Having enjoyed Yarndale so much in 2013, I booked to go again in the autumn. My friend Daisy rather conveniently came to visit the week of Yarndale, so we went together. She’s blogged at rather greater length and with more pictures than me.
The evening before, I did a thorough analysis of my stash, looking at strengths, weaknesses and gaps. I concluded that I definitely don’t need more 4ply/sock yarn, and probably not any more lace-weight, but any other weight would be reasonable to buy.
The thing is… I’m really good at buying sock yarn. I know what I like, what makes a good yarn and what is good value. I decided that the way to make it not a pointless purchase was to er… buy in greater quantity.
Here’s the sock-weight yarn I bought:
The one on the left is a crochet kit for this scarf. The middle yarn is 200g of Crazy Zauberball: I’m thinking a shawl for this. The right hand yarn is some of the new yarn base from the Knitting Goddess, who is very persuasive in a gentle way. The old KG sock yarn was 75% merino 25% nylon and I love it. The new one uses British wool: partly BFL, partly undeclared along with the nylon. It has the advantage of not crossing the Atlantic to Peru to be spun, but it is, naturally, not as soft as the merino. I’ll just have to knit it and see if I like it. These may well be quite plain, long socks.
Here is the other weight yarn I bought, according to the original plan:
100g of Knitting Goddess roving. I used some of this last year to make my sister’s hat and I rather covet one for me too.
I need a more detailed plan next time I go to buy yarn. I don’t have the experience to buy “a sweater’s worth of yarn”, as I have heard others talk about buying. I need to have a specific pattern in mind before committing to that amount of yarn.
In the afternoon, we did a short course on Latvian knitting, in which we learned some twined braiding, to be used on mitten cuffs. It wasn’t an amazing course for a variety of logistical reasons, but it was interesting and I made this:
In general, Yarndale has the advantage of being very focussed (unsurprisingly) on yarn, without the beading, sewing and papercraft that clogs up other local option of the Knitting and Stitching Show at Harrogate. The venue worked much better this year and I really enjoyed it.
Comments
2 responses to “In which I go to Yarndale 2014”
The trouble with the whole “sweater’s worth of yarn” thing, is that it’s very hard to implement with indie dyed yarn. Sock yarn or laceweight is easy, as you only need 100-200g, so it isn’t huge amounts of money and there is enough in a dyelot for that to be OK. But buying enough indie yarn for a sweater would be so expensive, and a bit risky without a pattern in mind. And I like going to events like Yarndale because of all the indie yarn stuff there, so I’m less likely to buy commercial yarn at one, even though it is available.
Good point.