The last of my purchases include these pretties that I can't figure out how to group them other than calling them my little luxuries.
The leftmost bag of fiber is one ounce of bison down. It is super soft and I am super excited to get to try it soon. It was found at Hill Country Weavers, along with lots of different bison yarns. I was very tempted to get the fingering weight yarn which was a 50/50 blend of bison/silk. It came in gorgeous colors, but in the end I decided that the fiber was a better choice than more yarn.
My new turkish spindle is from Yarnorama in Paige, TX. The exquisite woodwork done by Jeri Brock caught my eye. If you look closely, you can see that there are 3 small sheep on each side of the spindle. It was one of many different variations, as well as top and bottom whorls. Yarnorama has spinning, weaving, felting, knitting, etc materials and equipment. Loved this shop as well!
The swan shaped device in the box is a handturned crochet hook from Furls Crochet. It is the most beautiful and well balanced crochet hook I'd ever seen. They are handturned in Austin, and I was happy to discover that they will be selling their products at Happy Ewe. I was debating between two different hooks, when one of the two was purchased by another patron. Well, that made my mind up for me! I'm still thrilled with the hook, and can't wait to need a reason to use an F hook. ;o)
The buttons were purchased at Nan's Needleworks. This store was fascinatingly found inside of a traditional office building! You walked inside of an office building, up to the 2nd story, down a hall to a door that opened up to a traditional yarn store! One of the ladies there does dye work. I was tempted to buy one of her skeins, but they were a blend of wool and mohair (both from local farmers who had bred them to be as soft as they have seen), but I have found that no grade of mohair has ever been soft enough for me. And no one I am buying gifts for uses lace weight... so I finally decided to be practical and opted for wooden buttons instead.
All in all, I am very pleased with my purchases, and actually can't wait for next year's crawl!