I had an absolutely wonderful weekend! There's so much to tell that I won't be able to do it all today, so you'll be getting more of the story this week.
For starters, here's some of what I bought while I was there:
First up is the bone lucet shown above. Wow! a lucet that's nice. And it's made of bone. The distributer is Lacis, and the place I bought it is Carolina Homespun, which has always been one of my favorite places to shop at the festival.
For those of you who don't know, a lucet is a device used to make cord. It's essentially a two pronged knitting frame, similar in effect to a knitting nobby or a spool knitter to make knitted cord. You can see a spool knitter here, but you have to scroll down. With a spool knitter, the tension is determined by the spool, by how far away the nails are. With a lucet, you pull each stitch up snug, so it produces a much firmer cord.
The cords are useful as drawstrings or laces, and a lucet is a handy thing to have around. One of it's big advantages is that it can fit in a pocket, along with a small ball of yarn that can make many yards of cord. It's a very handy walk-around project, something to take with you to fill idle moments while producing something useful at the same time.
Susan's Fiber Shop had a complete lucet kit with a plastic lucet for sale at the festival, and I should have grabbed it while I had the chance. I'm intrigued by the idea of the bobbins, especially since they keep the yarn from sliding off the fork. The same lucet with bobbin is now available in wood, so don't worry about me calling it plastic.
Susan's is my favorite shop at the festival. She always has something new, and she always has the greatest stuff, and she spends most of the weekend while she's there teaching. There's usually a small group of people standing around blocking things up and watching here demonstrate stuff. Just ask her how to spin, and you'll find yourself at a wheel with a handful of wool before you know it. Or ask her how the combs work and she'll show you.
Anyway, in the next photo, the two big batches of fiber at the top are four ounces each of wool/tussah (80%/20%) from Bullen's Woolens. They're hand dyed, and I'm thinking about making a single of each color and plying them for a combination of purple/blue yarn. I think it's going to work well.
Under the wool/tussah, is some 100% silk yarn that I bought from Mangham Manor, although it was made by Oasis Yarn. It's called Seduction on the label, and all you have to do is touch it to understand why they named it that. There's a whole 100 grams there, and I'm not prepared to say at the moment what I plan to do with it.
More festival tomorrow.
Today is the first post of the brand new Craft Corps News blog. I've just discovered it (thank you, Vicki Howell!) and haven't really had a chance to explore it, but it looks like it may be fun. Enjoy!
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Doctor Who has been having adventures with Rose all day on the SciFi Channel today.
Chuck and Heroes are over for the season, but there's a brand new, two hour episode of Medium on tonight.
More news tomorrow! Have fun 'till then!
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Addition:
My sister sent me an email. It said:
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