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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!

rhinebeck wrap-up, vol. 1

Well. What’s there to say about Rhinebeck that hasn’t been said already – great weather, cute sheep, lots of people, lots of yummy yarn and fibre, etc. etc. I really needed the weekend away following a pretty shitty week (breakup), and my buds Jaya and rachel m. were just the ticket (along with some retail therapy).

They’s so cute!

So, my Rhinebeck story – rachel had a wedding to go to on Friday afternoon, so I took the train to St. Catherines and she picked me up there (after some getting lost trying to find the station). We hit the border (and a very surly border guard) around nine pm, then had the longest drive ever into oblivion, in the rain – we got to Jaya’s in Catskill at three am!

Up at a reasonable hour on Saturday, we left at nine and headed for the fairgrounds. It was nice to get in before the crowds really started building, although that didn’t last long! I was a bit overwhelmed at first, and it took a bit for me to hit my buying stride…heh.

I was glad I brought 2 big shopping totes with me so that I didn’t really have to get any plastic bags! I was also glad to see other people toting around reuseable totes rather than getting shopping bags everywhere (although there were lots of people doing that, too). More than one person asked me where I got my bag – we’ve got them at lettuce knit, and yes, we do mail order!

I did most of my buying on Saturday amidst the crazy crowds, and we headed out pretty early, around four thirty or so? Went back to jaya’s comfy, comfy home and had pizza in before heading out the Ravelry party. Sadly, saturday was a day of camnesia for me and I didn’t really take any photos at all that day. The party was nuts, but it was nice to say hi to a few more people that I’d missed at the fairgrounds.

Sunday we slept in until almost ten, and jaya made fabulous waffles with strawberries (and sausage for the meat-eaters) and then we headed out. We caught the tail end of the noon meetup, and I remembered to take photos this time…

Mama rav herself!

Sunday was a nice low-key day – the crowds were way smaller and everything was quite a bit more chill. We hit the food building and bought stuff (olive oil, wine, cheese, mustard for me), sampled a lot, and then wandered around some more, including checking out the author’s tent. We left around four, and that was Rhinebeck!

Jacquie and Stephannie leaning oooooover, while Adrian checks out something afar.

Monday jaya and her hubby both had morning things to do, so rachel and I let ourselves out – the drive home was much, much, MUCH more pleasant than the drive down, complete with nice and quick border crossing. The weekend was awesome, of course, but I’m pretty glad to be home (I’m sure my bank account is, too).

Next time…the haul. Yes, it was quite a haul indeed.

rhinebeck sweaters?

Yes, there shall perhaps be two!

Not that exciting as far as pattern goes, but the yarn sure is pretty! This one’s the Knitting Pure and Simple Neckdown Wrap, in Dream in Color (“dusky aurora”). I think I started this one about two weeks ago, and have mostly been working on it while in the store. I’m actually farther along now – the body is done, one sleeve is done, and the other sleeve is halfway there. So that leaves half a sleeve, the neckband, and ties to go.

Then there’s the Noro Silk Garden wrappy sweater (yes, I *am* into wrap sweaters this year!)…

Just half a sleeve and a good blocking to go. Go go go!

yarn break!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled wip/rip for this important update…don’t worry, I’ve got lots more on that front! I even took some more photos today to share with y’all. But I thought it was time for a wee break.

Rhinebeck is in two weeks, and I’ve been madly trying to spin up some of the stuff I bought last year before I go buy more stuff! I’m actually doing pretty well, and a few different yarns have come off the bobbin recently…

This firey red/orange pink one is 100% bombyx silk, not quite as searing as it appears in the photo (although it is certainly vivd). Checks in at 178 yards of worsted/chunky – it’s pretty uneven.

More bombyx silk – pink/purple/gold, 160 yards of worsted/chunky. I was feeling a little impatient when I spun these skeins, hence the thickness and inconsistency! I was originally going to ply the two colours together, but at the last moment decided to just ply them on themselves – a good idea in terms of the colours, but difficult in execution. I had to wind off the two bobbins (one each of the two colours) into balls, then split the balls by weight since plying from both ends of a centre pull ball is a Very Bad Idea. As it was, it was pretty tricky to ply. But they both turned out okay.

Now, this one I’m particularly proud of (the photo too). It’s four ounces of merino/silk, I think it was 50/50, clocking in at 660 yards of a fine fingering weight or heavy laceweight. Enough to do a shawl! And it’s pretty consistent as well. Did I mention soft?

All these fibres were purchased from the Carolina Homespun booth at Rhinebeck last year – I dropped a lot of money at that booth! There’s another two ounces of tussah silk that I’ve been working on from them, spun much finer. I’ve been spinning up some batts and trying to sit down at the wheel for at least a few minutes each day (in all my abundant leisure time!). I’m definitely seeing the difference from more practice these days!

goodies

Preface: I was pretty darn good on my pre-Rhinebeck yarn/fibre diet. I can’t really remember the last time I bought yarn before the KW fair, but it was at least a month before. And then there was KW, and nothing between that and Rhinebeck. So….I may have gone a little crazynuts.

There was so much to look at! I felt really rushed (and poor). I wanted to be able to look at everything closely, and doesn’t everyone just want to buy everything they like? At any rate I ended up with a lot of great stuff (but there was more I missed that I wanted! ah, well, that’s what internet shopping is for I suppose). Onward!

Two skeins of super soft merino/alpaca from Still River Mill. They also had CVM yarn that was awesome! I wanted to buy more but they didn’t take credit cards. Each skein is 200 yards, so it’s enough to do something nice with.

Five skeins from Briar Rose. Chunky weight, wool and flax. Awesome colours and flecks! I’m thinking a fast and easy top-down pulli.

“Hawthorn” is the name of the sheep! This Romney was a steal, and I bought a sweater’s worth. One bag is different, a bit darker, because there weren’t three bags of Hawthorn – I’m going to do a three ply with one of the plies being darker.

From Spirit Trail, 2 oz of the softest Polwarth/Alpaca/Angora, some merino/tencel, and some silk/camel. Yum.

From Carolina Homespun, 2 x bombyx silk, the blue/gren is tussh, and the skein on the right is merino/tussah. The braid on the left is merino/silk from a vendor in building 22 called Abi’s Web.

Oooh, shiny.

Batts from Grafton.

I also bought (but didn’t take a photo of, for some reason) some red “merino multi” and a Blue Moon sheep 2 shoe kit from The Fold.

And a jar of awesome champagne-honey mustard, but it has gotten lost! I remember having it at the hotel and packing it into one of my fibre bags, but it’s gone AWOL. No one else from the car has it so…I guess I’m outta luck. I’m lucky it wasn’t a more expensive item!