Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival

A good friend and I spent 2 days in Oregon this past weekend. We stayed at this lovely B&B called the Anna Becke House. I fell in love with the bed! I never would have thought I'd like all the girlie prints and flowers, but I did. If I had a slightly larger bedroom I'd find a bed frame that was similar.
We arrived early enough in the day Friday to unpack then drive into Portland to visit Yarnia. If you haven't been there, its a fun way to design yarn. I put together a 3 stranded burgundy yarn w/a dark gray thread of silk.
This is the lovely owner and the machine she uses to make the special yarn blends.
Mine was bamboo, rayon & silk.
The main reason we went on the trip was to go to OFF. It more than met my expectations for vendors, people and animals. next year we're going to bring a 3rd person so we can set up a picnic blanket along with food and our spinning wheels in the center of the green. I found this vest knit in once piece at a booth that was just so cute. I intend to make one similar. With some millends from Mountain Colors that I've purchased at other events.

While at OFF I purchased some fiber from Klaus from Crown Mt, 1 skein of the black angora/merino from Toots Leblanc and some wool/silk at BlueMoon. I think I'll make a cardigan from it. The fiber will be spun up and knit into a shawl.

I also found this cute booth by MissPurl on etsy that had a ton of cute stitch markers with coordiating little tins.

I spent a short while looking at the animals on display and thought this one was a darling! Isn't this the cutest little goat?

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More Yellowstone!

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Continuation of pictures from the Yellowstone trip. This one is all about the animals!

When driving in the park, you knew there was something interesting to see if there was a line up of cars and a slowing/stopping of traffic.


These guys were the first animals we saw as we entered the park. They're standing up a cliff side to the right of the car.
The Buffalo were the animals we saw the most of.Deers and bears and birds oh my!

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Here's the 2nd installment of picture from my trip to Yellowstone during June of 2008.

I think what surprised me the most was just how close the animals would get to the road. Most of the images are taken from the car and the animals are perhaps 5-15 away.

Lyle in front of Yellowstone Lake, near the Yellowstone Lake Hotel.

View from the car. It had snowed for a few days before we arrived. There was still snow when we left a week later. Here are a variety of shots of geothermal things.
Series of pictures of Old Faithful. It steam a bit before actually going off.

Yellowstone vacation pictures - 6-12/20-08

The first leg of out trip was to MT so I could visit the home of Mountain Colors. I really enjoy working with their yarn.

Shelves of undyed yarn. It hasn't been washed or preped yet.


Once the yarn is washed and prepared it is counted for the particular order and then layed out on a stainless steel countertop and dyed. The shelves above the yarn have squeeze bottles of dye. Each color has a few bottles. Each colorway has, if I remember correctly, 6-9 colors each. The dyers take a bottle which is numbered from the shelf and then dye all the yarn in a row with that color. The next person takes the 2nd bottle of dye and walks along behind the 1st dyer applying the dye to the yarn. This process continues until each of the colors for the colorway have been used.


Close up of the countertop.


After the dye has been applied, the yarn is placed in steamer tubs (electric chafing dishes with steamer inserts). I think they had about 30 of them around the room.


Just inside the entryway of the shop are cubbyholes of yarn. They do not have the types of yarn separated. They organize their yarn by colorway. Within each cubbyhole you could find 5 or more types of yarn.

One of my favorite areas was where their mill ends were located. They had more of their sock yarn than other types. I cam home with this batch:



I came home with two batches of yarn, Weavers Wool, in 2 color families for my two buddies, Rhonda and Ialiuxh. For myself I purchased two hanks of the colorway Yellowstone, in Weavers Wool. I also purchased some mill ends of their 3-ply bulky and enough Weavers Wool Millends in a light blue for myself.