Report from the sewing festival!

This will probably be a very pic-intense post, seeing as I came home from the festival with a whole paper bag full of yarn...

The festival was so much fun! Of course I forgot to bring my camera to the actual event, but don't worry: As I seem to have brought half of the yarns there with me home, there will be lots of yarn photos anyway :) I will definitely go again next year. It is actually going to be another one outside of Stockholm in about two weeks, but I really can't afford to go to another one that soon. So I'll wait til next year.

I began the festival by joining in a warkshop for shadow knitting, which I've never done before. It wasn't very hard, and took about 20 minutes to understand the basics. After that I went and looked at some of the booths, and did a little recon. I met up with my friend Gunilla after a while, and we watched a demonstration of knitting cardigans from the top down, by Tant Cofta ("Old lady" Cardigan, a lady blogger who does a lot of knitting from the top down), which was really instructive. She had a great method to make almost invisible increases, but unfortunately I forgot to buy her booklet! I think that the method can be found on her blog, as well as some tutorial videos (at least for those of you who read swedish =). I'll see if I can locate the video, and ask her if I can post a link to it here directly.

Those were the workshops we actually took part in. We also watched some lace-making, some needle felting, and Gunillas sister made a very beautiful pearl macramé bracelet in another workshop. And finally we walked around and looked at yarn. A lot. I was there from 10 in the morning until 17 in the afternoon, and was feeling pretty tired when I got home! So now for the interesting part... This is what I bougth:

First, the skein that I'm most pleased with. This is Kunstgarn by Hjertegarn, a Danish 75% Superwash wool / 25 % Nylon, with 420 m/100 g. I just LOVE these colours! The seller only had one skein left, otherwise I would have bought more. I do have a friend here in Linköping who can get more for me though, so I think some more of these skeins might find a new loving home with me eventually!

Then I found another yarn that actually looks quite similar to the Kunstgarn. This is Marks & Kattens Fame Trend, which is a Swedish yarn that also has 75 % superwash wool / 25 % polyamide. I see now that it is actually exactly the same weight, 420 m / 100 g... Maybe I'll limit myself to this swedish yarn that I can find easier, as the colours look about the same too...

I also bougth my first cobweb yarn, Jojoland Harmony, which I think is an american yarn, but the label says "Made in China". It is very thin, 800 m/50 g, so this will be a VERY thin shawl i think. It's 100 % Merino Wool and super soft!

I also found two balls of Zitron Noblesse, a german yarn with 70 % Merino / 30 % Silk, that is 150 m/50 g. I think these might be some really luxurious socks, or maybe lace gloves for me? It is a really beautiful burgundy/wine colour that doesn't really come through in the photo.

I found some really cheap 100 % Merion wool from Denmark as well, Löve-garn Symfoni, which is bulky (I think...), with 90 m / 50 g yarn. It was about half price from what it would have cost in a store, so I bought four skeins. I don't really know what I'll make from them, but they are beautiful and soft, so I'm sure I'll come up with something!

I found a very interesting yarn as well, that was 90 % Bamboo/10 % Soy. I've never knitted with either soy nor bamboo before, so of course two skeins of this had to come home with me. It's called Delfi, and I have absolutely no idea where it's made. It's 180 m/50 g, so quite thin. I think these will turn into socks as well.

I found a lovely 100 % wool from Marks & Kattens as well, called Sarek (which is a National Park in the north of Sweden). It's about 50 m / 50 g, so very bulky, and SOOO beautiful! Green is my very favourite colour, and this yarn is variegated in a lot of green and brown colours. I bought 10 of these skeins, and will definitely make them into a sweater of some sort for myself!

I also found a 110 g skein of Colinette JitterBug yarn, which is 219 m of lovely, multicoloured 100 % Merino wool made in Wales. This will definitely turn into socks for me! I've learned that I shouldn't really buy merino wool, as there was some scandal involving the treatment of Merino sheep a while ago, but I just LOVE Merino! I tried to not buy any Merino that I didn't know where it came from, as I believe the badly treated sheep were Aussie. So I guess there will me no Aussie wool for me (If I can help it...).

