One Crazy Fiber Lady

Well I made it through the weekend with the twins!  I don’t know why I was scared out of my wits to take them, but I was.  Now I know I can do it, watch out world! 

Damn I love the MDS&W festival.  It was so worth the trip.  Was it for the SEX (sorry googlers, Stash Enhancement eXpedition) alone?  Nope.  I can enhance the stash without leaving my living room.  The topic of why we go to these things came up on one of the mailing lists and I thought hard about my answer to the question.  It isn’t the SEX, it is being part of a community and being surrounded by this community that actually draws me out there.  Sure blogging has let me know that there are others out there that feel as passionately about the fiber hobbies that I do, but honestly meeting and seeing the sea of humanity that shows up at these festivals really drives the point home that I am indeed not the crazy fiber lady that my day to day contacts treat me as.  THAT is why I schlepped toddler twins two states away for a weekend alone…. because for a change, I wasn’t alone! 

In that vein, I spent some time with old friends and met some new ones:

Here’s the EZasPi group gathering (thanks to Judy for the photo) on Saturday.  From left to right, Shari, Elsie, Elaine, Sue, Judy, Chris and Me/Alex.  Kat was running loose while Alex was a bit clingy.  They both needed naps by this point.  Shari was a saint and gave me a huge Mother’s Day gift, she helped me with the twins for the afternoon!  She and her family spent the rest of the afternoon at the festival taking turns pushing the stroller, carrying a tired toddler that wanted out, walking hand in hand, and simply allowing me to get into the very crowded booths to check wares and spend some cash.  I couldn’t have done it without them.  Big thanks to Shari and her beautiful family! 

This is Cece and Mamacate, a new blogging friend and one that I finally met in person.  They both were great helps in wrangling the toddlers.  Cate was especially helpful at lunchtime.  I didn’t get to spend a great deal of time with these ladies as the ebb and flow can split up groups, but what I did I very much enjoyed.  I’m really looking forward to Cummington and hanging with Cate and finally meeting her twins.

Who did the twins and I have breakfast with yesterday?  None other than the Harlot herself!  I was ever so excited to read that there was going to be a breakfast meet up at the Homewood Suites in Columbia on Sunday morning, the same hotel where the monkeys and I were staying!  How fortuitous was that?  Pictured with Stephanie is Mia.  I also met reader Donna (Hi Donna!) and some very nice people. It was a great time.  Stephanie was very witty as a regular blog reader would expect.  Nice to find someone my size.

While I had planned to come straight home Sunday, I was tempted back to the festival with the promise that Sunday was a far less crowded day than Saturday.  No surprise, I went.  I shopped.  I saw more friends, pulled into the parking area one car ahead of Stephanie and her agent (sorry forgot her name, a very nice lady!).  After expanding the stash, meeting up with the NJ gals again and having lunch, the monkeys and I headed home at 1:30.  Sadly I did miss meeting with Vicki as I didn’t get the message she’d called until I was in Delaware and about the cross back into Jersey.  I hit nasty traffic in  a couple of places and didn’t get home until 6.  The twins were great and other than short periods of fussing were fab travel buddies.  They handled the excitement, the stroller confinement and the long drives like troopers.

After two days and just shy of 500 miles, this is what my car looked like:

While I did forget one thing, diaper cream they do have CVS type stores in Maryland and they do sell Desitin there so no harm, no foul.  We did lose three pacifiers at the festival, but that was not unexpected and I had plenty of backups.  I dodged a few bullets in the loss department as well.  On the way into the festival on Saturday, one of the sippy cups fell out of the bag.  I made do with only one, as well as a water bottle with the sport lid in hydrating the monkeys.  Wouldn’t you know it, on the way out of the festival a woman tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I had dropped something.  While I had just fetched Alex’s chewie (his version of a blankie is nothing more than a cloth diaper) I looked at where she was pointing.  Sitting on top of the barrel that marked the entrance path was the sippy cup!

The bigger problem had been Kathryn’s blankie.  Now I have three of them as I know how important blankie is in this kid’s life.  I’m a blankie girl myself so I really understand the implications involved in losing one.  When she latched onto this thing at 6 months old, I bought more and regularly rotate them so she wears them evenly so to speak.  Unlike Alex’s chewie and binkies I didn’t bring a reserve of blankies with us.  While I have spent considerable time retracing steps at the supermarket and various and sundried other places retrieving blankie you would have thought that I’d pack all three!  The kid goes nowhere without and certainly doesn’t sleep without it.  You know where this is going.  Yes, she lost it at the festival.  Twice.  The first time was about an hour in on Saturday.  In the very crowded Main Exhibition Hall, somewhere between the superfine Australian Corrie Fleece booth around the fleece sale and the much mobbed Little Barn booth where I discovered she didn’t have it.  (As an aside, that crowd had me forgo Little Barn for the first time.  Ever.)  It was a zoo. It was a very sad zoo to get through with a tandem stroller.  I made it back and forth.  Finally a very nice woman who had a booth there selling gorgeous felted items (hats and stylin’ scarves) offered up babysitting services and stroller parking to allow me to go find blankie.  I hopped on that one and went back one more time. Some kind soul had found it and placed it on the outside edge of the fleece sale table.  Thank goodness.  Thank you kind soul!

Blankie was lost again yesterday.  After lunch with the NJ folk, we started heading out with Shari and her family when Kat started whining.  No blankie anywhere in the stroller. I ran back to the lunch site.  No Blankie.  This time I can’t even tell the last time I’d had it, unlike Saturday when the nice Aussie lady told me she’d seen Kat playing with it with Cece.  Sigh.  I was already dreading the very long drive home without blankie.  Shari reminded me of my luck with the sippy cup and finding blankie once before and held out high hopes we’d locate it again.  Half fearing that I’d used up my luck, I retraced our steps.  What was that on one of the posts along the main walk????  BLANKIE!  Some kind soul recognized its value, picked it up, put it on the post and went so far as to put a rock on top to keep it in place in the wind!  THANK YOU.   Disaster averted, I decided not to push what remaining luck I had and made my way to the car.  I stopped long enough to drool over the gorgeous mohair yarn from Brooks Farm, but resisted.  I couldn’t resist though an aran cable sweater kit at another booth.

Pictures and listing of actual stash enhancement will be tomorrow.  I
was so pooped by the time I got it all in the house, gave the twins
dinner, got them to bed and unpacked the necessities that I was just
not ready to sort and photograph the new stuff.  All in all, I’m glad I made the decision that I did.  I’m so glad that I went.