Last weekend, I was a vendor in the Flagstaff Wool Festival for the second time, and it was exhausting but wonderful.

Two years ago when I was there last, I was 8 months pregnant with our youngest son, which definitely made it challenging and made me extremely grateful for the help of my husband and our older children. However, I also had a lot less to sell then. I was focusing mostly on my handspun yarn and art batts and only had a very small supply of handdyed yarn then.

This time, it was a lot easier in the sense that I wasn’t eight months pregnant, which generally does tend to make everything easier. However, I had five or six times as much available to sell. I decided to get a double-sized booth, and I’m so glad I did. It was full to capacity, but I think it looked quite nice. Here’s the left half:

 

…and here’s the right side, complete with me and our youngest son.

 

I had lovely neighbors on both sides. On my right were a couple young ladies selling herbs and other plants for natural dyeing as well as their own handdyed yarn in a wonderful array of colors made from natural dyes. On my right was a group of lovely ladies who had cotton sliver to sell, including some that was naturally green! These ladies were clearly pros at the whole festival thing!

Saturday was crazy-busy with somewhere between five and fifteen people in my booth at a time. I never really sat down. Interestingly, I found the morning shoppers were more interested in my yarn while many more of the afternoon shoppers came for the art batts or hand-dyed top to spin or felt. My best seller was my Sparkly Merino Sock yarn followed closely by my So Silky Sock yarn.

My husband and our oldest daughter spent the day keeping our 4-year-old and almost 2-year-old busy and happily occupied on the playground, exploring the Pioneer museum, going through the old train there, and even getting to hold a young lamb. I, on the other hand, never even made it to the side with the animals. It was just too busy!

Sunday was a bit calmer, so I had more opportunity to visit with all of my fellow fiber lovers as they came through the booth and find out what they enjoyed doing. I felt like I was with my “tribe.” I also had a bit of time to spin up one of my art batts that I have been wanting to get my hands on for a while–Tahitian Sunrise.

I had brought quite a few samples to the festival, including a couple of my handwoven vests, and I had several requests to write out instructions on how to weave them. I’m planning to do that in another blog post fairly soon.

The festival was a great success. I already have more yarn on order to dye up the colorways I sold out of, but my main focus for the next week or two is going to be enjoying the company of my family, especially the little ones who have had a little less mom time than usual while I prepared for the festival.

Even though I have been doing this for many years now, to tell the truth I always feel a little bit vulnerable putting my yarn and fiber creations out there to be “judged” because there’s a lot of me in my work. I’m sure you guys feel the same about everything you knit and crochet and weave. Having such a great response to my work was really exciting and wonderful and heart-warming.