So many hobbies!: Michigan Fiber Festival

Sorry for disappearing. The fiber festival kind of snuck up on me and I found myself rather unprepared for the event. There was camping and food to prepare for, classes that needed equipment gathered, and catkids to be taken care of. Nothing bloggable happened, so, no blogging.

We drove out to Allegan, MI on Tuesday. Wednesday was my first class which was Indigo Dyeing. Oh. My. God! It was so much fun. We dyed silk scarves, cotton bandanas and socks. Yup, socks. We used something called Instant Indigo. They take a dyepot of indigo, get it ready for dyeing - a horribly smelly and complicated process - and when it's ready to dye, they freeze dry it. So, it's real indigo but all you have to do it add water and get the pot up to temperature (115F). I bought 8 oz. of the stuff. Blue being my favorite color and all.

The two on the right became the two bandanas in the middle in this picture:

The silk scarf on the left is mine but I didn't take a picture of it all folded up. This class was so much fun. I will definitely take it when she offers it again.

My second class was Drumcarding Basics. That's my "station" in the lower left-hand corner. All those bags in the center are filled with dyed Columbia locks. This one was a lot of fun, too.

Camping was fun, as usual. We got rain, as usual, and, as usual, somehow water got into my tent under my mattress. Everything else was dry and there weren't any leaks that I could find but the water made it onto the tarp under the tent and soaked through the tent floor. As leaks go, I'll take it. It could have been so much worse.

Sheri and I entered yarn in the skein contest. Her 2-ply, wheel-spun yarn won first place and mine won second:

I was absolutely floored to find I'd managed to win Best of Show with my spindle-spun yarn. When I saw it in the vase, I thought they'd just displayed it to make it look nice. I didn't realize that the vase WAS the award:

The picture isn't very good but the vase is etched. It says: Michigan Fiber Festival, Best of Show, 2012. They had to tell me I'd won something special because I was thinking I'd won 1st place because there weren't any other spindle-spun skeins entered. I still can't believe it. I've never won something like that before. Wow.

So, how was your week?