The Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival and Why I Might Become A Luddite

I'm a bit late with a post about this year's Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival held September 22nd and 23rd. I can sometimes procrastinate, but this time it's not my fault. It's Microsoft's fault! Seriously, it is! [If you don't care to read a rant about technology, skip the rest of this paragraph.] My computer got automatic Windows updates on September 25th and 26th and promptly ground to a halt. It ran. It even booted into Windows. But it ran so slowly that it was unusable. For example, when I clicked on the Chrome icon nothing happened. I waited. Got up to make a cup of tea. Came back to find the window for Chrome open but the page still trying to load.Tried to open Task Manager to see what might be wrong. Decided to clean the cat boxes while waiting. Came back and found Task Manager trying to open but blank. Ten minutes later Task Manager completed opening and told me my hard drive usage was at 100%. Now, just a minute (or 10). I know that I have gigs and gigs of space on my hard drive so this makes no sense. I used my tablet to google the issue, and sure enough others have had this problem after Windows updates. There are many pages with lists of possible solutions so I started working through them. Two weeks later, I had tried everything I could find except the nuclear option: reinstall Windows. It was that or pull this machine's plug for good. So, reluctantly I clicked the button to reinstall. Bottom line, it fixed the problem but uninstalled a lot of my software. To Microsoft's credit, they popped up a warning saying this would happen. But why did they uninstall their own applications (Office), but leave some third party applications alone? Bless their hearts, at least they didn't touch my data files. 

So, yes. I yearn to become a Luddite* and pull the plugs on all my electronics especially after having spent time at the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival where all crafts are hand made and the most complicated machine is a spinning wheel. You knew I'd get around to talking about OFFF eventually, didn't you? 

OFFF, as usual, was just loaded with fibery fun. Unfortunately, I just got back in town from a vacation on the 22nd so I only had one day to enjoy it. My first stop was my CGOA chapter's display. We are Always In Stitches, and we meet in Tigard, OR on the second Saturday of each month. See our website for location and time and come join us if you're in the area. Every year we have a display of crochet at OFFF. Here's what this year's looked like.

Our display was conveniently located outside the gallery displaying the entries in the fiber arts competitions. Here are some ribbon winners in the crochet competition. The tan shawl on the left was the Grand Champion and was made by my friend Connie. The photo doesn't do it justice. It's in lace weight yarn and just a great piece. The doily on the right was Champion in it's category and also exceptional. The brown/purple gradient is one of my entries - the Decadent Bliss shawl pattern by Laurinda Reddig.

Some more crochet entries. This is called the Funky Chunky hat. :-) What fun.

Another of my entries. Wanderin' and Wonderin' also by Laurinda Reddig. I do like Laurinda's patterns!

I wish I had a better photo of this lovely shawl and also knew the name of the pattern.

This year's featured craft was felting. There were some absolutely amazing entries.

The next one is a tower on a rotating base. Incredible.

Some closeups of parts of the tower

I was pleased to see crochet displayed by some of the vendors this year. I always look for crochet friendly vendors and support them as much as I can. Lilliput Yarn had a lot of shawls displayed in their booth, and three of them were crocheted. I also love that the name of her business was inspired by her Corgi, and her yarns have dog related names.

This is the Lost Lake Shawl by Noriko Ho. It was the pattern for this year's Rose City Yarn Crawl mystery crochet along.

This lavender shawl was also made from a Rose City Yarn Crawl mystery crochet along pattern. Vicki's Hike by Julie Blagojevich was the pattern for 2017.

Lastly this is the Taegan Shawl by Kendrea Beers.

It's not surprising the next vendors chose to display a crocheted shawl since they're makers of hooks. Gina and Rob of Treasured Hooks make hand turned hooks in a variety of shapes to fit any hand. 

They had a version of the popular Virus Shawl by Julia Marquardt in their booth. 

Rock N' More Accents, a maker of magnetic shawl clasps had this gorgeous shawl in her booth. I didn't get a chance to ask the pattern name, but it looks like the Sunset Shawl by Laurinda Reddig. It's pinned with a lovely amethyst crystal. 

That's all I had time for at OFFF this year. Next year I'll have to remember not to schedule a vacation that will overlap it.

*Postscript regarding Luddites

You might be familiar with the commonly accepted definition of the term Luddite as a person who is opposed to progress and technology, and that is the way I used it above. However, this is a bit unfair to the original Luddites. They were a group of skilled textile workers in early 19th century England. They weren't opposed to technology for it's own sake but rather that some factory owners used the machinery to get around standard labor practices such as apprenticeships and also produced low quality goods. See this article on Smithsonian Magazine's website if you're interested in the story. I'm not opposed to technology either. Heavens, without computers and the internet, we wouldn't have Ravelry. I just want technology to work!

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