Inquisitive Felines and Fibers

Yesterday I worked at a friend’s booth at Stitches East in the Expo Center located in Hartford, CT. It was a long, busy, colorful day spent talking with some wonderful people and admiring a lot of truly beautiful knitted and crocheted items. I swear if I had behaved in the same manner anywhere else I’d have been arrested, but all of these lovely people just took it in stride when I popped on my glasses and headed for them looking at their shoulders more often than their faces. I came home with several pattern and yarn names to add to my wish lists and thoroughly enjoyed the adventure.

I did make an interesting discovery yesterday. As I walked through the Convention Center and looked at all of the lovely yarns and admired the amazing colors I discovered that I really wasn’t interested in buying someone else’s work, but that I really wanted to create my own yarns to knit, crochet, and weave. It wasn’t a quick revelation at all. I think it was actually on the way home, empty-handed, but not wildly unhappy about it that it occurred to me that while there were some yarns to truly die for, there wasn’t anything I really wanted in my bag other than possible the raw fleece to try my hand at making my own. This is not a place I thought I would be at my age. Really.

The places that attracted me most were the booths that had the intricately dyed yarns and the specialty yarns that were plyed from interesting fibers. I can see that this winter will be the time to work at mastering my ABC’s, so to speak, so that when next spring and the wool festivals start up again I will be in fine form to sally forth and get my raw material. I believe I’ve stocked my house fairly well with the basics – or I’ll soon find out what I’ve missed – and I look forward to winter in a way that I never have before….as an indoor training session for a whole new world. The snow we receive in New England doesn’t seem quite so dismal to me now.