cosmicpluto knits!

purple and more purple

In addition to the basket backpack, which was the first thing I picked up at Rhinebeck, here’s the bit of yarn I got!

Some silk/merino from Skaska. None of the cashmere there really struck me this year (and I went early) but I love this colour. I’m already knitting some of it up!

Cashmere from Still River Mill – love it! So soft. Not sure what I’ll make since it’s quite thin laceweight. Maybe a shawl.

Sock yarn from Sliver Moon Farm. I bought three skeins of this exact colour last year, so when I saw more I bought it up. Now I should have enough for…well, something more than socks anyway.

A few skeins of natural cormo/alpaca/silk from Foxfire Fiber. So squishy. I feel that perhaps I should’ve bought more, but none of the colours really did it for me.

This didn’t come from Rhinebeck – on the way back to Boston we made a long pit stop at Webs. I had a great time looking around there and bought a sweater’s worth of this red Araucania merino as well as a bag of Misti Alpaca Royal Worsted. Yum.

Now I just need to get on this swatching thing!

my 2009 Rhinebeck recap

Rhinebeck was so much fun this year – really, it can’t ever *not* be fun. It just gets better and better every year!

We got to the fairgrounds around 9:30 on Saturday and managed to shop a wee bit before heading to the Rav meetup. I found a basket backpack and some Cormo in Building A.

As you can see, I was somewhat unprepared for the cold weather even though I knew about it, so I borrowed Ysolda’s Snapdragon Tam and the Snapdragon mitts as well. I think the colour actually kinda works on me – I’m always hesitant about yellows, but this one’s nice and golden.

The Saturday meetup was awesome – I loved seeing everyone’s reactions to Bobsolda! And I got to see Bonnie with her gorgeous teal Sagano shawl, which she test knit for me.

After the meetup we headed out to the Elks Lodge to set up for the party. I manned the button table, which was great since I got to say hi to everyone coming in!

The party was a blast as usual, cupcakes were had and nibbles eaten. Sunday was way more low-key – after the meetup I went off to find my Got Soap and headed to my book signing in Building B – lots of great books and authors there! Afterwards we all met up again, did some shopping, and headed back to the (amazing) house for dinner. Can you believe we could all eat dinner at the same table at once? That was a huge kitchen.

I had such a nice time, I can hardly wait for next year. Next up, the yarn!

come see me at Rhinebeck!

I’ve had an awesome time in Boston and have taken hardly any photos! Now I’m having a crazy awesome time pre-Rhinebeck with loads of fun people, interesting beer and yummy food.

Just dropping in to say, if you’re coming to Rhinebeck this weekend come and see me at the Author’s signing being put on by Merritt Books in Building B! I’ll be there with books to buy on Sunday from 1-3pm. Come say hi!

rhinebeck spoils

It’s late and I’m dying to go to bed, but I wanted to post all the yummy stuff I got at Rhinebeck! So it might have to be point form if I’m going to get through writing this…

L: Teal laceweight cashmere, over 1600 yards, from the Skaska booth. Mmm!
C: Black fingering weight cashmere, 1200 yards (score!) from the Skaska booth as well. A woman at the booth was a little disappointed that Andrea and I bought up all the black cashmere!
R: DK weight wool/silk from Brooks Farm, 1 skein. Probably destined for something like a swallowtail shawl for a gift.

L: a sweater’s worth of pillowy, squishy natural coloured DK-weight merino from Greenwood Hill Farm (I think?). Sort of knits up tweedy – I totally got sucked in by the knitted up samples at the booth!
C: three skeins of sock yarn from Sliver Moon Farm in a gorgeous plum. Seriously, the camera did not want to capture the true luminescence of this yarn.
R: two skeins of yak down/cormo DK-weight yarn from Bijou Basin. This yarn is irregularly spun, cushy, and I love it! I’ve got 300 yards, and I’m thinking something with cables…

And finally, in spinning fibres (do you sense a colour theme here?) -

L: batts from twitchystitches.com – crazy awesome teal/green/shiny goodness. About 180g.
C: smokey grey corriedale mix from Spinner’s Hill – 5 oz.
R: one lone braid of Ashland Bay merino in Cranberry – 4 oz.

