Great people, a stash excursion, and fiber enabling

Today marked a day of fiber therapy and enabling of epic proportions. My friend, Sairy, and I met up today and headed down to Woolbearers. I hadn't been there since they moved to their current location so I was extremely overdue for a trip, and Sairy is still learning how to get around to places in New Jersey. What better way then to make a trip to a LYS, right?

We each realized we had been wanting to learn how to spin. I have been quite inspired by Jessica and Bea's lovely work and felt the need to explore. Meeting up at Jessica's last weekend (yes that is me on the left in the pic on Jessica's blog) and watching my friends spinning away had me enticed by the fluidity of the wheel. I became more intrigued over the last week to learn. My hope was to learn a little more on our excursion to Woolbearers today, knowing that they had spinning wheels and roving.

After fondling EVERYTHING in the store, we came to the far wall and spotted some drop spindles. Suzie, one of the two lovely owners, offered to give us a quick lesson on some purple roving. Hooked and inspired, we made it over to the roving cabinet. We both grabbed some lovely aqua-ish Romney roving processed from their own flock of sheep. I think it's safe to say there may be another addiction in the making.

Of course, there is more. Would I disappoint you? I picked up this lovely hank of Woolbearers Hand-dyed worsted 50/50 mohair/wool in the "softball" colorway. I envision a lovely cowl to match my winter, brown peacoat. The color is hard to photograph, but there are golds, greens, and purples.

The next one may shock some of you. I had some Heritage handpainted sock yarn by Cascade sing its siren song from across the room. This yarn didn't speak to me, it "yelled" at me "I am going home with you and I WILL be a pair of socks". So a year since my miserable failure with the Monkey socks, I am back in love with socks again. This time, I am using the magic loop with some instruction from Sairy until I got the hang of it. This is a much faster method for me and I am already sailing along the leg past the cuff. I think I may actually get two socks instead of one sorry sock with no mate. Who knew? :-)

The picture does the color no justice, unfortunately. This is a very dark blood red with some purple and navy blue.
I have lofty ambitions once I am inspired and picked up a skein of J.Knits Superwash Me-Sock in colorway "Boulder". This one is in cream, peachy-orange, and green.After oogling over the Kauni and showing my sweater inspiration for using the Kauni for the Autumn Leaves cardigan, the discussion turned to the February Lady Sweater by Pam Wynne of Flintknits. I happen to have mine in the car so I ran out and brought it back in to show the knitting group in the store. You can say there was some enabling on both ends. I was enabled to spin as much as I enabled folks to try the February Lady Sweater. Poor Suzie broke her no more WIPs promise to herself crumbling under the peer pressure. LOL. What squishy Dream in Color Classy in a happy, bright green will do to folks, right? My enabling is discussed on Suzie's blog here. You will see Sairy and I standing together clutching our drop spindles and practice wool kindly provided by Suzie. See the crazed look of future addiction in our eyes? Scary, I know. Sairy had a small skein of purple wool before she left my house, all soaked and stretched.

As far as my sweater progress, the sleeves are off and I am plugging away at the lace on the body. For some strange reason, the color looks very washed out as this is a very bright, yellowy-green. I smell an FO coming on very soon because I like parading around in wool sweaters after the first of summer. That's how I roll, don't you know?

Thanks to Sairy, Suzie and all the ladies at Woolbearers for a fabulous end to the weekend. After the last week I've had at work, this proves the point that fiber is way cheaper than therapy.