Fiber Weekend Away, Part 3: NEFF

Sunday we had the time change so we were all up early, packed up and ready to go.  We headed over to the New England Fiber Festival and got there right after 9 am when they opened.  The entire festival was inside a huge building.  It was so nice to walk around on level floors and not have to worry about the weather at a festival.  Since I was with friends, we took our time and chatted all day and visited every booth.  We didn't end up leaving until close to 2:30 and while exhausted, it was well worth the trip.

I had some fun shopping and browsing all of the booths.  My first stop was for beads from Bead Biz.  I needed some size 6 beads for future projects and they had a great selection and decent prices:

It's hard to tell but there's 1100 beads per color in that tiny little bag.  I'm going to be knitting with beads a ton moving forward.  I love how it looks.

I didn't buy any yarn at the festival.  Not a huge surprise for me, since I've starting spinning more I've been all about the fiber:

6 ounces of 90% alpaca and 10% camel from Alpaca Obsession

About 4 ounces of targhee from Purdy Thangz

1.3 ounces of silk from Holiday Yarns

4.3 ounces of mixed BFL/silk from Bittersweet

I have been searching for a small Turkish spindle for a couple months now.  I found some great possibilities on Etsy but I wanted to try to buy from someone in person.  I say that the Spunky Eclectic booth had some turkish spindles and when I asked they pulled out the very last one they had in a smaller size.

It's a Jenkins made from Chechen wood and weighs .98 ounces or 28 grams.  I haven't taken the time to try it out yet but I'm saving some of the silk I purchase just for this purpose :)

Overall, I would have to say that NEFF was more enjoyable than Rhinebeck but that may be because I went to NEFF on Sunday and Rhinebeck on Saturday.  This year, NEFF felt like it had lots of vendors for felting, definitely a main theme with many of the booths.  Similar to Webs, I would definitely go again but only if I could connect it to a larger trip with other stops involved.

Next up, my biggest purchase from the festival that was definitely a splurge and then later a handspun knitalong.