I also came home with a heck of a lot of raw milk cheese and a couple bars of soap, too! I actually had a bit of trouble shopping on the Saturday since it was so darn busy, I just wasn’t really able to concentrate properly! I more than made up for it on Sunday though

In not-unrelated news, I have a pair of Fluevog Marians, red, in size 7.5 that I want to sell to a good home. After I twisted my ankle, it’s decided to be a bit…reconfigured. So they don’t fit quite right anymore! I’ve only worn them a few times (maybe 3 times) so they’re in like new condition. Yours for the same price I paid, $165 (USD or CDN is fine with me, despite the now rather significant difference!) and I’ll include the shipping. Email me if you’d like some new shoes!
Taken!

rhinebeck story

So! I’ve had one full day at home, never leaving the house. Recovering. Watched flurries fall for over an hour from inside my cozy house. And working on the Rhinebeck photos! So here’s the recap of the weekend.

On Friday I headed downtown not too early with my super little bag (the little hand luggage you get with a luggage set?) and was picked up by Andrea and Cheryl. Sonia, Andrea’s GPS, was along for the ride too – we love Sonia.

We took a couple hours’ stop in Niagara Falls and a little eastward to go to the outlet mall and the regular mall for shopping and lunch. I got a great little cotton robe at the Gap that came in rather handy later on! We arrived around 9 or so to our fantastic little rental house to meet up with the rest of our Toronto fibre buddies – Steph’s got great photos of the house (I sort of neglected to take any!). There was a bit of interestingness that evening, if you read up at Steph’s!

Saturday morning we headed out to the fairgrounds pretty early, getting there around 9:30 and snagging a pretty sweet parking spot.

Everything was so gorgeous! The trees, the yarn, the fibre.

It was pretty overwhelming on the Saturday, and I’ve been going a couple years now! It was seriously CROWDED, a bit claustrophic in some of the barns. I amused myself for quite awhile taking photos rather than actually fondling stuff, and met up with lots of awesome knitters. I headed over to the Ravelry meetup a little late, but still got to chat with caro, javajem, minty, and of course jess and casey (well, we said hi, anyway – he was a little occupied!).

I thought of Casey as being a little like Santa – people would wait until he was free, then go up, chat a little, take a photo, and then let the next person go.

We walked around until about 4 or so, then went to the huge grocery store next to the fairgrounds to secure some dinnerstuffs, drove back to the house to eat, and headed out to the Ravelry party. Sonia was a little confused that evening and told us to drive offroad…which we did not.

The party was crazy, and cold! We hung out awhile for the raffle, then headed home – I’m glad we went though, because I got to chat with gleek and skrilla, both of whom I’ve hung out with online but never met in person!

Our car had a bit of adventure of our own that night – when we got back to the house, frozen and exhausted, Andrea discovered that she didn’t have her phone! She figured she must’ve dropped it when we got out of the car (parked on the street) at the party, so she and Cheryl headed back to Red Hook to look for it. Not only did they find the phone, but they found my koigu mittens there too! I’d dropped them from my lap when *I* got out of the car, and hadn’t even realized they were missing. Whew.

Sunday was pretty chill and nice. We got to the fairgrounds around 10:30 and it was so much quieter. Of course there were some things that were gone (fudge, the cheddar I’d wanted to buy) but it was a lot easier to shop and to go back and check out things that we’d missed or wanted to reconsider. And take leaf photos!

After a rather goal-oriented dash around to find Andrea and Cheryl some inexpensive spindles and pretty roving to get them started spinning (heh heh heh), we finally decided that we were done and headed back to the house.

The evening was spent doing show and tell of all the fabulous stuff people had bought, eating pizza and drinking wine, and chatting – it’d been tough for all of us to hang out together since we were always so busy driving somewhere or shopping or whatever!

Andrea, Cheryl and I headed out really early on Monday morning (6:30 in the freezing cold) to get home before the rush hour kicked in around Toronto (it’s killer). So I got home in the afternoon and got to relax, unpack, and enjoy being back at home!

Rhinebeck is so much fun. The touching, the looking, the general wool fumes, the knitters. Who’s on board for the same house next year?

(Stay tuned for the goods, I know you wanna see them!)

rhinebeck re-entry

Rhinebeck was awesome, as usual. And renting a house was a perfectly civilized way to do it! It was fantastic to have a home base with a proper kitchen and everything. The countryside was just so beautiful! Fantastic autumn colours and light.

Staying with great friends was especially fun. (Sonia, our GPS, was also quite an invaluable member of the expedition). I met lots of awesome knitters, including some that I feel like I knew already from Flickr and elsewhere online! Oh, and there was all the yarn buying stuff too. That was pretty great.

I’m exhausted and need to decompress a bit. Details soon!