Sewing Festival 2010

My oh my. The Sewing Festival in Borås this year was absolutely fabulous! I went to Borås on Firday evening, to stay with my parents. When I came into my room (It's more of a spare room, the only thing that's really mine in there any longer is the bed), I was greeted by an insanely strong smell of cat pee. Turns out one of my parents' cats had peed on the couch in there. Yay. We removed the wet pillows, but the smell prevailed all through the night. The next morning we found out that the stupid cat had also peed on a pillow that was on the floor underneath the bed. No wonder it smelled! Once we removed that pillow too, the smell disappeared! Stupid cat.

Ok, on to the festival. This year I went with my mother, and I didn't partake in any of the workshops. There weren't that many of them that I was interested in anyway, but it was fun to just walk by them and see what they were all about. And let me tell you, the festival was a bit bigger this year than last! There were so many yarn vendors! And before you say anything, let me tell you that I actually didn't spend any of my own money! A month or so ago, my sister got a pair of insanely expensive boots and a new autumn coat as a gift from my grandmother (well, she got the money for them, and bought them herself). And even though my sister and I are 25 and 30 years old, my grandmother still thinks that all gifts have to be equal, so she gave me the same amount of money. So I decided to spend it on the sewing festival, which I did!

And I tell you, the harvest was bountiful this year! I didn't get as many skeins as I did last year, but went more for quality this year instead. I still managed to come home with 14 new skeins of yarn! I had my camera with me, but I only remembered to take two photos the whole day, on my favourite booth. It was the swedish dyer Färgkraft (which translates roughly as powerful colours, or strenght from colours). One of my LYS's here in town, Garnverket, carry some of this yarn as well, but this booth that was run directly by the Färgkraft people had such a huge selection! If the yarn wasn't so expensive, I would have bought the whole inventory!

All the yarn is made from swedish sheep, and dyed by hand. I walked away with three skeins of gorgeous lace yarn called SoftBlend. Two in a gorgeous dark pink/fuschia colour called Cerise:

And one in a lovely green colour called VarmGrön (warm green):

I love them all so very much! The pink is destined to become the Butterflies and Flowers shawl, and the green will become a Troll Forest shawl. I have to say that I'm very proud of myself, because I almost only bought yarn with specific projects in mind! I even wrote down a list of patterns that I have in my pattern stash, but that I don't have any yarn for yet, so I would know what to look for. 

Next we came upon a booth that only sold Opal sock yarn (the link goes to the booth people, the swedish vendors). This is a German company that only make sock yarn (I think), and in so many crazy, self-striping colours. Since I mostly knit patterned socks, I didn't think I'd want any of this, but it turns out that they had a lot of solid colours as well. So I bought five skeins in total here:

Pink

Purple

Wine

Green multi-coloured (because I couldn't help myself)

And crazy multicoloured (one crazy skein is all right, right?)

All of them except the green will be socks from my 10 patterns collection. The green skein was bought so I can make a pair of socks for Christmas for my youngest brother-in-law William (he's 14 years old, and my husband's brother, not married to my sister...). He asked for a pair of socks a while ago, and I'm going to make the Manly Aran socks from the Toe-Up Socks for Every Body book by Wendy D Johnson. All the Opal skeins have 100 grams in them, so they should be enough to make at least a pair of socks from (I think the socks for Willie will be a bit more though, as he has bigger feet than me). The yarn is 75 % superwash wool/25 % nylon (which seems to be a standard for many sock yarns).

The next booth I shopped in was Limmo Design, who also has a web shop. She had soooo many gorgeous, hand-painted sock yarns, it was hard to choose! I walked away with two skeins of gorgoeus skeins that were 100 g of 75 % wool/25 % polyamide:

Colourway Sun

Colourway Rosebud

These skeins will also go to the 10 socks pattern collection. With these skeins, I actually have ten different yarns that I'm planning to use for this pattern collection, so hopefully I will make all of them! I'm sort of in a sock zone right now (I'll tell you more about that later), so this suits me very well!

