Gone Girl

And then, POOF!, she was gone. Wow, where did the time go? I guess other things just got in the way: dyeing, travelling, house guests, the holidays, and now it's almost Valentine's Day.

One of the big things that happened in my blogging absence was that my yarn was featured in Anne Hanson's Fall Into Full Color Club. The yarn she selected was Aries Oceanus, and the colorway was a grayish, blueish, reddish, greenish, iridescent purple called Abalone. It was a multi-step dyeing process, so there was a good deal of depth to the color. It was a lot of fun to do, but it was also quite challenging. 700 skeins is a lot of skeins when you are the only Yarn Zombie in the Craft Dungeon! It was so nice to get such great feedback from Anne's club members, and it was an amazing opportunity to get Fleur de Fiber into so many new hands.

So, I know I promised swag pictures from the trip. So, remember how I mentioned that within four hours of landing I found a city bus to my hotel, took a shower, figured out how to get to the harbor on the tram, and had Finnish wool in hand? This is what I got. There is a mitten kit and some sundry skeins from the vendor at the outdoor craft market that happens--get this--every day down by the harbor. I hear it even goes on in winter, so long as the crafters can set up. These are some hardy people, but I was happy to be there buying wool in summer, thank you very much. I am from the northeast and I live in Chicago, so I am average hardy for a resident of the Lower 48, but I prefer not to do outdoor shopping in winter if it can be avoided.

On my second day in Helsinki (my only full day, actually), I found a yarn shop down by the harbor in a little mini-mall of shops geared to tourists. I picked up these two skeins of hand dyed yarn. Helsinki is very, very expensive, and I remember thinking that these were pretty spendy, but I don't remember what I paid. It was at least 25% more than you would expect to pay in the US, but it was vacation yarn, and that doesn't count, right?

The next yarn acquisition was in Haapsalu. There was a yarn vendor at the street fair, and she had these thick, squishy, sheepy skeins of yarns for sale. The colors were heart-breakingly saturated. I have it on good authority that the Nancies (Bush and Marchand) also stashed some. In Haapsalu, I also bought some lace yarn. It doesn't photograph particularly well, and, frankly, is not all that exciting. It is yarn that is about what it becomes, not what it is. Also, the yarn used to make the shawls isn't from Estonia. I could have passed it over as there is already some stashed, but I was there, it was there, and, well... (To be continued...)