn't see any fiber animals either. No sheep, alpaca, angora goats, rabbits were there as this was purely a market to purchase fleece, roving and yarn. YARN! Just what we need!

We brought our wheels, safely fastened in seat belts in the back of the car, and we were eager to settle in among  spinners in order to learn more about the craft.  Sigh. There was no spinning going on. Just shopping. SHOPPING! Okay, then. We took our wheels back to the car and got into shopping mode, something we know a thing or two about. We found wheels for sale and even discovered vendors that knew all about our wheels. So, back to the car we went to fetch our wheels for tuneups. Paulette got a new drive wheel band for hers and learned how to pack and unpack the wheel, stop the weird clicking sound on her brand new Kromski Sonata, and how to oil the wheel. I learned how to adjust a few parts on my Majacraft Susie Pro and was told not to worry about the groove with paint coming off on the back side of my wheel. I'm still not too sure about that, tho.

We looked at quite a few raw fleeces and loved the barn smell and the lanolin feel.

After making the full circuit of vendors, we each purchased roving that was dyed and ready to spin. It took some time to figure out how much roving would produce a scarf or two, but the vendors were very willing to share information with two eager newbies. We also discovered that cash or checks were welcome, but not plastic. Oh oh.  

We hope we made good selections, it was pretty hard to figure it out without Bonnie with us. In fact, we didn't think it was fair of her to move to Michigan just when she was in the process of teaching us all about the spinning world.

We have no idea what these are for, but liked the wine corks on the ends. Maybe these are weaving tools? In the far left corner of the photo you can see the niddy noddys. Paulette bought a maple one and the carver was there to explain how to wind yarn on it.

 Since we know all about how to buy processed yarn, we did purchase yet more sock yarn. I loved the sign and yes, yarn does make us happy!