We found ourselves back in New Mexico, this time armed with GPS and a list of the local yarn shops and places of interest to people like me.
It was a week of fibery goodness. I won't bore you with the typical vacation pictures. I'll focus just on the fiber.
Serendipitously I found the Lumpy Bumpy yarn for the worm scarf at the Needle's Eye in the Pansy colorway. I've loved this scarf on Ravelry for a while. I modified the pattern a bit to make it wider. The yarn was great to work with, I would definitely make another. I didn't realize until I was knitting into the second skein that one had considerably more purple and less gold than the other, but I still like the outcome. This was a super fast knit, bought and knit on the trip.
I love it!
We also stopped at Miriam's Well in Santa Fe. I loved it there. I forgot to take a picture of the front of the store, but this is one of the back.
Ok, I visited it more than once, but I couldn't help that it was conveniently located a few blocks from our hotel.
The day we spent in Taos was awesome.
No day would have been complete without visiting Weaving Southwest. I decided to get some weaving yarn to create SOMETHING (not sure what yet) on my loom. My sad, forgotten, lonely loom. I'm working to remedy that situation now, but that is for a future post.
I picked up some silk roving from La Lana Wools which I am really excited to spin up and then dye for some yet unknown project. Given the fact that they specialize in hand-dyed yarns, my buying undyed silk roving does seem a bit boring, but you should FEEL it. It is fabulous.
There was also a quick stop to the Fiesta yarns factory outlet 'just to check it out' They didn't have any of the Boomerang yarn I was looking for (pretty, pretty), but who can say no to $1 balls of merino? Not me.
The great thing about vacationing in the Southwest is all of the car miles logged between sites. I finished one Tudora (yet another thing on my Ravelry favorites list).
This one was out of handspun yarn from fiber from MSW. I only got a little bit it that I spun up into a 127 yards of single ply worsted weight yarn. Unfortunately I didn't realize how much I'd love the yarn, because I do and am looking forward to visiting that stall next year at the festival. At the moment I don't remember the name of the farm, just that it is located outside of Gettysburg, PA.
Then I cast on another Tudora, for my mom for Christmas (yes! working on a Christmas present before December, a truly life-changing idea). This one is out of Manos silk and wool purchased at Miriam's Well in Santa Fe. This yarn feels like a dream.
Of course, since visiting Taos last October for their wool festival, no visit to Taos now would be complete without driving up to Arroyo Seco a few miles North of Taos. That's a picture of Taos Sunflowers (a wonderful yarn shop!) above. I'm not sure what to call it, a little village? It is so cute and perfect it looks like something off of a movie set.
Happy Churro Sheep at Las Golondrinas:
Hand-dyed, spun and dyed Churro:
And some more:
Sadly, it was display only.
It was a fantastic week.
Fiber and Roving and Merino, Oh My!!
Sounds like a little bit of heaven.
And isn't that also a goat in the churro sheep photo?
Posted by: mollie | Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 07:58 AM