Mainely Wooly

My husband and I spent our first vacation without kids in Maine–Bar Harbor and Castine. It was a lovely time with lots of rest, nature and fun. And of course, wool. It turns out Maine is a pretty wooly place.

In Bar Harbor there is cute and fun Bee’s Yarns, Sweaters and Candy. Yes, candy and yarn! What could be bad, right? No photos of the store but I did pick up some real Maine wool in the form of Blue Star’s Favorite Alpaca Yarn. A 70% alpaca/30% merino blend in Baltic Black and Midnight Meadow. Yummy!

A swing through Blue Hill enabled a stop at String Theory. I had known their yarns but never seen so much in one place. Stunning! And the building that houses the store is another work of art and labor of love. Most of what I got at ST was for gifts but I did get some Blue Faced Sport in a rich blue they call Delft. You will be seeing that in the future, for sure. I am already swatching.

The crowning achievement of my woolcation was an afternoon at Fiber College in Searsport. I was lucky enough to take a Photo Safari class with Gail Zucker. The campground location of Fiber College is beautiful and the class was great. Gail knows what she is doing, as Shear Spirit and Craftivism have shown, and she can also teach it. I am a real camera newbie and this class was pretty fast paced but I still learned some things. More progress will be made in early October as I have signed up for two classes with Gail at Interweave Knitting Lab!

My first assignment was to take photos of blue things.  I found some really cool things–like this painted table.  Then, because I don’t always follow directions well, I took some pictures of this guy–

 Really, how could I not?