~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs. I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading? Take a photo and share it either on your blog or on Flickr. Leave a link below to share your photo with the rest of us! ~ Ginny at small things

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Good morning!

This yarn-along is a tad different, since it’s really going to be a quick overview of my weekend at Berryville. Hope you don’t mind.

As you can see in the picture above … the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival was a wonderful chance to add to my stash. I bought over 800 yards of West Virginian-raised heavy worsted-weight wool in a gorgeous, natural oatmeal color. Maureen Pritchard, the shepherdess and spinner at the Barefoot Spinner, had such lovely, natural colors I had a devil-of-a-time picking the one I wanted. The wool is spun from her suffolk, corriedale and cormo sheep — it will be lovely knit into a cabled vest!

I also got a t-shirt since I volunteered on Friday to help set-up the festival — 5 hours of schlepping tables and chairs, erecting tents and inventorying the festival wares were hours well-spent. It was a lovely day in Berryville and the camraderie of the folks behind SVFF made it great fun to be a helper.

I didn’t do much knitting on my cabled creation while at the festival — too busy teaching a couple of classes and then working in the booth. By the time I got back to my hotel, I ate, checked emails and then headed to bed. Whew it was exhausting … but I would do it again in a heartbeat! The classes went well … the Classic Celtic Cabled Clutch (or pillow top) was well-received and I just uploaded the pattern to Ravelry and Craftsy in case you’d like to give the cabling a try. The Chill-Chaser Cowl is also uploaded to my Ravelry pattern store — this is the model I used in the colorwork class.

The book you see poking out under the pile of luscious wool is one I just got — newly published (like yesterday) from XRX, Jean Frost’s Stitches for Tailored Knits is a fabulous book, packed with stitch patterns that add texture and color to knitted jackets or other garments where you’d like a firm, almost woven, fabric. There are no jacket-patterns in this book … you’ll need to get her other book, Custom Knit Jackets: Casual to Couture to find patterns. This is pure stitchionary and it is wonderful. After all my cabling designs that I’ve got rattling round in my head, I’ll turn to more texture/color, using this book! Fun.

So what’s on your needles and book table? Wanna play …