2010 Midwest Fiber and Folk

I'm back now from MWFF, and full of energy and excitement. I had a fun show! I shared a booth with my friend Diane of Bugsnugger, dyer of all things fresh and pretty. She was awesome and brought all the fixtures, though during setup, as we kept pulling skeins out of our bags and arranging them on shelves, we came to the unsettling realization that we had too much yarn for our fixtures. So we went and bought new ones. Twice.

This is what 750-odd skeins and braids look like (all photos are courtesy of Diane; I only remembered to take one photo all weekend):



Our friends Lori of Alfabette Zoope and Jen of Starving Artist Bazaar were also at the fair. This is what four vendors look like on the last day of a show:



Left to right: me, Jen, Lori, Diane

My side of the booth:


Diane's side:


A skein of her Pulling at Strings colorway on Posh MCN might have come home with me. *whistles*

Our shared rack of worsted, plus my friend's Bitterroot shawl that I knitted, and my Annis shawlette:



I really love meeting people and seeing the beautiful handmade items that they wear. It was a surprise bonus to meet customers of mine from Sock Summit. One even brought a lace shawl--the lovely Prairie Rose pattern--that she'd made from my yarn that she'd purchased at Sock Summit, especially to show me. How cool!

And I met some people from my tribe. You know who you are. Especially the ones who I showed my Centurion colorway to, and who instantly got the Battlestar Galactica reference. So very awesome.

There's also one more noteworthy development that came out of this weekend, but more about that later.

On my list this week is to stock some of the yarn I brought home with me (the rest is in transit from Illinois), start dyeing the latest wholesale order for my LYS here in town, and to continue setting up my Etsy shop. My initial game plan is to stock lace, fingering, and sport yarns, as well as spinning fiber at Etsy, while leaving longies yarn over at HC, where my current storefront is. I would be sad to leave HC completely, but I know that my creative direction is going somewhere else for the most part, so I'm going to give Etsy a go and see where it leads.

Thank you to all the people who visited our booth! A great weekend with great people, surrounded by beautiful fiber--it's hard to ask for more than that.