Back Home With Just a Few Additions to the Stash!

Maryland was amazing and wonderful as usual. The weather could not have been better and the sheep were just about the cutest things ever. There was quite a bit of stash enhancement on my part and the color of the day was apparently a raspberry pink (as you'll see below). Above you can see the shawl pin I got from Moving Mud, a kingwood orifice hook I got from The Woodchuck and a little polymer clay sheep pin that I got from a booth whose name I don't remember. This is a pound of Merino/Yak top that I got from Toni at The Fold. We spun up some of this blend in grey in the class (I'll show what we learned in the class in another blog entry or two - it was great!). Yak is an amazingly soft and beautiful fiber and we all agreed in the class that Yak pillow cases wouldn't be a bad idea. It's also a much better price than Cashmere and Bison and some of the other ubersoft fibers (around $5-6 an ounce for pure yak).

I got these from Ohio Valley Natural Fibers. From left to right, they are a pound of white merino top, a pound of ice blue merino top, and a pound of raspberry merino roving. Either the blue or the white or both will be used to practice and experiment with some of the techniques we learned in class. Did I mention the class was amazing?
This is a pound and a half of batts from Spinner's Hill. I got the fiber for the Vine Lace Cardi from Spinner's Hill two years ago at MDS&W. As you can see, raspberry was on my mind as I shopped.

This is most of the yarn I got. There is one skein that's for a stealth project that isn't pictured. From the top, two skeins of raspberry Silk and Ivory (silk and merino - yum) from Tess Yarns, sock yarn from Tess Yarns, and Mountain Colors Bearfoot in Moose Creek - (it's not actually black, it has black, browns, plums and other wonderful colors in it, it just doesn't photograph well.)
This is 4 ounces of a dark raspberry and blue Border Leiscester roving from a youth program. I don't have any definite plans for this, I just thought it was pretty.
I did find Kid Hollow Farm this year and I got 8 ounces of Costa Rica roving (Border Leiscester lamb's wool and mohair). I also enabled my mother a bit at this booth.

Finally, in addition to the shopping, Maryland is great for meeting people. Thanks to all of you who said hello, it was great putting faces to some of the commenters as well as knowing who's lurking out there! I did get to finally meet Carrie, who has been reading and commenting on my blog for over a year now. This was her first MDS&W and she made me these adorable Pink Lemon stitch markers! She sells them at her Etsy store, here - go check them out! I hope everyone who went to the show had a great time and was able to get all their purchases into the car when they left. Tomorrow I'll show you some of what happened in the class!