My dad is unfortunately in the hospital which has been very stressful. We were going to skip the festival this year but then we thought that he will never be safer than he is at the hospital and we don’t know what life is going to look like going forward.

Frederick is about an hour away in Western Maryland so we knew we could get back quickly.

I had seen notices for crochet classes at FederickMade in the fall so when I saw one for the same day as the festival we decided to go for it. Might as well make the most of the drive!

We got to the festival at around 10:30 am and it was hopping! I got some mini skeins of pink yarn to make some knitted prawns after I saw them on TikTok last night. I find this pattern that looked cute.

I also got some mini skeins from Dachshund Daddy Knits for a pattern I already had the main color for from our trip to West Virginia. The pattern calls for 13 different small amounts of yarn to make a border of mitered squares on a wrap. I feel like you are supposed to use scraps for that but I don’t have a massive stash of the same sized yarn. This set of five is more yardage than I think I need so I might not use 13 totally different yarns or use from the assortment I got for the prawns. I enjoyed the mitered squares when we were working our way through the book but wished they were a little tinier so this pattern is my excuse to make more. Luckily the set does look nice with the yarn I already have! I really wasn’t 100% sure what it looked like.

Matt got some buttons for a project he had completed already and one more skein of sock yarn.

I always wish sellers at festivals sold more kits. The festival gets bigger every year and there is so much to yarn to chose from but I don’t know what to do with it all and am not interested in buying yarn just to buy it. One of the appeals of socks is that they lately only use a skein so you don’t have to worry about dye lots and having enough.

I had planned to do some looking at patterns in the days leading up to the festival but my dad’s sudden health deterioration derailed that. I was glad I remembered about the mitered square project just as we were getting ready to leave.

I was looking for fiber to spin and there was some but a lot was in braids which I’ve found I haven’t enjoyed as much as getting it loose. I also didn’t find anything for my guild project that’s due about local fiber sheds.

The class was at noon about 10 minutes away. I’m extra glad we had the class because it had started to rain quite heavily and unexpectedly so that would have cut short any wandering around the Main Street we might have done, a storm disrupted our plans last April so it was good to not repeat that!

The class was just three of us and we made tiny PopTarts. Some of it was started for us and mine was a little big thanks to my looser tension but it really helped reinforce counting the stitches and we leaned how to connect two squares together and make an edge. That would have been great with my temperature blanket! One of the main reasons I wanted to learn crochet is how many projects in weaving call for some crochet finishing touches. Even in knitting patterns I see it. It feels like a handy skill to have.

We got done slightly early and they showed Matt how to crochet in the rounds. We got a lot out of it, even if my PopTart was a little wonky. I think I had time to crochet the back myself but I can see why they provided some help, the woman who took the class was left handed and could not grasp it at all and left early. My creating did look better after it “rested” on the way home. My only quibble was that the yarn was really cheap acrylic (understandable and popular in crochet) but it split a lot.

After class we stopped and newly opened Gwenie’s Pastries and got some amazing pandan doughnuts. Highly recommend! So light and airy and the filling was so creamy.