Feasting!

Happy Thanksgiving! Saturday I cooked a turkey with all the fixins. Sunday my family helped me eat the feast. Today is Thanksgiving Day and I'm resting.

I feel very thankful for the abundance in my life, of family, friends, food and fiber. I should have taken a picture of what we ate yesterday, it was fabulous. Everyone was very grateful that I'd cooked the turkey the day before since the temperature in London was so high. But, instead of food I have pictures of fiber to share with you. Yes, finally, the stash aquisition pictures from FibreFest North.

First up, when we arrived on Friday night, Ted had swag bags for all of us that included his homemade chutney (very tasty Ted, had it with some fried ham the other night), some chocolates, a Philosopher's Wool video and my favourite thing, this skein of laceweight from Sheldridge Farms:

I don't even see it on their website, so it must be a new yarn. It's soft and lovely and I think I'll make a pretty little lace scarf from it.

Then at the Lindenhof Wool Mill, I had to bring home a souvenir from their store.

This is Romney sport in a natural brown and natural white. It's pretty soft and seems very durable. I think it will make a great hat. The blue bit at the bottom are boot liners made from felted wool. I was thinking they'd be good for Jim, since he works outside all winter long, but I may steal them from him for my boots.

Sunday morning was market day, and after getting a feel for their lace weight, you know I just had to go back to the Shelridge Farms booth.

This is an 8-ply superwash that I think will make awesome Selbuvotter mittens. I wanted to try traditional ones at least once, but I don't seem to have suitable yarns in the stash.

All morning I'd been walking around mumbling "I don't need more laceweight." Over and over. I had too because there were just so many beautiful yarns. But then I found this neat looking pattern from Alpaca with a Twist, called the Filigree Shawl. The picture on their website doesn't do it justice. It has this very intriguing construction technique that I will either find an interesting challenge or will drive me batty. So of course, I succumbed to the call of the laceweight.

This is Baruffa Cashwool. It's what I compared Ted's laceweight too. It's gorgeous, but I will be knitting these two skeins forever I think. Laceweight lingers in the stash.

After the sale, Ted drew for door prizes. It was crazy how we all hummed and hawed over our freebies after shopping ourselves silly. On my turn I was torn between more laceweight, the new Ethnic Knitting Discovery, or this:

It's 11 skiens of Philosopher's wool, in just my colors. There's something about this yarn that gives me a feeling of freedom to be entirely creative with it. I'm dreaming up a jacket where I can to just anything I want with these colors.

After everyone had a prize, there was still some things left on the table, so Ted had a second drawing and I got this:

I may just try two socks on one circular with this bad boy.

Isn't that an amazing haul? To top it off, Ted brought in his old magazines because he wanted to get rid of them. Friday night I picked a half dozen of the ones I liked best, and then told Ted I'd take what ever was left on Sunday morning. Well I've come home with about 20 magazines total and I've been having so much fun going through them bit by bit. I've found articles to read, patterns I'd like to try and a whole lot of nostalgia for those eighties styles.

This amazing abundance is another reason why I said Fiber Fest North felt like Christmas to me.