Festival Hoarde

I have a really busy couple of months ahead, preparing for my very first festival as a vendor. I will be joining Stephanie from A Tangled Yarn in Nicholasville, KY and Johanna of Ever Improving Me in Lexington, KY at the Kentucky Wool Festival in Falmouth, KY the first weekend of October.

One of the things I am doing in preparation for my first festival, is knitting a mountain of chunky handspun hats and cowls for sale. I find them fascinating to make, partially because handspun yarns are so much fun and so unique between skeins, and partially because they are great "instant gratification" projects for someone like me who usually knits socks on us1 needles!

Here are the first couple that I have finished :)

This cowl is the first one I made, from my own super chunky artsy handspun, and the one that started the whole idea for me. It doesn't look very tall, but its the perfect height once you put it on to keep your neck warm without taking up too much room inside your coat. It doesn't have any buttons, but I still love it.

This blue cowl is the one that has me on the hunt for awesome buttons for these cowls. I picked that button up at the KY Sheep and Fiber festival this year, but sadly, I don't remember what booth I bought it from. I just love how stockinette really shows off handspun to the fullest!

This brown cowl was done in seed stitch, from my own handspun, with super awesome buttons from Karen of StarryRoad Studio. I've decided to keep this one for myself, since the buttons are so amazing and it matches my winter coat flawlessly :)

I actually spent this morning knitting this cute, stripey, pink hat from some yarn sup by my friend Nellie from Yarn Sweet Yarn. It ended up sort of a weird size, in that it feels too shallow for an adult head to me, but too wide for a small child. It will probably get frogged and reknit. Its much easier for me to rip out a project like this and do it over again than most other projects because they just don't take very long to complete, so I don't feel like I have a million hours wrapped up in it!

This last one feels like an "Ugly Duckling" story to me, because I spun it and plied it with some random shiny commercial something, which I almost never do, and I really wasn't thrilled with how it looked in the skein. But when I actually took the time to knit it up, I feel that it has vastly improved, and I don't find it in the least repulsive anymore. I'm still looking for the perfect buttons for this one, but I'm sure they will expose themselves in plenty of time for the festival!

What is your favorite place to get buttons online? Leave a link in my comments, and I'll check out all of them!