Hiya. :)
I went to the New England Textile Arts Spa Knit and Spin on February 27, 28 & March 1, in Freeport. It was really really really fun! I was there as a vendor, and we did pretty well, almost as well as last year. I had a great time. Unfortunately I was too busy to get out of the vending room and go hang out with anyone and see all the lovely stuff people were knitting and spinning, but I did manage to get out of my booth and acquire some lovely stuff to knit and spin for myself!

This is some lovely fiber and yarn from Ball and Skein. The 2 bags of fiber are hand painted Alpaca, Merino, and Silk Top in colors "Jonquil" and "April Showers", 2 oz. each. I love the colors! The Jonquil is so nice and bright, and the April Showers is a pretty blue/purple blend. They are on opposite sides of the color wheel. In the Fall 2008 issue of Spin Off, I read Amy Tyler's article about Blending Colors at the Wheel, and I wanted to try it. When I saw these two lovely colors of yummy fiber, I knew I wanted to use them for that purpose! It will be exciting to see the result.
I also got two skeins of sock yarn, "Water Colors" Super Sock 416, 75% merino/25% nylon. I got a nice rusty red and a luscious, rich purple. Both skeins have a lot of color variety in them. The purple skein has blue-purple, dark royal purple, a plummy berry, and snatches of a light periwinkle. The rusty red has orange, red, rust, pumpkin, gold and burgundy. I love dem.
At the Quiltessentials booth I succumbed to a couple skeins of one of my favorite yarns in the whole world, hand dyed yarn from End of the World Farm. I have knit several socks out of their sock yarn; I love their colors. It is so fun to knit with them! The top skein is a wool/nylon blend which I will make into a pair of socks, and I think this time I would like to try making them both at the same time, from the toe up, using each end of the skein simultaneously. The other skein is 100% wool, and I am going to make plain mittens out of it. The colors are so yummy. :)
I got some fiber at the Spunky Eclectic booth. I got one braid of fiber that is not pictured; I will post about it later. At the top is a batt from Grafton Fibers. I love the rich colors of this! On the left is 100% BFL in handpainted color "Mercury". I like the brown and green together, very forest-y. It is so soft! On the bottom is handpainted 50% superwash merino/50% tencel in color Aspen. I love tencel blends, so shiny and so soft. I don't know what I will make from these yarns after I have spun them. The tencel blend would be good for socks, but I am thinking mittens for the other two.

Also from Spunky Eclectic are these three yarns (actually I got four yarns, but in another post I will show you what I am making from the fourth one). At the top is a lovely handpainted aqua with streaks of gray merino lace weight yarn, destined for a shawl, no doubt. The color is called Shark. The second skein is a sport weight superwash merino in a color called "Route 66". It has 10% nylon, so I will make socks from it. The bottom skein is Tough Sock sock yarn, in a great red called "Lobster"... well you know I had to have that. It is such a vibrant red! And I do love lobster....
Springtide Farm was in the booth next to us, so of course I was led astray by these two little skeins of dark red 100% cashmere. I wish you could feel how soft they are! The will become a sweet little scarf to keep me warm and happy in any weather. I have a navy blue one I made from their cashmere a couple years ago, and I just love it! I know I will love this red version just as much. It feels so good!! Nothing, NOTHING, feels like cashmere. It is truly heavenly.
This is Spunky Eclectic fiber I mentioned at the start. It is a wool/nylon/bamboo blend called Panda, and the color is called "Walking on the Sun" (wooohooo! Smashmouth!) that is a hot blend of sunny yellow, hot white, and orange. It looks just like the pictures of the sun you see from space, yellow/white with darker orange sunspots. It is so nice and bright and warm that I just had to start spinning it right away, the day I got back from SPA, which was the first of two really snowy, wintery days. Nothing better to have than a spot of sun to spin on a snowy day! Tomorrow I will tell you about how the spinning is going :)