Can't Buy Me Lace

Can't buy me lace...

While I was doing a stint of guard duty at the festival's skein and garment display with other monitors, two women discovered a lace scarf there and asked us urgently where they could buy yarn that was that thin.

We told them, out in the vendors' tents.

Later I mentioned their interest to the maker of the scarf, and she said you can't buy yarn that weight.

I knew she'd spun the yarn, but I hadn't realized that was the only way to get it. Oops.

In the same vein, last week someone wanted to find a source of thin nettle yarn and, having seen the little bit of thin nettle yarn I'd spun,* asked whether I had, or could make up, an entire skein to sell.

Regretfully I had to decline, because I'd spun all the nettle fibre there was to spin and I wouldn't be able to produce thin nettle yarn economically given my experience level and the type of tools I use.

Was able to give the person some information that might serve to help source suitable yarn, facts about spinning methods and principles and how they relate to the properties of bast fibres, processing, and finishing treatments. That was cool.


*Yeah, I spun nettle! You know I'd been looking forward to that.