Have you ever "tasted" yarn?

My close friend MamaK and I went to a "Yarn Tasting" this past Friday, hosted by Woolbearers, a yarn store in southern New Jersey. It was their 2nd Annual event, though the first of its kind for MamaK and I. So "what is a yarn tasting" you may ask? Well, it goes something like this:

At each seat there was a box filled with goodies, lots of little balls of yarn to try out. Oh, did I mention that all the yarns were "green"? Since I've never been exploratory in my yarn usage, this was a great way for me to get my feet wet...well, my fingertips, anyways. Each of the little balls was labeled with the kind of yarn and there was a sheet of paper to take notes.

All the ladies just dug right in and started working with the fun yarns, while the waitress came around with coffee and tea. Lots of talking, lots of knitting, and then there was me...crocheting. I got a lot of flack from the knitters, but all in good fun.

As the ladies got further into the night with their knitting (and crocheting), the waitress came around with a scrumptious dessert platter and took our dessert orders. Mmm, the chocolate-peanut butter dessert :-p The ladies fell in two camps, those that put down their crafting to enjoy dessert, or those that left their dessert for their crafting.

After dessert, more talking, more knitting (and more crocheting) and boy how the time flies! Since crocheting uses up more yarn, I was able to finish my sampler of all the "tasty" yarns while we were there. Check out the Mini Me pic...crochet vs. knit (though I did have a bit of a headstart). I kept all the tags on the yarns so I can refer to it later to decide which yarns I want to try out on an actual project.

My favorite of the "green" yarns were the Baby Boo (so soft), the Royal Bamboo, the Tapes (both the Soy Silk and the Bamboo), and the Wool Bamboo. Can you tell I'm a fan of Bamboo?

Since neither MamaK nor I were quite ready to call it a night, we decided to go to a nearby diner. MamaK did more knitting, we ate grilled cheese (mmm, comfort food!), and more talking of course. We hung out at the diner until MamaK and I both became incoherent due to sheer exhaustion just before 11:00pm...boy, I'm getting OLD!

Thanks to MamaK for sharing in the experience and making the night extra fun. Thanks for taking all the pics, too! I'll keep my eye out next year and hope we can do it again!

Oh, and here is a pic of my completed sampler.