Snail Spirals

Last weekend, Emma and I went to the Columbia Gorge Fiber Festival with some friends. This was a FANTASTIC weekend, and not just because of the fiber festival. The weather was lovely, gorgeous and sunny, the flowers were blooming, and the company was wonderful. The fact that there was a fiber festival to attend was the icing on the cake, although that part was a bit dangerous.



My haul.  I almost wasn't going to post this picture online, because...well, there's just so much.  But it's all wonderful fiber, and will give me and Emma many, many hours of spinning pleasure.  See, some of that is Emma's, so it's really not as bad as it looks.  Right?  Of course there's a lot of fiber, I was buying for two!

I'm too tired right now to list everything out properly, but there's alpaca, alpaca/silk, alpaca/merino, polwarth/silk, shetland/merino, shetland/corriedale, blue-faced leicester, merino/bamboo, superfine merino, and a pack of angelina that Emma picked out to blend with merino we already have at home.  Gorgeous stuff, all of it.

The sharp-eyed among you may notice that there are {cough} three spindles on the table.  Ummm, yeah.  I can't resist.  But only two are for me! 



Mine are the Jenkins Kuchulu (olivewood, 8 grams) on the left and the Spindlewood Square Mini Featherweight (flamewood, 15 grams) in the center.  Those were the only spindles I was going to get, but then on Sunday when we went back to the market, Emma somehow talked me into getting her a Jenkins Turkish Delight (beeswing narra, 27 grams), even though she much prefers to spin on a wheel.  It wasn't really that hard to talk me into it- everyone (everyone!) needs a Jenkins spindle of one size or another.

Plus, I have a devious plot to appropriate her spindle for myself when she remembers that she prefers to spin on her wheel.

So here's a group shot of all my lovely spindles.  The family is growing!



Left to right:

8g (0.28 oz) Jenkins Woodworking, Kuchulu, olivewood arms, maple shaft
11 g (0.38 oz) Jenkins Woodworking, Kuchulu, verawood arms, walnut shaft
27g (0.95 oz) Jenkins Woodworking, Turkish Delight, beeswing narra arms, maple shaft
20g (0.7 oz) Spindlewood Co. Square Standard, birdseye maple whorl and shaft
21g (0.75 oz) Spindlewood Co., Square Mini, cocobolo whorl, ebony shaft
15g (0.5 oz) Spindlewood Co. Square Mini Featherweight, flamewood whorl and shaft
8 g (0.28 oz) Cascade Spindle Co., Tiger, zebrawood whorl, mahogany shaft

On Saturday night, I started spinning one of the shetland/merino batts I got from Sporfarm, and it is wonderful stuff.  I initially only got one package of this fiber, but I liked it so much I made Anne go back to the market on Sunday so I could get a couple (OK, six) more.  And just a few other things.  Oops.



After we cleaned out the market finished shopping, we went up the valley to the Blossom Craft Show in Odell, which was another of the Hood River County Blossom Fest weekend events.  It was way bigger than Anne and I were expecting, full of wonderful high-quality crafts made by local artisans.  Lots of woodworking, jewelry, quilts, weaving, ceramics, glass, and other fun things to look at. 

My eye was immediately caught by this bowl, in the first booth we saw as we walked in the door.  It kept rattling around in my brain and poking at me as we went through the whole fair, and ultimately it had to come home with me.  It's turned by a man who lives in Parkdale, out of bigleaf maple, and it has an amazingly chatoyant grain pattern.



For now it's on the table next to My Chair...loveliness holding loveliness.