DFW Fiber Fest

So, I went shopping last weekend.

Bought a little yarn.

This all is for specific projects. There was a list, a calculator and a clipboard involved:

This was all ooooh, pretty! purchases:I took three classes. One from Lily Chin, who is a big time knit and crochet designer who has worked with people like Isaac Mizrahi and Dianne Furstenberg. She was hilarious and not at all what I expected, although I did see her once on Craft Corner Deathmatch, so I guess I should have known she was funny.

I took two classes from JC Briar, who blew my mind. Very smart woman, JC, and a really good teacher. You can tell that she enjoys teaching and her handouts are five star handouts. I learned so much from her and since you do hands-on work in her class, I feel like I can do the things I learned without her there. She also has a book. I love using charts and now I feel like I can not only use the ones provided by designers, but create my own to help me handle tricky situations. I wasn't sure what she was going to tell me about charts that I didn't already know, but it turns out that you truly don't know what you don't know. She's brilliant and if she is teaching anywhere I can get to in the future, I'm going. She is also very nice and very interesting. I got the opportunity to hang with her a bit and feel very lucky to have met her, if only briefly.

I got to spend some time hanging out and drinking wine with Abby Franquemont. She is a master spinner and I wanted so badly to take her beginning spindle class, but it was on Friday and the whole SAHM thing makes Fridays not work out right now, so I had to live vicariously through my friend Amy. Amy took a full weekend of six classes with Abby. Amy bought a spinning wheel not to long ago and is already going great guns on it. It's amazing, really. Amy needs to draw my name for Secret Santa next year and give me that green handspun she showed me this weekend. Amy, are you reading this?

Anyway, I always love Fiber Fest and it gets better every year and I am friends with some of the board, so I know it sounds biased, but they do SUCH AN AWESOME JOB! I see first-hand how much work and thought and care they put into making it a great event for students, vendors, shoppers, and teachers.