Knit Twits: August 2007

I've finally got my camera out, and I've gone snap happy over our latest purchases at the Mt Pleasant Wool Festival.
It was a great day out. We had two spare seats in the back of the car, and Frances and Nancy joined us. For a small town hall, it's amazing how much wool can be packed into it.
When we got home we spread the wool out across the floor and after a thorough cat scan, we pulled out all our knitting mags to find the right pattern for it.
With such lovely wool, we have to do justice to it. This can't be turned into just a garter stitch scarf, it has to be something that makes the wool stand out. Any suggestions?

This wool I had to fight for. It's a Wool/Silk blend. I found this on our first trip around the hall (we did several). Nancy liked it too, but I grabbed hold first. It's sooo soft. I was thinking beanie or lace scarf. Maybe. There's just under 100g of this wool.

This was from the Coloured sheep breeders table. They had lots of beautiful fleeces for sale, lots of silvers and darker grays. The coloured wool intrigued me. Mine has a base of a darker gray wool that has been dyed over. I was thinking of using this in a panel for a vest.
The tag says its hand spun dyed Wool/Cash/Angora, and there's 100g of it.

Denise picked out some wool with a silver base. The colours are a lot brighter than mine. This one is just wool and there is only 80g of it. Denise has no plans for it yet.

This is some very beautiful Alpaca. It's surprisingly light and in these two large balls there is 155g of wool. I was thinking of using this for the main colour of the vest, and using the coloured handspun in a pattern or panel. I should have enough for a vest and some left over.

The first time we went to the Mt Pleasant festival Denise picked up a skein of this handspun baby wool and made the lacy scarf. Now she wants something to go with it. She's trying to work out if the Little Arrows pattern she used in the scarf will translate well into a beanie pattern.

This wool came in two size skeins. The 100g we have here, or 500g! It was one continuous skein. Don't ask me where you get a wool winder for that size skein. It was tempting. Just enough for a very beautiful soft jumper.
On the table with this wool was a few knitted goods, including a drop stitch scarf. It displayed the wool and the three colours in the wool perfectly. Some of the other examples you could see one colour would dominate in sections.
The funniest part of the trip up to Mt Pleasant was driving between Birdwood and Mt Pleasant. There are fields, and cattle, and sheep, and suddenly four women in the car getting very excited about a paddock of alpacas. Actually there were several paddocks of alpacas, baby ones, jet black ones, recently shorn alpacas and ones with giant mop-tops. On the way back we had to stop into Akhira Alpaca farm.

Denise rummaged through the basket of handspun, and we cooed over the chocolate brown wool. The woman in the shop brought out a bag of wool that she was about to put out. The gray was even more striking. This ball had some beautiful variegation in it, we just had to buy it. Again, another ball around 100g.

The Akhira Alpaca farm is have a big open day soon, they'll be displaying a lot of their alpacas, and the Bengal cats they breed too. We'll be saving up for that weekend too.