Oh, and at Limmo Design I also picked up five bags of Kool-Aid! It's a bit hard to come by here in Sweden, so I was very pleased to find it here. I have five different colours (or flavours, really): Grape, Cherry, Slammin' Strawberry/Kiwi, Black Cherry and Pink Lemonade. I realized yesterday evening though that I might actually need more than one bag to dye a whole skein, but I think I might be able to get more bags from the Limmo Design web shop. 

Next we went to the booth where GarnGalleriet sold it's wares. I got to fondle Hand Maiden for the first time, and of course I couldn't resist. One skein of AMAZING Lace Silk (100 % silk, 900 m/100g) in a beautiful, lustrous copper hue went with me home. 

This will become a Lirio shawl, which is a pattern that I've had in my queue for a while now but never got around to buying. The other day though, I got it as  RAK gift from Pyttan, and I couldn't be happier! The yarn is just so incredibly soft and shiny, it's going to be a real treat to work with it!

We then moved on to Nysta's booth, and this was also a real treat! She had lots of yarns from Colinette (although I didn't see any Jitterbug), and some Debbie Bliss and Heaven's Hand. This is the booth where I bought my only impulse yarn, that I didn't have anything planned for. Two skeins of Debbie Bliss Andes went home with me:

It's 65% alpaca/35 % silk, and oh so soft! The colour is a pale purple/grey, and I think they will become a pair of mittens for me. It's 100 m/50 g, so DK weight. 

Finally I also bought a pair of DPN's from Marks & Kattens (a swedish manufacturer), but I can't seem to remember which vendor I bought them from. They are very pretty wooden needles (you can see them in the photo of the Kool-aid above), and I'm very curious to work with them as they're not as smooth as the KnitPicks Harmony needles I'm used to.

Oh, and one more thing: I've finaly gotten my mother back on knitting! When I came home on Friday she showed me a scarf she had knitted! She used to knit a lot of sweaters and cardigans for me and my sister when we were young, but she quit some time in the late 80's. And even though I started obsessing about knitting about a year ago, she hasn't really picked it up again until now. So she went with me to the festival yesterday, and she bought some Caron Simply Soft yarn to make a sweater for herself! 

Yay! I doubt she will become as crazy as I am about it, but I love that she has finally started again. The 100 % acrylic yarn ws really, really soft, and as she wanted a white sweater I think she made a good choice in going with a washable yarn. 

There were of course LOTS of vendors that I didn't shop at, and it was so much fun to just look around! I stood a long time at Ullcentrum's booth and finally decided that I would wait with that! After the festival we went to visit my grandmother and uncle for a short while, and yeaterday afternoon I went back to Linköping again. Thomas and his friends went to a metal concert last night, so I had the apartment all to myself. I just sat in bed listening to my new audio book and knitted a bit (and Skyped with Sarah for 2.5 hours!). And fondled all my new yarn, of course! 

Ok, I'm actually going to talk a bit about my own knitting too. I finished my secret Christmas project the other day, so I decided that they would become a birthday present instead. My mother has a birthday coming up in October, so she got her gift a bit early on Friday evening. A while ago I found a free sock pattern on Ravelry called the Rosalie Socks. This was really funny, as my mother's name is Rosalie! The match was ment to be, so I knitted her a pair using KnitPicks Stroll yarn in the Saphire Heather Colourway:

She loved them, and put them on right away. Once I got into the zone knitting them, they went really fast, and as soon as I finished them I had to cast on for another pair of socks for myself! I just enjoy knitting socks so much right now! I chose the Wanida socks, from the Sock Innovation book by Cookie A. I'm using a yarn that I bought at last year's Crafts day in Old Linköping, it's Zitron Trekking XXL. 

So far I've only gotten past the cuff, so I don't have any photos to show you yet.

I've also been working a lot on the Tunic Dress, and I've finished the skirt part and just picked up stitches for the top part. Now I'm starting the pattern though, so it's become a bit too challenging to bring to work. I need to find another stockinette pattern that I can have as a work project! But today I think I'm actually going to knit some on the languishing India Stole! I'm more than half-way through it, and I really want to finish it so I can start something else :)

/ Jenny