The Fiber Fest that Wasn't - Day 2

On Friday night at DFW Fiber Fest is the big event.  There is a baked potato bar, and cake, and door prizes, and sometimes a raffle, and always a speaker.  In the early days we had trunk shows and fashion shows, but the last decade or so they've hosted a speaker.  Many times, it has been Franklin Habit and he's a favourite of mine.  So today I decided to wear an outfit drawn by him.

 

You can get the t-shirt in his Society6 shop, along with many other cool items, and Maker's Mercantile used to sell the leggings but they are sold out.

The shawl is from yarn I purchased a couple of DFW Fiber Fests ago, or more, from Knitting Lagniappe.  Misty spun one hank and Sony spun the other and they became one of my UFOs until late last summer.  I'd looked forward to showing them the end result this weekend - guess I will have to do it next year.  The two hanks go together so well they look like one:

 

The yarns are very soft merino, and the shawl is a nice size, and cuddly, and the kind of hug some of us need right now - especially on a very grey and rainy and chilly Friday.

Today at DFW Fiber Fest I was supposed to take a class similar to yesterday's but in another format: "Colorwork Crochet Cables".  My skills here are more basic than in knitting coloured cables so I was looking forward to learning some new skills.

The other class, which I was really interested in learning, was Franklin Habit's "Snip and Zip" class on steeking and insetting zippers.  I've inset zippers in fabric, but not knitting.  And steeking is scary but he does it often, so is a good person from whom to learn.




Lucky for his Patreons, he did a demo of steeking as a live feed, and luckily for me, I could watch it as a late lunch half-hour.  It was charming, and we can watch the preparation and video later also:

Work was less so, and busy enough that I was glad I put in my farmstand order for tomorrow instead of trying to go today.  So I didn't get very far with my knitting.

The instructions for the yarn is to use each colour completely.  I want to have smaller stripes 

and thought of doing five-row stripes because 3x5=15 and it's the DFW Fiber fest Quinceañera this year.  It's a two-row pattern stitch, though, and that would be problematic with the colour changes because they won't look clean every time.  So I decided on six rows of each colour, and this also works for me because 3x6=18 and in Jewish numerology (called gematria) this is propitious because the letters in the word תִּי, which means "life", add up to eighteen.  I'll take that as an omen.  "Next year in DFW," we're already telling each other.