NY Sheep and Wool Festival (aka the Rhinebeck Recap)

Charlotte, my dear, it was soooo lovely to spend time with you last weekend! I thought I'd do a Rhinebeck recap post with some photos from the weekend and of the very small large amount of yarn and fiber I bought. :)

So, without further adieu...the Rhinebeck Recap:

Friday afternoon I hopped into the car with my Mom and her good friend Teena and we drove down to the Holiday Inn in Kingston. Shortly after we arrived, Aimee (yay!) arrived as well and we headed across the parking lot (by car, of course) to the pizza/italian place in front of the hotel. After dinner, my Mom and Teena headed straight to the Holidome (the big gathering place in the middle of the Holiday Inn) while Aimee and I gathered up our knitting stuff. I received a text from my mom saying, "FREE ROVING, COME QUICK". Someone had brought 20 lbs of superwash merino pencil roving and was giving it away! I scooped up some blues and greys and Aimee requested that I also gather up the NEON yellow/green to spin for her. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of this because it is still at my parent's house. My Mom will bring it with her at the end of November when she comes to visit (I have plenty to keep me busy until then!). A little while after we started knitting, Carrie of Cosmic Fibers Yarn emptied an entire suitcase of hand-dyed yarn and fiber onto a table and folks went to town! I ended up with 3 skeins of yarn.

Pictured from L-R: Cassiopeia (a merino/cashmere/nylon blend) in "Amethyst in Shadows", Lyra (superwash merino) in "Everything Goes Black and I Wake Up Surrounded by Body Parts", and Orion (merino) in "The Woods Outside Merlotte's" 

The latter 2 colorways are dyed and named after the "True Blood" series on HBO

After a bunch of yarn buying and knitting we went to sleep and woke up early on Saturday to get some breakfast at a nearby bakery and head off to Rhinebeck! While we were waiting in line I got to meet Lily, who is in a few of the same Ravelry groups as I am and who also shops at the frequently mentioned Purl Diva! Our first stop as soon as we were through the entrance gate was the Briar Rose booth. Whoa boy. There were gigantic skeins of yarn hanging everywhere, buckets full of lovely fiber, and samples galore. We all ended up with quite a haul at our first stop. So much that my Mom and Teena ran out to the car with our bags. Here's what I ended up with:

These all deserve their own picture, I think. Did I mention there would be tons and tons of pictures?

6.5 ounces of Blue Faced Leicester Roving

Charity, 100% Corridale Wool- 900 yards

Grandma's Blessing, 600 yards of sportweight merino

Aimee and I wandered from booth to booth and from barn to barn for a while, picking up special yarn and fiber as we went. I think that my next purchase after Briar Rose was from Periwinkle Sheep.

Watercolors Superwash Merino in Sweet Plum

Sometime around 11, Aimee and I heard our walkie-talkie ring and lo and behold, Charlotte had arrived! We did some more walking around, grabbed lunch, and headed over to the KnitSpot Ravelry meet-up. It was a pleasure to meet Anne Hanson (who I'm related to, which is totally fun!) and see lots of folks wearing her designs. She's as wonderful and lovely in person as she appears to be from her awesome blog!

After much prodding, we dragged Charlotte over to meet Anne! :) I think she has some creepy stalker pictures from afar that she'll be sharing soon. 

We spent the rest of the day walking through all of the barns and drooling over the yarn and fiber. Charlotte purchased a sweater's worth of yarn from Briar Rose and picked up some awesome buttons from Jennie the Potter's booth. While Charlotte was making her button decision I met up with some lovely ladies from the Yarn Hoars group on Ravelry! It was just a quick meeting, but hopefully there will be more meet-ups in the future at other yarn related events!

Aimee, Charlotte, and I also stopped for some Cider Donuts (and hot cider, but unfortunately they were out) and I snapped a photo of the two of my bestest friends who I am so glad are also knitters:

Aimee and Charlotte in the Cider Donut line wearing their fabulous handknits!

Now, onto the rest of the stash enhancement....in no particular order:

4 ounces of BFL swirl in colorway "Velvet Elvis" from Gale's Art

100% Cormo Cross wool from Foxhill Farms 

 2 ounces of Merino/Cashmere roving (I bought 2 of these) from The Sheep Shed

1/2 lb. of Merino/Tussah silk also from the Sheep Shed 

 Two, 2 ounce braids of Merino/Silk (50/50) from Cloverleaf Farms

Merino/Silk (80/20) from unknown vendor (it isn't labeled and I can't find my sales slip) in Chili Pepper 

Merino/Cashmere (80/20) roving from Spirit Trail Fiberworks...If I make another Rhinebeck trek next year, I will definitely spend a good portion of the budget here. They had really, really gorgeous stuff.

I also bought 1/2 lb. of undyed Cormo roving to blend with some of the Alpaca that I have yet to process as well as another skein of the Cormo blend to make Judy (who watched Sailor) a scarf. 

Oh my, my, I bought a lot of gorgeous stuff! It's going to be very hard to concentrate on Christmas knitting with all this gorgeousness begging to be knit up/spun up! 

Saturday night, Charlotte, Aimee and I were exhausted! Charlotte decided to wind up one of her giant skeins of yarn from Briar Rose by hand. All 750 yards of it. We also ordered dinner from the pizza/italian place and sat in bed and knit!

I believe that this is Abundance from Briar Rose. This took 40 minutes to wind by hand!

Phew. 

Rhinebeck was such a wonderful experience and I feel very lucky to have shared it with my Mom, Aimee, and Charlotte!

I have 2 new FO's to show off, but I'll wait until tomorrow to do a post about them!

Love,

liz :)