The very model of restraint

Last weekend was the annual Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. A slight damper was cast on this year’s festival because the lovely Sewing Goodness was unable to join me, as volcanoes and thunderstorms interfered. Yes, nature. We get it. You’re a badass. Why for you want to ruin our girls weekend, though? You sure can be a jerk sometimes.

But I went on with a few other lovely ladies and a good time was had by all. I’d been on a yarn diet for some months; hadn’t bought a THING and was prepared to go nutso.

But, surprisingly, I didn’t. This is the sum total of my haul. Half it isn’t even for me.

Firstly, this adorable robot magnet for my friend the K-bot, who was also visiting this weekend.

And a souvenir keychain for my father-in-law, who finds the concept of an entire festival devoted to sheep and yarn just fricking hilarious. This made him laugh, which made me happy, because it was a joke that could have fallen very flat.

And for myself, two skeins of wool from a local family farm and a coffee mug. A coffee mug with sheep on it.

That’s it. Seriously. There was *lots* of stuff I *wanted* to buy, but did not. After going for so long without spending any money on yarn, and severely cutting back on superfluous spending for no other reason than frugal responsibility, I found it very easy to say “no” to myself when I wanted to drop $75 on a skein of cashmere, even though I had no idea what I would do with it once I had it. I should really concentrate on burning through the three four 18-gallon rubbermaid tubs of yarn in my sewing room before I go off to buy more. I do prefer to buy from local stores and independent farms, and I could have given them more of my money than I did. But I was strictly limiting myself to what I needed for the first ten items on my Ravelry queue. Even that, though, I couldn’t really find anything that really jumped out at me as The Perfect Yarn.

Here, have a picture of a goat trying to sit in a chair.