I drool for wool
Wow. Yesterday I spent an afternoon at the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival in Howard County with my best friend J. Thanks go to my friend Kiki, who told me about it all, and that she still hasn't worked up all the yarn she bought at the last festival. I thought, I need to see this place then (perhaps when D sees our Visa bill, he may think twice about that need!). Click here for pictures someone else took, which are excellent. For a textiles freak, this is a break-the-bank occasion, and a veritable nirvana of yummy yarns and amazing craftsmanship.
After parking in the very crowded lot, J and I walked towards the fairgrounds. I expected to see maybe one pavilion with yarn merchants, and twenty pavilions with sheep and all the smells associated with them, like a more specific State Fair. This was more like Artscape for wool-lovers: booth after booth of yarn, penned-up rabbits and kid goats interspersed with cascading yarn bins, a few pavilions of sheep bleating and huddled under shearing blankets, amazing sweaters and shawls and capes, book stalls of every knitting pattern you ever wanted, everyone from babies to granola grannies, hipster knitters and grow-your-own farmers. I touched everything I could get my hands on. Pavilions that looked like they should house sheep or llamas had--surprise!--even more yarn.
Craftsmanship really sums up the whole focus of the festival: an appreciation for every stage of the hand-made process. One could buy hand-turned knitting needles (and crochet hooks), hand-made buttons and clasps for your finished products, hand-woven workbaskets to store everything. Many vendors sold hand-dyed wool roving that one could then spin into yarn with a hand-made spinning wheel, or one could get a sheep or an angora rabbit, or a doe-eyed alpaca, and do the whole process from scratch. In fact, there was a woman there (one of the photos shows her at work) who had an angora rabbit on her lap and a pile of its fur in her hand, and was spinning the fur on a spinning wheel into an angora yarn. The rabbit just sat there, calm as can be, like a pure white dustmop with eyes.
(I've always had trouble with angora. Every sweater I owned with it was very very hot--great--but every time I would pull it over my head some fibers get caught on my eyelashes somehow. Then I feel like something's pulling my eyelids down and stuck in my eye, like wearing too much mascara. Also, those sweaters shed something fierce.)
The roving fascinated me the most, as I don't remember ever seeing it before. It looks a lot like the consistency of cotton candy without the stickiness, and some of the roving's bright colors looked exactly like something you'd see getting devoured at a fair. You could buy large bags of it by the pound, swirls like a fluffy merengue, or my favorite, huge balls that looked like how yarn must look to a housecat--all out of proportion to the slim hanks of sock yarn that it would become after spinning.
As a city girl, my comforts have been plastic, slick 1960's design, cubes and sparse rectangles that I could then fill with my books. Or I would spend time with my favorite plastic incarnation, Smurf figurines. I savor the smell of vinyl like a sommelier and his favorite wine (if you didn't know before, I am a freak). Naturally, I am not a snob about acrylic yarns, as long as they are cool-looking and fit the project. Most wool I shied away from until a couple of years ago, when I realized there are many other types than Scratchy. You pay for the non-Scratchy type, just like you pay for paint colors that are unadulterated pigments--Old Holland in particular, which a 200 mL Cobalt Violet tube can go for upwards of 200 bucks. Ah, but it is SO worth it. It's like butter, and you don't have to use half the tube to mix a strong color. The cashmere of paint.
So am I a wool convert? I don't feel like I have to choose between natural and man-made, really, just like I don't feel like I have to be a knitter OR a crocheter, or feel like Episcopalians are any closer to the true worship of Jesus than Presbyterians, or any other Christian denomination under the sun. I am happy celebrating the true nature of each, enjoying the benefits of their vast differences, and remembering the underlying foundation that--dare I say it--knits so many disparate elements together.
After parking in the very crowded lot, J and I walked towards the fairgrounds. I expected to see maybe one pavilion with yarn merchants, and twenty pavilions with sheep and all the smells associated with them, like a more specific State Fair. This was more like Artscape for wool-lovers: booth after booth of yarn, penned-up rabbits and kid goats interspersed with cascading yarn bins, a few pavilions of sheep bleating and huddled under shearing blankets, amazing sweaters and shawls and capes, book stalls of every knitting pattern you ever wanted, everyone from babies to granola grannies, hipster knitters and grow-your-own farmers. I touched everything I could get my hands on. Pavilions that looked like they should house sheep or llamas had--surprise!--even more yarn.
Craftsmanship really sums up the whole focus of the festival: an appreciation for every stage of the hand-made process. One could buy hand-turned knitting needles (and crochet hooks), hand-made buttons and clasps for your finished products, hand-woven workbaskets to store everything. Many vendors sold hand-dyed wool roving that one could then spin into yarn with a hand-made spinning wheel, or one could get a sheep or an angora rabbit, or a doe-eyed alpaca, and do the whole process from scratch. In fact, there was a woman there (one of the photos shows her at work) who had an angora rabbit on her lap and a pile of its fur in her hand, and was spinning the fur on a spinning wheel into an angora yarn. The rabbit just sat there, calm as can be, like a pure white dustmop with eyes.
(I've always had trouble with angora. Every sweater I owned with it was very very hot--great--but every time I would pull it over my head some fibers get caught on my eyelashes somehow. Then I feel like something's pulling my eyelids down and stuck in my eye, like wearing too much mascara. Also, those sweaters shed something fierce.)
The roving fascinated me the most, as I don't remember ever seeing it before. It looks a lot like the consistency of cotton candy without the stickiness, and some of the roving's bright colors looked exactly like something you'd see getting devoured at a fair. You could buy large bags of it by the pound, swirls like a fluffy merengue, or my favorite, huge balls that looked like how yarn must look to a housecat--all out of proportion to the slim hanks of sock yarn that it would become after spinning.
As a city girl, my comforts have been plastic, slick 1960's design, cubes and sparse rectangles that I could then fill with my books. Or I would spend time with my favorite plastic incarnation, Smurf figurines. I savor the smell of vinyl like a sommelier and his favorite wine (if you didn't know before, I am a freak). Naturally, I am not a snob about acrylic yarns, as long as they are cool-looking and fit the project. Most wool I shied away from until a couple of years ago, when I realized there are many other types than Scratchy. You pay for the non-Scratchy type, just like you pay for paint colors that are unadulterated pigments--Old Holland in particular, which a 200 mL Cobalt Violet tube can go for upwards of 200 bucks. Ah, but it is SO worth it. It's like butter, and you don't have to use half the tube to mix a strong color. The cashmere of paint.
So am I a wool convert? I don't feel like I have to choose between natural and man-made, really, just like I don't feel like I have to be a knitter OR a crocheter, or feel like Episcopalians are any closer to the true worship of Jesus than Presbyterians, or any other Christian denomination under the sun. I am happy celebrating the true nature of each, enjoying the benefits of their vast differences, and remembering the underlying foundation that--dare I say it--knits so many disparate elements together.
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