Maryland Sheep and Wolf (according to Jay)

Crochet Yoga Mat Holder
After a few weeks of toting my yoga mat around downtown Silver Spring like a newbie, I finally got around to making a holder for it. I still need to make the strap and add some little decoration, but here is the main idea.

Friday evening was a pizza/wine/crochet girls night with Vara and Emily before I headed over to a little birthday shindig. We also snuck over to the building in the Blairs that we might be moving into this month! It's beautiful, accross the street from the metro, shares a parking lot with a grocery store, maybe a 5 minute walk to downtown Silver Spring, where I seem to spend all of my evenings anyway. Basically, it's awesome.

But back to the mat holder...I used some new Peaches'n'Cream double bulky cotton for this - it took 3 skeins:
single crochet in the round with a smaller hook until I reached the circumference, then double crochet with large hook up the length, ending with a single crochet band at the top. Ringo won't leave it alone.


Yarn Attack
This weekend is Maryland Sheep and Wool, a huge yarn festival. MDSW is warrant for an epic post, so it's going to be a long one.

Emily and I venutured out to Howard County Saturday morning. She had her list and was clad in a really interesting beige tank/halter that she made. I had a big cup of coffee (did I mention it was a really fun birthday shindig?) and was sporting my little cotton caplet. Both tops were a huge hit! Em and I each got a ton of compliments and pattern inquiries.

I was equally excited about the fiber and all of the adorable animals.

It was great to see all of the animals, but sometimes it was very hard to see. We witnessed a sheering demonstration, and it was sad to see how rough they are when controlling the sheep and sheering the wool. They were also selling items like these contraptions to hold the animal while you sheer it. So they had these poor animals just standing in the contraption with their head strapped in all day to show how it worked.

This is a cute combination. Little sheep with the bag of roving in front. Not cute: the grill full of lamb burgers right behind me while I was taking this picture.














The festival had a nice mix of other vendors and features besides the fiber. This one is for you mom - a great Celtic group complete with the Hammered Dulcimer!! They were fantastic and even invited me into their tent to take this picture.







Amy was set up in one of the booths selling her patterns. She was out in line for food when we snuck into the booth. Everytime I tried to take a picture of her stuff, people kept grabbing at her patterns to check them out. Amy, you rock!










After many hours of walking around in the sun, we were pretty tuckered. One last pic: two very happy girls leaving their first (of many) Maryland Sheep and Wool festival!
















The Goods
I couldn't talk about the festival and not show off the awesome goods that came home with me. This was my first purchase of the day: a beautiful organic cotton in sage and cream. I wish pictures could tell you how soft this is. Next time you see this, it will likely be another raglan top-down shirt of some sort.





I also got a hand-spinner (see below), so I picked up this beautiful roving to spin. Burnt orange + grey, one of my favorite non-green combinations.

This was a taking-a-chance purchase. The yarn is made out of cotton, linen, and flax, so it's a really different texture than I've ever worked with. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but it's a beautiful mix of brown, burn orange and olive.

I really wasn't intending on getting much roving, as I've never actually spun before. But here it was looking oh-so-beautiful, and I thought "well I can get yarn anyday over at A Tangled Skein or Stitch DC, but how often can I find really great fiber like this?" All the convincing I needed!

This one is called Rose Garden. Love it.

To round up my order at one of the booths so that I could use my card, this little variety pack of felting wool hopped into my bag.

I think that this is by far the best find at the festival! Emily was on the hunt for a drop spindle. I was sort of ambivalent at first. But she found this really cool spindle made from a CD for $4!! Well, based on this picture I'm sure you can tell what happened from there.

Happy Sunday, all. I'm off to the Farmers Market (woohoo!) and then working hard to tweak the portfolio for my grad school interview tomorrow morning!!