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!

Please leave your comments below!

Rose City Yarn Crawl

Last weekend was the Rose City Yarn Crawl in Portland, OR which is always a fun, fibery time with raffles, food, and of course, much yarn. The yarn crawl fun actually starts in late January when the first clues are released for the mystery crochet and knit alongs. To be honest, I’m not usually a fan of mystery CAL/KALs. You just never know what you’re going to get. (Duh! It's a mystery!) But I’ve never seen a pattern from the RCYC that I didn’t like so once again I participated in the mystery crochet along. This year’s pattern was the Rimsky-Korsakoffee-Cake Shawl by Kat Streiby. It's named for the Rimsky-Korsakoffee House in the Buckman neighborhood of southeast Portland, and it is a real stunner.  It’s a triangle lace shawl with 3 “cake” layers and “frosting” in between. Each cake layer is a different lace pattern which kept the project interesting. It was so much fun to watch as people posted photos of their shawls in progress then to see them wearing their finished shawls on the yarn crawl. Here's my version. Don't ask me what kind of cake it is. Green. It's green cake. Pistachio or creme de menthe. Something green!

This year 3 friends and I did the crawl together. We went to shops on the east side of Portland. They were all new to me except one so it was fun to explore. I started out with good intentions of taking lots of photos. At our first stop, Wool N Wares in West Linn, I did pretty well. A flock of partying flamingos greeted us in the parking lot.

 

Follow that guy with the party hat! He must know where to go!

Here's my friend Karen in the required shot of a companion in front of the shop.

 

From there, it was kind of downhill as far as photography went. Here are Karen, my other friend Sarah, and I at Twisted, a great shop on Broadway. Karen is wearing last year's mystery CAL project as a scarf, and Sarah has on the mystery KAL cowl for this year.

That was the last time I remembered to get any photos. Oops. I'll do better next year.

Each shop features a pattern or two designed for the yarn crawl that participants get free if they make a purchase in the shop. The shops also discount the yarn needed for the patterns. The crochet pattern featured at Close Knit on Alberta was the Mahonia Shawl by Ann Bressler. Mahonia, or Oregon grape, is the Oregon state flower. It has yellow flowers and blue berries superficially resembling grapes. I purchased 2 skeins of Bumblebirch Heartwood in the Atlantic colorway to make it.

Yarn crawling tends to make a person hungry so after visiting Close Knit, we went across the street to the Salt and Straw ice cream shop. Salt and Straw isn’t an ordinary ice cream shop. It has many unique flavors like pear and blue cheese, cinnamon snickerdoodle, Stumptown coffee & Burnside bourbon, and Abequina olive oil. Yes, olive oil. To put it mildly I was quite skeptical of that last one. But since we could sample anything we wanted, I decided to give it a shot. It was delicious. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn't tasted it. The flavor was vanilla caramel with just a hint of olive oil on the finish. Delightful!

After our ice cream adventure, we had 2 more yarn shops on our agenda. The first was Yarnia which is a custom yarn shop. You can choose from among all the fibers they have available, and they'll wind your choices together on a cone for you. It was very busy and a bit overwhelming. I want to go back when the staff is less busy and has time to help me create a good combination of fibers. Our last stop was at Yarntastic in Sellwood where I found the small size of darning needles I'd been needing for weaving in ends of light weight yarns. By that time, we were all ready to call it a day. That was the extent of my adventures, but my intrepid companions all went out again for at least one more day. It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

What A Crocheter Does When She's Bored

I recently found myself between projects. (The horror!) I decided to work on a couple of long standing WIPs and not start anything new because I'm waiting for a crochet-along that's about to begin. I'll have limited time for that so will want to devote myself to it completely. Unfortunately, I got bored with the WIPs. What to do? Learn a new technique!

The Winter 2016 issue of Interweave Crochet has an article by Darla Fanton on illusion crochet. I had never tried that technique and thought it looked interesting. Darla developed a method to create illusions with crochet after seeing it done in knitting. When viewed straight on, the piece has straight stripes. But when viewed at an angle, a different pattern is visible. It involves strategic placement of single crochets in the back loop to create the design on a background of standard single crochet under both loops. 

I spent a contented hour making the swatch from the article. Here's what it looks like straight on:

At a slight angle:

And at a steeper angle:

Pretty cool, eh? In addition to the tutorial, Darla has designs for an illusion crochet hat and scarf in this same issue of Interweave Crochet. 

Darla is an expert in many of the less common crochet techniques such as broomstick lace, hairpin lace, and Tunisian entrelac. If you ever get a chance to take one of her classes, I highly recommend it. 

Rose City Yarn Crawl

The crochet-along I mentioned above is part of the annual Rose City Yarn Crawl in Portland, OR on March 3-6. This will be my third year participating. Both the crawl and the CAL are loads of fun. It's a mystery CAL. We know the finished object is a shawl but that's it. There's also a mystery knit-along. I think my favorite part of the yarn crawl is seeing all the beautiful finished projects from the CAL/KAL being worn in the streets of Portland and surrounding suburbs. If you're in the area or just enjoy mystery "alongs", join in the fun. Here's the Ravelry group for the crawl with forum threads for the CAL/KAL. The first clue comes out in 2 days!

Call Me Cleo(patra)

What's your favorite project? For me, it's often the one I just finished. Right now, that's Feathers of Pharaohs by 10 Hours Or Less. I've loved this design since it was first posted on Ravelry. I got a great deal on two colors (Redwood and Honey) of Shibui Staccato yarn at Knit Purl in Portland during last spring's Rose City Yarn Crawl. This merino and silk yarn was fabulous to work with. I wanted a third color for this project so I dove into my stash for a dark teal Marion Foale wool that my sister had sent me for my birthday. The Marion Foale is a bit lighter weight than the Staccato, but it wasn't a problem. I'm thrilled with how it came out, and can't wait to wear it. 

    

What about you? What's your current favorite project? The one you just finished? The one you're working on? Or the one you're dreaming of?