Sunkissed Fiber Festival and Knitting Hats
- Celeste Ramirez
- 5 hours ago
- 5 min read
On Sunday January 25th, I attended the first annual Sunkissed Fiber Festival in Hillsborough County, Florida! For the past couple of years, I saw so many fiber festivals being hosted in places far away from my balmy state. Florida is not a place too welcoming of wool and insulating clothing. In fact, the temperature through the end of January was the lowest it has been in years, a brisk 27 degrees Fahrenheit! I know there are parts of the country that would have been thrilled to have temperatures above 20 degrees this winter.
Thankfully, the fact that we have such balmy weather most of the time did not stop the lovely folks of the Bay Area from running a local fiber fest! Here were my favorite parts as a drop-in visitor on the final day of the festival.
Meeting the People
The vendor space was bustling with activity! There were over 30 vendors, including the Bay Area Knitting Guild who had a booth to increase visibility for their group. Other vendors included Three by the Sea and Dizzy Blonde Studios, some dyers local to Florida.
The vendors were so knowledgeable, and so happy to talk about the craft that we all share. I went with the goal of matching some old Superwash Merino yarn I have had in my stash for years, and the ladies at Dizzy Blonde Studios were not only helpful in my selecting the fiber content and colors (which I'll show in a bit!) but they were so much fun to talk to. I also talked to another crafter who makes stitch markers, shawl sticks, and I-Cord tools from wood, who had a lot of advice about laser cutting tools!
Engaging with the Artistry
At every booth, there were gorgeous knit and crocheted and woven goods. I could not believe the artistry on display.
These stunning pieces were on display to showcase the yarns. There were colorwork shirts and sweaters, shawls with delightfully intricate stitch patterns, lacework in both knit and crochet fabric, and so much more. Not to mention, there were not only yarn vendors present!
At least 4 of the 30 vendors were woodworking and tools vendors, selling their weaving shuttles and stitch markers and shawl sticks. There were vendors for drop spindles and looms, lucets and felting needles, handmade I-cord tools and carders, and so much more! While the vast majority of the vending space was made up of yarn vendors, other fiber arts crafts were not left out thankfully!
The Yarn
Of course, how can you talk about a fiber festival without mentioning the yarn?? Can you imagine a color, a shade, a combination? It was represented here. The booths were packed with so many possibilities! A large number of the yarns were superwash Merino wool. There were some that were 100% wool and some that had a lovely blend of Merino and cashmere. I was surprised at how many also contained nylon, but it makes sense with the recommendations to use a 20-25% nylon blend for knitting socks.
My favorite booths were Dizzy Blonde Studios, Three by the Sea Designs, and Robin's Promise Yarn Co. Their booths had so much to offer, between the yarn and the personalities of the lovely folks running them.
My Haul
I went into the festival with a goal in mind. I have had two skeins of 100% hand dyed superwash Merino that I bought years apart from Hobby Lobby. The first one, I thought I would use on a crocheted shawl. The second one, I bought because I thought it would compliment the first. They are two different shades of grey, one with splashes of orange and the other with longer (but still short) color changes between mahogany and dark steel grey.
My goal at the fiber festival was to find complimentary yarns for both of these, ideally to pull them together into a lovely project somehow. Dizzy Blonde Studios helped me out here and picked out an excellent pairing.
I'm thankful I went in with a goal in mind. If I hadn't, I might have gotten swept up in all of the different vendors and added too many things to my stash! As it is, I am trying to use my stash, not add things to it!
Knitting Hats for Charity
In my last post, I mentioned the Yarn and Coffee Hat Drive for the Advent Health Cancer Center here in Central Florida. The idea for this drive honestly came from a desire to make hats using yarn I have in my stash. I figured I might take this energy and send it out into the community! Even if other people didn't want to shop their stashes, they would have an excuse to explore their creativity for a worthy cause.
Personally, I have made a total of 7 knit hats and 1 crocheted hat (so far) towards this effort. With everyone else's contributions, so far we have donated 49 hats total! There are still a few weeks left in the drive, and I have another huge donation to collect, which might push the total donations to over 100! The charity has been so beautiful to see. I want to celebrate everyone's creative efforts, so I am going to try to plan an event in late March for everyone who participated.
I have also used this opportunity to be very intentional with my knitting learning. Each of the hats I have made used a different skill, had a different construction, and played with colors I would have never put together, myself.
Represented here are hats made with 1x1 ribbing, 2x2 ribbing, folded ribbing, stockinette, colorwork, mosaic, and delightful textured stitches. I also did a lot of experimentation with the finishing of these hats, as they were all worked bottom-up. For some of them, I used a larger cable and the magic loop method. For others, I used DPNs. Once, I used two cabled needles, even! My favorite outcome was the City Walk Hat, and my favorite to work on was the Humboldt Hat.
The way I found these was through Ravelry. I used the Advanced Search feature and filtered the results heavily. All of these are made with #4 weight cotton, so I looked for patterns that were written for an aran or worsted weight yarn. I also learned I do not knit as tightly as I crochet! These all ended up being slightly larger than I was expecting, except for the City Walk Hat, which is the exception. I made that with a #3 cotton/viscose blend.
It has been a thrilling start to the year with all of these lessons in knitting. I have been gobbling up new techniques and using them in as many different cases as I can think to. I am excited to share more about my upcoming projects; but that will have to wait until next time!
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