Midwest Fiber & Folk Art Fair

Woo-hoo! The Midwest Fiber & Folk Art Fair was a blast! The fair was even bigger and better than last year. Read that to mean even more temptation than last year! LOL! The new venue was very nice with lots of free parking nearby. Some vendors were outside in tents though most were inside the buildings where it was cooler. No porta potties either.

Here's a pix of what I got: Wool and silk blend hand dyed skeins with one to dye myself, and wool and silk top to spin from Winterhaven Fiber Farm; Miss Babs Bamboo baby and 2 sock yarns from her booth; silk spinning fiber from Lonetree Wools; Corriedale and merino braids from My Favorite Things; batts with sparklies in them from Spinundrum; washed Coopworth locks from Lamb Lane; and rainbow dyed Polworth from JWrayCo.

I'm always looking for new breeds of wool to try out. The Polworth and the Coopworth are both unfamiliar to me. I'll have to find out more about them. Both are yummy and soft. I was severely tempted to buy a Coopworth cross fleece. They had a small lambs fleece and a larger one that almost hurt not to buy. (I have a card from the booth just in case.) Here's a closeup of a Coopworth lock. Doesn't it look lovely? I contented myself with a 7 oz bag of washed locks to try out. I also scored one of these at Miss Babs booth.

The only negative about this festival is the drive around Chicago. It was a 3 hour drive up in the rain and a 4 hour drive home. (Luckily, the rain stopped before we got to the fair.) Coming back it took 2-1/2 hours to get from Crystal Lake to the Loop in downtown Chicago! That's way too much traffic for me and lots of expensive gasoline being wasted sitting in lines at toll booths, merging, or in the inch worm traffic on the highways.