Black Swamp Spinners' Guild Event!

Well, Larry finally found time to download a rather large packet of photographs, so let me tell you about the day trip we took this past Saturday to the Black Swamp fiber event in Bowling Green, OH -- where once the Black Swamp Land Company sold shares to unwitting souls for perfectly useless swamp land.  George Washington was a shareholder.   I'm not making this up.

What a season!  It's a time of new, celery-fresh greens -- I think of it as Baby Green, particularly on the coming-to-life willows, which generate fronds that look just like crocheted fringe, or some kind of exotic Italian novelty yarn made into skinny scarves:

Bowling Green is one of those midwestern/Easten woodland communities that you'd drive right on by unless you knew better.  Of course, it's home to Bowling Green University, a pretty good institution actually with a much better than average history department and a reputation for taking very good care of its graduate students.  When you first drive into town, the university fills the right hand side of your car windows, and fast-food restaurants the left side.  You have to keep driving.  The downtown area has blossomed since I first encountered the town; now, it has a marvelous independent coffee shop called Grounds for Thought, a truly wonderful restaurant called Sam B's (where we had a great lunch -- really great), and a whole range of interesting shops covering a half-mile or so of street.  SO you don't need to stop on the fast-food strip if you don't want to.  That's a major change. 

At the festival, which is held at the Wood County Fairgrounds in nice-enough buildings, we found Riin Gill of Ann Arbor -- who is finding who here?  Riin is the one with purple hair:

....and then we moved on.  It's a small show -- but a good one.  Here's a general view from one side of the main building -- tap on the pictures to make them bigger:

....Here is Bad Amy, by her own definition a small-town girl who made good with perfectly astonishing bags (totes, gadget bags, etc.) and a new line of drop-dead gorgeous hand-painted yarn, the best of which is semi-solid:

....and here is (in order) a cute little fella found in one of the booths, and some YARN!!!!  and some MORE YARN!!!!!!!!!

So, you see, it's worth the drive -- in this case, maybe an hour and a half, perhaps two if you take your time, which I'm never inclined to do when I'm driving (VROOOOOM).  I bought some stunning green semi-solid skeins from Riin that blend beautifully with some of her DK-weight variegated yarns (already in the studio).  And we found some really lovely hand-painted alpaca -- bought quite a few batches actually, though there are only a few skeins per batch, from an alpaca and llama farmer.

Time now to go to sleep so that I can greet the morrow, as they used to say. 

svb