Saturday, May 23, 2009

Great Lakes Fiber Show

After working almost 14 hours yesterday, I got up bright and early this morning to meet up with Barb and Merida to head off to Wooster, Ohio for the Great Lakes Fiber Show. This is an annual event occurring on Memorial Day weekend and we look forward to it after a long winter.

We took Merida's new car a Honda Fit and had been warned that we were only allowed to eat/drink non-staining things in her new baby. In fact we were her first non-family passengers. It was a smooth 2 hour trip and a dry run for our trip IwannaKnit ReTreat in 2 weeks. The car was comfortable, our only concern at this point will be getting 3 knitting machines, accessories and yarn, luggage for 3 people and a cooler in the car for the 4 hour drive.

We hit the festival a little after 10 and planned our attack on the vendors. Merida wanted her first stop to be Noah's Landing as Susan tends to have interesting Habu yarns on clearance from time to time and Merida loves their yarns. Me, I just needed to find some acid green yarn from Fleece Artist, similar to what I used for Barb's stole. My sister loved the scarf I made for her daughter from the leftovers and has indicated that she wants one for herself. We wandered through the 4 buildings running into numerous friends and exchanging many hugs.

I am always amazed by the memory of some of the vendors. Catherine at Knitting Notions commented that I looked so much better than the last time she had seen me at Stitches East last fall, that I had seemed down and not feeling well. Merida reminded me that I had gone to Baltimore with a serious prescription of antibiotics and had slept through most of the drive as I had been recovering from a respiratory infection and high fever the day before. I had forgotten that I was even sick on that trip. Jim from Aunt Aggie's greeted me by name as we arrived. I only see most of these vendors 2 -3 times per year and they remember little things. It's just amazing.

I think we managed to look at almost everything before starting to buy. I am admittedly on a yarn/fiber diet with my change in employment. Being an architect brought home much larger paychecks than a landscape foreman/production manager. So the budget is different and Lord knows that I am not hurting for yarn or fiber to work with. So I made more thoughtful purchases. I couldn't find the yarn for Robin and so bought dye and undyed base yarn and will dye it myself. I love an excuse to play with yarn and color, so this really breaks my heart. Several braids of seasilk/silk and seasilk/wool roving also made the trip home too. All three of us bought three pound bags of undyed/neutral NZ wool for use in class samples at Machine Camp, 3 pounds for $10. What a great deal.

We rounded out the day with a trip to Lehman's Hardware in Kidron. A truly fascinating place to wander through. And after a quick stop across the street for ice cream and we were headed home. We were all tired but happy, it was a good trip.