Yarnporium is coming!

You may or may not have seen some details over the past few weeks about a little show I'm going to be vending at this coming weekend - the brand new Yarnporium!

The Yarnporium kicks off on Saturday, 5th November at King's College London on the Strand at 10am (unless you've booked a workshop) and will run through 4pm on Sunday afternoon. If you are looking to do any holiday crafting this year, this is the show to go to! There will be yarn and kits and all sorts of lovely, beautiful treats for the crafters in your life (or for yourself, when you get right down to it!) Allison has been doing an amazing job sharing previews of vendor goods on Yarn in the City, but I thought I'd do a bit of my own sharing.

So what am I bringing to the Yarnporium? Well...first up will (obviously) be fibre. Lots and lots of fibre...

Clockwise from top left: Haematoma Humbug BFL, Willow Hearth Romney, Hoard Falkland, Shetland/Suffolk Victoria Sponge batt, Alpaca/Ile de France Victoria Sponge Batt and Quantum Dots BFL.

I'm also hoping to have a few more gradients for the show, including a very last minute one inspired by this gorgeous autumnal vine I saw over the weekend.

I'm also planning on having quite a few spindle kits available - if you've been wanting to learn how to spin, or know someone who wants to learn, these make great Christmas presents! You get a drop spindle, instructions, and four 1 oz/28 g bundles of different fibres to try out for £20. I'll have them with a wide selection of fibre colours and types, so do come by and check them out!
 

Tickets for the Yarnporium are still available at the early bird price (£8 per day/£12 for a weekend ticket) until tomorrow. After that, the prices will go up to £10/£15 respectively, so don't wait! It should be a great weekend and I'm looking forward to seeing you there!

The Tour de Fleece is here - hooray!

Last Saturday was the launch of the Tour de Fleece, as well as a little bike race in France. I went down to the wire on setting goals for myself for this year's event, but finally I put some down in writing last Thursday:

1) Spin up the May and June fibre club colourways.
2) Spin up at least 4 bundles of my Hello Yarn fibre stash into yarns for sale.
3) Spin up at least 2 bundles of HYFC into yarn for me.

Since then, I've added Goal #4: Spin up the 2016 Tour de Fleece colourways on the appropriate days. Since today is Stage 4, that means I've been spinning up Rosé d'Anjou. This is going to be a fractal 2-ply, and here's the first ~1.5 oz done.

As for the other goals? Well, I've finished 3 oz of Hello Yarn merino into singles that will need to be fulled and finished. I also finished off my Lab Goddess Fibre Club Cortus on Wensleydale, which I started spindling a looooong time ago, so I've crossed off 1 bundle from Goal #2 and one bundle from unlisted goals. Or something like that...

Here's the first three days in order:

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Day 1: Damp Earth on Merino from the Hello Yarn Fiber Club
Day 2: Cortus Wensleydale from the Lab Goddess Fibre Club
Day 3: Started Critter Falkland from HYFC

Please feel free to come join Team Porpoise Fur on Ravelry - any and all spinning projects are welcome and will be heartily cheered on, but to be eligible for prizes, you've got to spin some Porpoise Fur.

Lab Goddess Fibre Club March 2016

Cortus on Wensleydale

The March club colourway was inspired by Virginia Apgar, an obstetrical anaesthesiologist who pioneered the testing of a newborn's transition from life inside the womb to life outside after birth. In addition to developing the ubiquitous Apgar Test, she was also the vice president and Director of basic research for the March of Dimes, and a strong advocate for vaccination in the fight against mother-to-child transmission of German Measles (Rubella), which was pandemic in the United States at the time.

The name of the colourway comes from the Latin word for birth, breaking out or originating. Given that March is the month in which my eldest daughter was born, this seemed like an apt name! The colours come from obstetrics - greens for the surgical scrubs worn by doctors and nurses in the delivery room, and for the tiles that are everpresent in hospitals, with a bit of mauve and dark blood red for contrast.

I've been away for the Easter holidays for the last week or so, and I took along my Cortus and a spindle to get a bit of work done on it. And I was struck, once again, but how much I like spinning Wensleydale. This fibre is certainly the polar opposite of last month's Corriedale: from a very straightforward easy-to-spin medium fibre, we've gone straight into longwool territory this month, and I'm finding it to be a lovely change! The Wensleydale is much more slippery to spin then a lot of other wools that we've used in the club, due to its lack of crimp, but the shine and lustre of the singles are amazing. I think I'm going to keep this one as a singles yarn, both to emphasise the drape of the yarn and to keep the colours from getting too muddied. Which means it's going to have to become some kind of lacey something to keep from biasing...anyone have any suggestions?

There is still some space left in the second quarter of the 2016 LGFC, if you'd like to join in the fun. Club membership gets you three monthly shipments of 4 oz/113 g of an exclusive colourway inspired by a female scientist, and also includes a brochure with information about the scientist, the development of the colourway and the fibre base. We'd love to have you join us!