LAST SHOW OF THE YEAR!

Well, and whew!! the last fiber show of the year for Margie and me came and went yesterday -- the Torrance Fiber Fest -- hosted by the Southern California Handweavers' Assn. What a great job they do. This is an amazing one-day show with marvelous vendors. Despite dire reports on the economy, the show was literally a mob scene. It was wonderful to see so many fiber enthusiasts in the Southern California area, many who traveled distances to come to this show. We were happy to see all of the new vendors, too, as well as the regulars. Unfortunately, this is a once-a-year event, and if you missed it, you'll have to wait until next November. But, don't despair, many of the vendors have websites and can also be found on Etsy.com.

Margie and I arrived at 6:50 a.m. and had our booth set up an hour early so she had time for a leisurely cup of tea before the rush. Once the doors opened, we were practically nonstop busy, with a lull during the fashion show. Do we ever love this show.

Both of us had many skeins of our hand-dyed and handspun yarn. Here's a rack of Margie's beautifully spun mohair with curls.

Here's some of my fingering weight handspun skeins -- lots of merino with baby camel, cashmere, silk, and other luscious fibers.

I have been pleasantly surprised by the popularity of a new item I have been making up for shows this year -- my "Pastiche", which I use to spin up "fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants" chunky novelty yarns. Every skein is a one of a kind beauty. This is a concoction of beautiful fibers like merino, cashmere, alpaca, angora, kid mohair, mohair curls and cut up commercial novelty yarns like eyelash with some glitzy angelina tossed in. It's hard to photograph the bags of Pastiche and do them justice, but here are a few. I seem to sell out every time I bring these colorful bags.

And, of course, I had the big rack of handpainted rovings at the show. Most of the hanks on this side of the rack are superwash blueface leicester wool.

And I had regular blueface leicester as well as handpainted mixed (brown/white) BFL on this side.

So, now . . . . catch my breath, take a little rest, have a few glasses of wine, do some spinning and knitting for Christmas presents, and then in a few days, I hope to get my Etsy shop back up and running. I'm also looking forward to spinning again with my friends down at the Common Threads spinning group in Encinitas and getting back to the Wednesday night knit group.