Fiber Festival of New England

I went to wonderland this month — I went to the Fiber Festival of New England to buy local yarn for myself to make local clothing and further my dream of living a slow lifestyle.  Truth be told, I drove myself a little wonky searching for local Shetland yarn.  That is, yarn from Shetland sheep who live in New England.  I drove more than a few vendors cross eyed as well, asking about it.  Is that not a common request?  There must be other knitters out there who crave Shetland wool!

I failed to get pictures of the event because my camera died, but even if it hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have taken too many photos.  I was overwhelmed.  Not only were there hundreds of vendors with thousands of skeins and colors of wool, but everywhere I looked I saw knitters and people knitters love wearing gorgeous patterns on their shoulders.  There was noise and sheep and alpacas and rabbits and wool everywhere.  It was enough to give anyone sensory overload.

My mother fell victim as well.  We hurried from booth to booth and I gave Mom (Hi Mom!) a crash course in yarns.  By the end, she craved alpaca yarn but couldn’t make up her mind as to which color, let alone which vendor.  Luckily, I’d had Ravelry conversations with Karen from Hunter Hill Alpacas in Connecticut, so we knew where to go in the end.

We also met two of the only non fiber lovers in the entire festival.  Mom and I had just sat down to lunch when I asked the two women next to us if they knew of any vendors selling Shetland yarn.  It turns out that they are basket makers who had showed up to support their friend Wendy who makes beautiful baskets.  Whoops!  We got somewhere when one of the women pulled out a knitting pattern and asked for advice on knitting her first object.

And as we walked away, my mother said to me, “You’re so friendly!”  It’s true.  When I get around my people, I’m talkative.  There is nothing so good as large gatherings of hippies and fiber nerds for setting my gears turning, and this lovely group of knitters and artists did the job.  I’m up to my old tricks of dreaming and scheming, plotting how to best secure my own hyper local yarn.

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©2011 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where the yarn shown here is my mother’s lovely alpaca — being more photographic than the black-gray Shetland I bought.

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