Spring is here, and YarnCon is right around the corner! April 1 and 2 to be exact, and we are busy getting everything ready! Anyone who has attended YarnCon in the past knows there is a wealth of stunning hand-dyed and hand-spun yarn with which to enhance your stash, but what about all that lovely unspun fiber? You can learn to needle felt it, or you can learn to spin it, and we have four different teachers ready to share their knowledge with you!

Vera Videnovich has not only been teaching an introduction to spinning since YarnCon was in its infancy, she also taught Sara, Lindy and Natalia how to spin. If you want to get a feel for spinning, DIY handspinning is the class for you. 

If you want to expand your skills, you will not want to miss Emily Wohlscheid’s classes! Emily will teach you to make your own batts in order to create a custom tweed effect in her Tweed: Custom Blend! workshop.

Another clever trick to learn is how to blend your fibers to create fractal color repeats in your finished yarn, and you can learn how in Emily’s Fractal: Blend and Spin workshop.

Have you ever wondered how hand cards work, or want an opportunity to take a class with your kids and make colorful batts? Maegan Burkart has you covered in her Kids Color Blending on Hand Cards workshop. Maegan has more color skills to add to your arsenal, she can teach you to prepare and manipulate your singles yarn and make your colors match up in striping plied yarn in her Controlling Color Changes While Spinning and Plying workshop.

And finally, newcomers to YarnCon, Tom and Joanne Blodgett will be demonstrating the process of turning flax into linen in Straw into Gold!, and will even have a young flax plant to show you. This should be a fascinating presentation, with some hands-on components.

That only covers the spinning classes! We encourage you to to head over to the Classes page to see all of our amazing workshop offerings, with small class sizes and experienced teachers, you really can’t go wrong.

And, you made it to the end to see what the announcement is! We are really excited at YarnCon HQ about our 10th birthday, and birthdays mean birthday presents, right? So, for our birthday, we are giving you presents!! Instead of 50 goodie bags each morning to the first 50 people in line, this year we are giving out 75 goodie bags to the first 75 people in line! The bags alone are worth it, they are our organic cotton, fair trade Work + Shelter bags that we are so fond of. But, because it’s our 10th YarnCon, we asked some of our incredibly talented vendors to dye up some YarnCon birthday limited edition colorways just for the occasion, and you will find some in those bags. Say what? (Please don’t start camping out yet.)