Unravelled

After (more-or-less) three weeks of being home with one or more of my children (first with sick child, then sick child plus irritated child on half-term holiday, then sick-but-now-well child on half-term holiday), I was feeling just a little bit familied-out. As in, my fondest dream was to crawl under the covers on the bed and never come out again.

Instead, on Sunday morning, I got up early-ish and went off to the lovely village of Farnham for Unravel (Alli made me do it...I think she just wanted a ride down there...).

We arrived in Farnham just before ten and wandered over to Farnham Maltings, a fabulous group of repurposed tannery-turned-brewery-turned-community-space that contains the event. We knew we were in the right place when the yarn bombing began to appear...






I have to admit that once we got inside I had total camnesia and neglected to take pictures of any of the stalls. Mostly because I was too busy making grabby hands at more or less everything. You know how it is...

In our whirlwind tour, we stopped at John Arbon, Fyberspates, Pom Pom Quarterly, rock+purl, Hilltop Cloud, Bigwigs Angoras, Skein Queen, The Natural Dye Studio, Blacker Yarns, The Threshing Barn, Aragon Yarns and vast numbers of other fabulous stands that were just spectacular. Thankfully, I did not come home with goodies from all of these people, but a number of them are going to be at Wonderwool, so I'll have another chance to get in trouble.

I told Alli in the car on the way down that I had a specific shopping list in mind.

1. A new bottle of Soak woolwash, since mine is almost gone.
2. A skein of water-inspired laceweight for an ongoing shawl design.
3. 1800 yds of natural colored bulky wool for a coat design.
4. Some superwash something or other for a ripple blanket for the Wee Nephew.

Exhibit 1:

Look at that, the first two items on my list taken care of at one stall. Result! To be fair, that colorway is more sand-inspired then water-inspired, but I did actually mean something rock colored vs. water colored. I blame low blood caffeine...

Exhibit 2:

Appears absolutely nowhere on my shopping list, but I went by Katie's stand and spent about twenty minutes trying to pick something out. That is 100 gr of gradient-dyed, handcarded, dizzed roving that is 30% Shetland, 50% merino and 20% Tussah silk. You can understand why I had a hard time walking away. I'm even willing to overlook the merino content, just because of the colors. Too beautiful.

Exhibit 3:

Also not on the list, you will note, but bunny fluff!!!!! SO FLOOFY AND SOFT!!!! The fact that I don't like wearing angora yarn is of no importance here because its SO GORGEOUS!!!!! The pictures of adorable and beautiful rabbits didn't hurt either. 

Smoke...sigh...it is such a fabulous shade of grey. I have no idea what I'm going to do with this beyond spinning the most fabulous hat/mitten lining yarn ever. 

So...I'm still on the hunt for the yarn, but am coming to the conclusion that I might be better off spinning the bulky yarn, and I'll break down on the superwash sometime soon, I have no doubt.

In conclusion, I highly recommend Unravel for a day trip or so. There's a lot to see packed into not very much space. I heard from most folks that it was unbelievably busy on Saturday and I can imagine that it might be a bit hard to move about with too many people, but it was fab. And if you're willing to get out of the venue for a bit, there is a really good French cafe on the high street. I can't remember the name, but they had good food and fabulous almond croissants. Yum!