This weekend was a serious reminder that fall is not only coming, it's here and planning to stay for a while.  Saturday was a lovely sunny day, but it was also definitely sweater weather as I made my way over to Yarn Con.  Chicago may not be close to Maryland or Rhinebeck, but for those of us who haven't been able to make it to the eastern side of the country for a full on fiber festival, Yarn Con was a pleasant surprise. There were a remarkable number of indie dyers and spinners to go along with all of those who also made wooly goods and knitting notions. 

It seems to me like the best part of these festivals, big and small, is the opportunity to meet the people who make the lovely goods that make the crafting experience so much more pleasurable.  I have made several purchases from Emily Parson's Sophie's Toes and have had a couple email conversations with her as well, and try to keep up with her blog, but had never met her in person before the weekend. 

Emily was truly delightful to meet and talk to, and I hope I'll get the chance to see her at more local Chicago craft events.  My only regret was that I didn't get to talk to her at all about her quilting!  I was ever so pleasantly surprised that, in spite of my late arrival time (everything co-ordinates around a certain someone's nap these days) she still had both some Magic Balls and some "Candy Corn" colored sock yarn.  I've been stalking the Magic Balls on her Etsy shop, but I have had a hard time getting to that party on time too, so I never was able to get one in my hot little hands.  But I had better luck at Yarn Con and got this lovely "Calico Cat" Magic Ball.

For those of you who, like myself, didn't know what a Magic Ball was until recently, it's a skein of Yarn that Emily creates by joining lengths of yarn from a variety of different colorways.  It's a bit like a hand dyed version of Noro in a lovely soft sock weight merino.   Emily has a fun scarf pattern that she uses as a model, but she also showed me a Baby Surprise Jacket that was absolutely adorable.    I think mine has a scarfy destiny...

I love to take closeups of hand-dyed yarn because you can really see the details and appreciate what makes a yarn special this way.  In this case, the lovely speckles of orange and yellow that take this yarn from being just another Halloween themed colorway to something that is quite artful as well as being fun. 

Emily also has something else that sets her apart where her dyeing is concerned: she makes a remarkable number of really delicious and still man-friendly colorways. My husband has recently corrected me to say that it's not that he doesn't like color in his life, it's just that he doesn't really like too many colors and he doesn't really want his socks to be bright.  I could have brought home a whole basket full of colorways that I think he would have been okay with  (and that doesn't mean that there wasn't plenty of brilliant color at Emily's booth!)