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...
Unravel yarnbombing (1)
Unravel yarnbombing (2)
Unravel yarnbombing (4)
Unravel yarnbombing (5)
Unravel yarnbombing (6)
Unravel yarnbombing
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:
Gleem Lace (2)
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:
Hilltop Cloud shetland-merino-silk
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:
Bunny fluff! (1)
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. 
Bunny fluff!
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!