I really wish I lived in Taos. It has many of the great things that Santa Fe has (and even more yarn stores) and less of the bad stuff like traffic and crime and crowds. And it is drop dead beautiful up near the ski area, especially now when the aspens are turning golden.
Our day started with driving up the Turquoise Trail. We could have driven up through Albuquerque and seen the thousands of hot-air balloons from the Balloon Fiesta but this event makes the already awful drivers here even worse. They actually stop ON THE INTERSTATE to gawk at the balloons.
Traffic started to get bad again with all the construction they are doing near Tesuque and the Santa Fe Opera House. They are adding some neat retaining walls with large artistic renditions of lizards, birds, snakes, and rabbits.
After Santa Fe we hit Espanola. I have heard there is a Fiber Arts Center there now but I had no clue where it was. (Espanola is a relatively isolated small town with a huge heroin problem and the highest heroin overdose rate in the country. Experts think it is generational and keeps getting passed down from parents to children.)
Next we drove through Velarde, one of the greenest parts of NM. It is a pretty valley full of fruit orchards. I went to the largest produce market, the Fruit Basket, and purchased a bushel of Jonathans, a mini bushel of Winesaps, some tomatoes and garlic. I also unwisely purchased some monster zucchini for 25 cents each which we'll be eating all week.
We arrived in Taos about 10:30 am and the festival was starting to get crowded. In the past 10 years I've been attending I mainly spend my money at four booths - Fire Ant Ranch (where I first learned how to spin on a drop spindle) , La Plata Farms (I visited their sheep farm when I lived in SW Colorado), Palanca Farm (they have a booth full of books), and Elsa Sheep and Wool. Elsa S&W is all about Cormo. They sell ready-made garments and both worsted and woolen spun Cormo yarn in 2 weights. This Cormo is the Rolls Royce of yarn. I bought A LOT.
I purchased about 20 oz. of Romney from La Plata Farms for future socks.
I purchased two back issues of Spin-Off from Palanca Farm along with this wool/kid mohair blend, also for socks.
Some of the newer trends in knitting have finally reached the festival. I saw poncho kits and scarf yarn. The most crowded booth was one selling multicolored yarns. There were several booths that just sold felted items which I'd never seen before. I admired several angora rabbits and there was the cutest miniature Southdown sheep in the demo area. There was also a baby yak who was totally adorable.
I found Tracy Eichheim's Woolly Designs and checked out his spindles. The only heavier top-whorl spindles he had were Kokopellis. He had more bottom whorl spindles - actually throughout the festival I saw many more bottom-whorl spindles and many more Navajo spindles than I'd ever seen. Are top-whorl spindles going out of style?
Next we drove up to the ski area and found Taos Sunflower yarn shop. It was a cute building full of scarf and novelty yarns. They also had a good selection of Lamb's Pride for felting and all of Elsebeth's Lavold's new books and her silky wool line. I was in search of sock yarn but couldn't find any at all in the store. Lots of Mango Moon and Noro but no plain wool other than the Lamb's Pride.
Some of the most interesting fiber sightings of the day happened at the ski area. We went into a sporting goods store right near the lifts. I found lots of ready made Dale of Norway sweaters, including Norge, priced from $200-$250. Upon examing them I noticed that even though they were machine knit the tension was visibly different on the patterned part than the plain stockinette part. Interesting - the floats were pretty long as well on the inside of the sweaters. I also found Dale of Norway hats, some with a relatively simple colorwork pattern, for $59. They did have a fleece insert around the headband pattern but $59 seems high to me for a hat. I really liked the gorgeous Dale cardigan called Lysekloster - here's a photo.
Andean Software , also at the ski area, is a store full of Peruvian handknits and some raw alpaca fleece. This store has great prices and is definitely worth a trip. I debated getting some awesome knee socks done in about 20 colors but I know I can come up with something similar myself. The chullo hats were done in an extremely fine gauge and were just beautiful. They also had wonderful gloves, fingerless gloves, children's items, etc.
Next stop - Wool Festival of the Southwest in Farmington Nov 13-14. I think I'll get some alpaca and try harder to find another spindle.
