Fiber and Friendly Felting!

I made the short drive south to Greencastle, IN, today for The Fiber Event. This was the first fiber festival I'd been to and I was not disappointed! The weather was not ideal (some rain, too much wind) but it was so much fun browsing all the booths and checking out the fuzzy (expensive!) bunnies and alpacas. This festival is truly a spinner's paradise - tons of roving and fleece, lots of wheels. I even got to try my hand at spinning (badly)! Great fun! When I felt the roving at one booth, the ladies started giving me lots of info about what they had for sale. When I said I didn't spin, they asked if I'd like to give it a try on their wheel... as if I'd say no. haha It's definitely something that would take a good bit of practice to get acceptable results. heh Apparently, I didn't completely suck, but I definitely wasn't a natural. hahaha I could see it being a ton of fun to learn though! One of the ladies even gave me two balls of roving, each bigger than my head, to get me started. Can we say enabler? They suck you in and hope you come back next year for the good stuff! =)

It's beautiful stuff, but I'm told I won't want to wear it after it's spun (way itchy). It would make a great felted purse/bag though! And I picked up a little bit of dyed roving to try my hand at needle felting some flowers on a felted bag or hat too. It won't be anything compared to this: All I can say is... WOW. These are just a couple of the needle felted animals made by Linda Martin of Martin's Magical Menagerie. She does amazing needle felting! These are solid wool, no forms involved. That camel is so adorable! Reminds me of the characters in the Serendipity books.

The faces of her needle felted animals are amazing. The larger animals are well over a foot tall - probably closer to 2'. So much work. Such fun critters.
Amazingly, I left with NO YARN. haha I'll admit I was tempted by the watermelon yarn - knits up in thick stripes (dk green lightens to white and then darkens to red) but the $25 price tag held me off. Great idea though! =)