My 27th birthday was on Friday! And so was the Midwest Folk Art and Fiber Fair! I went out there to check out the vendors and to take a class on plying.
As I was wandering around the fair with my spinning wheel made out of
PVC pipe people kept asking me if it was my first wheel and if I was new to spinning. I like my wheel and have never had any problems with it. I forgot that it's sort of ghetto and a lot of people look down on them. So I felt a little self-conscious when I pulled it out in the class. Everyone else had fancy wooden wheels. But once the class got underway it became apparent that your wheel doesn't matter. I was the star student! The teacher kept holding up my yarn to show everyone how it was hanging in a perfectly open loop, meaning that it was a balanced yarn. She said "It's always the quiet ones in the corner". She seemed amazed that I picked up Navajo plying so quickly and asked me after class how long I had been spinning. Here are the samples I made in class:
The first is two colors plied regularly. It was just to practice the new spinning technique she showed us (two treadles per draft). The second was plied by winding the yarn onto a ballwinder and then plying with the two ends. It's a good method for when you don't have much yarn and you want to ply without wasting any. The last three are Navajo plied, in the order that I did them. At first I got a jumbled mess but I figured it out by the end of the first skein. I did the other two to get a little more practice in before I used it on this amazing fiber I bought at the fair! It is about 4 oz. of BFL (75%) and Silk (25%). Not vegan, I know. But so beautiful and soft! I bought it from
Wolf Creek Wools. They were my favorite vendor there. I was really impressed with their color combinations. This one is called Fire. It looks a little pink in the picture but its really red, orange, yellow and purple. I started spinning it up today.
The next day was 80's night! I dressed up and went out all 80's-fabulous all day.
I met up with Emily at her house around seven.
From there we went to Diedrich's Captain's Inc. in Pecatonica. Here is the whole crew:
(Megan and her boyfriend Brad, Me, Amanda, Emily and Kyle with Tim and Nathaniel in the back.)
There was supposed to be a prize for the best dressed but since we were the only ones really dressed up, we all got $20. Woo! I think we deserved it anyway, we did look pretty amazing!
I don't normally drink but in honor of my birthday and 80's night I had a few. They had 80's-inspired drinks like "MC Hammered" and "Weekend at Bernie's" as well as Rainbow Brite Jell-o shots. I had Sex on the Beach (the drink!), a few "Weekend at Bernie's"s and half of a Jell-o shot (that was a first for me - too boozy!). Megan, who works there, bought me a shot of some fruity thing and RedBull for my birthday. I spread it all out over 6 hours and it took me two hours to drink my first drink but I still got a little tipsy. Scandalous, I know!
We were practically the only ones in the bar so dancing and loud singing soon overcame us!
Kyle tried to sneak a peek under Emily's skirt...
And fake fighting broke out!
For some reason people started wearing sunglasses, even though it was one in the morning...
Myself included. It made sense at the time.
It was a fun and fabulous way to spend a birthday!
