A few Saturdays ago was the Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, OR. I took a trip down for my first Oregon fiber festival. I did manage to buy a bit of yarn.

First up was a purchase from A Verb for Keeping Warm. I’d first heard about the company in a Stash & Burn podcast. They use natural dyes, and their booth was filled with beautiful colors. I had a hard time choosing a yarn. I finally ended up with the Superwash Merino Fingering in Kerala, and is lovely shades of brown with some red tones.

Apparently, the next yarn I purchased is from a vendor also in the same Stash & Burn episode, but I don’t remember hearing their name (must go back and re-listen). The yarn is from Toots LeBlanc & Co. It’s 1200 yards of fingering weight yarn in a Jacob wool, alpaca and mohair blend. I’m thinking this would make a great “rustic-style” lace shawl.

I did, of course, make a stop at the Blue Moon Fiber Arts booth. I took a cruise through and didn’t see anything in the regular stock that I needed. However, this skein on the Rare Gems rack caught my eye. For those who don’t know, the Rare gems are the mistakes or over-dyes when colors aren’t quite to the color specification.

I must admit that I’ve been a bit obsessed with chartreuse green lately, so this skein was particularly hard to resist. Plus, with the added depth of some rust and aqua colors (not colors I’d have imagined it paired with), it had to come home with me.

Finally, I purchased some lovely 100% alpaca laceweight from Crown Mountain Farms. It’s their Alpaca Lace Athena in the Stonehenge colorway. It’s 500 yards per two ounce skein, and I purchased two. I’m currently using it to knit Icarus.

I was also lucky enough to win a prize in Black Sheep Bingo, but I haven’t had a chance to photograph it yet. I’ll be sure and post it later.

I’ve been working on a variety of projects lately.

First up is the Spiraling Master Coriolis pattern from Cat Bordhi’s New Pathways for Sock Knitters: Book One.  I’m using Socks that Rock in the Chapman Springs colorway.  It’s great to finally find a pattern that this color works with.  I’ve tried it several times with other patterns, and it hasn’t matched up well.  The sock has been a bit of a challenge.  I’ve knit so many socks in the “traditional” fashion that it seems strange that the patterns will work as written.  So far, I’ve made only one major mistake.  I put the increase stitch marker at the wrong place, so I ended up with a straight line of knitting instead of a spiral.  I didn’t like the way it looked, so I ripped back and knit it correctly.  I’m at the end of the first sock, and just need to determine what cuff to put on this pair.  I’d been thinking about a picot edge, but I may just make a plain ribbed cuff.

Also on the needles is a shawl, the Icarus Shawl from Interweave Knits.  Right now, I’m nearing the end of the plain stockinette and eyelet rows that seem to go on forever.  I’m starting to worry a bit about my yardage.  Per the shawl calculator over at Rose-Kim Knits, I’ve completed 48% of the shawl.  When I way the yarn, I have about 2.1 of 4 ounces remaining, or 52.5% of my yarn left to knit 52% of the shawl.  This is going to cut it really close.  If I’m off by only the tiniest bit, I might run out of yarn in the final rows.  It would be so heartbreaking to have to rip back half of the shawl because I ran out of yarn.

I didn’t check Ravelry before I purchased the yarn. The pattern originally called for 875 yards, so I thought I’d be fine with 1000 yards.  However, the pattern on Ravelry calls for 875-1200 yards because a lot of people have run short when knitting the shawl.  The designer now calls for 1100 yards to be enough yarn for the majority of knitters.  Since I’m using a hand-dyed yarn, I don’t want to risk ordering more and having it be a drastically different shade.  For now, Icarus is sitting in the corner while I decide what to do.

The good news about these two projects is that they gave me a chance to use my new stitch markers.  I purchased the big beads while I was in Prague, with the intent of someday making myself some stitch markers.  I never got around to it.  But, recently, Allison started making and selling stitch markers, and she was nice enough to turn my beads into stitch markers for me.

It’s hard to capture their sparkly orange-ness, but I love them.