Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival 2009 Day 1

I arrived bright and early at the Canby Fairgrounds shortly after 8am, meeting Cindy and Karen there. We unloaded cars and then started setting up canopies. It really is easier if there are four people putting the so called E-Z-Up canopies - one on each leg. The funny part was having a guy sit and watch and then offer to help us 'poor weak women' and he couldn't get the canopy tops open. Once we had the canopies up, one of the OFFF organizers didn't like where we had relocated our canopies, (the original assignment was on slope - hard to spin that way!) and after we explained our logic she moved us in front of the Main Pavillion.

 

By this time it was ten minutes to 9am. We had just enough time to head over to the pastry vendor - some people got cinnamon rolls, I picked up a marionberry strusel topped muffin. On my way back I stopped in at Knitted Wit's booth and picked up a blue-green I think BFL braid she had in her sale bin. I also remembered to check back in on Lorajean and was able to at least offer her a chance to use the restroom, if not get a lunch.

By this time it was 9am and I headed over to pay for my pre-order with Klaus at Crown Mountain Farms - Finn (8ounces), Shetland (4 ounces for a total of 8) and then added in an additional 2 ounces of Black Mulberry Silk Sliver. I thought I was doing good. I was being restrained.

Not too long after, Cindy was back waving around a bag of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Twisted that she had gotten out of their $8 bins. $8 bins? So beat feet in and found 2 skeins of Rare Gems Woobu and 2 skeins of Rare Gems Laci that called to me. I decided that since they were such great buys, why worry about only getting one or two, I'd just go ahead and get all four. Awesome deals!!! Rare Gems are dye jobs that didn't come out to Tina's standards and so I'm guessing at colorway names in my Ravelry stash.

Feeling pretty good at my purchases. I sat down and had some coffee. Then I decided that I hadn't been inside the Main Pavillion and thought I'd go check it out and stumbled across Judy's Novelty Wool and she had some really dark saturated really soft black merino. I immediately thought of the black alpaca, black silk and thought that adding in 8 ounces of it would make for a really soft blended batt.

Angela and I opted for Lamb on a stick for lunch. There was some learning of how to use Turkish Drop Spindles by Rachel and Tammy. Then Michele arrived and Leila was pulled in as the original enabler from Sock Summit and we were able to get pictures of all of them using the Turkish Delights:

(Tammy, Rachel, Michele, Duffy, Leila)

I had picked my chair location in the morning because I thought the shade it started in and the angle of the tree near by would cause me to stay in the shade. That was incorrect! My chair spent the greater part of the day in the sun. I borrowed chairs that were in the shade and did get some spinning in on the cormo/silk but then was lured away in search of some pygora. I was going to try to find Applebright Farm, suspect that they may be located in the barn. I never made it into the barns. I stumbled across Foggy Bottom Farm Pygoras. After feeling the various bins that she had out, I went with the 'Grade B' and found out that she's named Fiona, see her on this page, 4th down from the top. She was also right next canopy to Abstract Fiber.

We had a 'famous' visitor stop by our canopies - Franklin Habit. He's in town for the weekend and has a class and an evening with him at Knit-Purl. Some fangirl pics were taken. I caught this one of him:

I helped Carissa find some rovings to add to her collection, not the first time today I was accused of enabling fiber purchases. ;-) All too soon it was 5pm and packing up the car and headed home. After unpacking the car I packed it up with Carissa's alpaca fleeces for the Parking Lot sale tomorrow morning. Here's my car all loaded up:

I'm all set to sell, sell those fleeces and spin while doing so. Here's hoping that I can sell them all before Carissa gets there and we can enjoy the afternoon spinning under the Spinnerati canopy.