I found two more skeins of the lovely Eco-Alpaca from Viking of Norway. This is the yarn that I made the scarf in for my mother-in-law (which she loved, by the way, I saw her this weekend!), and I just had to have some for me as well. I bougth one skein of while, and one in a lovely toffee colour (I'll only show you the toffee one here, if you want to see the colour of the white one you can just read my previous post). It's also bulky, 125 m / 100 g. I'm not sure what pattern I'll use yet, but I think it might turn into a striped scarf for me.

I also bought some really cheap acrylic yarn that I'll use for crocheting amigurumis. The green one is Järbo garn Lady, 125 m / 50 g, and the pink/purple one is Marks & Kattens Carolina, 130 m/50 g. Not very fancy, but I've found I like making amigurumis in acrylics. I also found a skein of very cheap cotton, Järbo garn Soft Cotton, that is 80 m/50 g, 100 % Cotton. I don't really know what I'll use it for, but it was practically free with the acrylics, so it went home with me. It's the dark red on the right.

I bought a set of Järbo Mini's 10 skeins of about 10 g each, with 100 % acrylics in different colours. Some of them will probably be used for amigurumi making, and some of them will probably be sent out in RAK gifts all over Europe!

I found a Chinese yarn as well! This is AAA Aotexi Jingpinrongxian (try pronouncing that! and 100 % Merino wool (I actually wonder if the chinese sheep are really treated any better than the Aussie ones?), 180 m / 100 g. I thought this yarn looked perfect for socks, and as it wasn't very expensive I thought I'd try it. It's green as well!

My final yarn purchase was two skeins of 100 % banana fiber yarn! I've never seen this either, and it has such a shine to it, almost like silk! I think it is about 68 m / 100 g, but it's actually quite hard to understand what's written about this yarn, and the website is under construction. I bought one green skein, and one yellow, and I think they will turn into some kind of striped scarf/shawl for me.

That was all the yarn I bougth. So no cashmere, and no pure silk. I actually saw a 100 g skein of pure silk, but it was incredibly expensive, so I ended up not buying it. I got the 10 balls of Sarek for the same price instead... I also found myself some beads, and a circular shawl pin. You can hardly see the beads at the top of the photo, but they are white frosted glass and really pretty. I'll definitely have very beautiful shawls from now on!

So as you can see, I spent about a year's yarn budget just this weekend. I'll really REALLY try not to buy any more yarn until at least after new year, and just knit with what I have. I have two exceptions to that rule though: The first is if I can get my hands on more Kunstgarn yarn. The second is that I have to find a white contrast yarn that goes with the green KnitPicks yarn i got from Ulrica a while ago, so it can turn into knee-high socks, gloves, a neck-warmer and a hat for me before it gets too cold.

I also have a surprise finished object for you! I have been working on this secretly for a while, as it was a birthday for my mother (and I know he reads this blog). Her birthday is actually not until october 18:th, but I'm not going to see her until November again, so she got her present early this weekend. I've made her a matching set of neck-warmer, hat and gloves. They are made in Drops Merino Superwash, 105 m / 50 g, and really super soft. She loved them, but refused to model them for me, so here is a photo of them lying on my bed:

I had to block the neck-warmer quite hard, as it wouldn't lie flat over the shoulders otherwise. But it looked very good on my mother, and as she takes long walks almost every day, I think she will get good use from them this winter.

I also had time to see my best friend Christine home in Borås this weekend as well, as well as her three sons (Lucas 6,5 years, Leo 4 years, and Alex, 2,5 months. It was so much fun to see her again, we see each other way too seldom! She and her fiancé actually asked me and my husband if we would be Godparents for little Alex at his christening, and we are so honoured! So I guess I'll have to knit him something soon, especially as those three boys are practically the only children among our friends.

I also got to see Martin and Gunilla today before I went back to Linköping. They are the newly-weds whose wedding we attended this summer, and I haven't been at their place for much too long. Thye've just turrned vegan, and actually finding some coffee bread for all of us (as I don't eat gluten) was quite hard! But I managed to find some cinnamon buns that didn't contain either egg, milk or wheat flour! And they tasted good! I wonder what's actually in them...

Ok, that turned into a VERY long post. Hope you got through it!

/ Jenny