Kevin the Yarn Pet and Shrek's Cousin

I had a terrific time at the Michigan Fiber Festival. I always do. The weather was perfect. Really. Perfect. I bought almost everything on my shopping list. And I had so many wonderful interactions with fiber folks. A great week.

Immediately after returning, I did a week-long house/dog/cat sitting stint. So I wasn’t at home or at my computer. After that, I had several catch-up chores, mostly to meet deadlines for my upcoming workshops at Spin-Off Autumn Retreat.

I’ve been busy. I’ve been ignoring my blog. And I have so many things I want to write about. Let me start here.

At MFF, I roomed with Nancy Shroyer, the brains behind Nancy’s Knit Knacks. I was the designated driver for the week; Nancy had flown in from North Carolina. In appreciation for my taxi work, Nancy gave me one of her newest inventions, a “yarn pet”. It is a device to hold yarn that has been wound on a ball winder. As it happened, I was just starting a knitting project from such a ball of yarn. So, I put the yarn pet to work right away. Even though I am ever so fond of my yarn bowl, I found the yarn pet to be a very handy tool.

I named it “Kevin”. Why? The night before MFF, I had a dream that I got a kitten and I named it Kevin. I think that is a weird dream and a weird name for a cat. It stuck in my head. So, when Nancy handed me the yarn pet I was compelled to name it Kevin.

(As an aside: the very next night I had a dream that I got two kittens and I named them “Kelvin” and “Celcius”. I am holding on to those names for whenever I get a pair of pets.)

After the festival, Nancy sent me an adaptor for the yarn pet so that I can use it for knitting from cones. So very nice of her, don’t you think?

One night, Nancy and I went to dinner with Rich and Patsy Zawistoski. Patsy had recently been to New Zealand teaching innumerable spinning workshops. On her journey, she was given a lock of wool from one of those Merino sheep that had escaped annual shearing for a number of years; they called the sheep “Shrek’s Cousin”. She showed us the lock and Nancy took pictures. Very good looking wool. Very very long lock. (Sorry for the fuzzy shots; we were in the car.)

I have to admit that I felt sorry for the sheep that had to carry all that wool.