One Crazy Fiber Lady

Sometimes you have good weekends, sometimes bad. Everyone now and again you get a fabulous one. This past weekend was one of those rare fabulous ones.  It actually started early though, even if I did have to work then.  As many know, I had a house guest this weekend.  While Nancy and I have gotten along very well via email over the last year or so, we hadn’t met face to face.  Living on opposite coasts played a not-so-small part in that.  We’d cultivated a deeper friendship than simply commenting on each other’s knitting and yarn purchases and I’d call her friend.  Anyway, I invited her to come stay with me for Rhinebeck.  The weekend essentially started with a sushi lunch on Friday and ended with Thai lunch today.  I saw her off a few hours ago.  I have to say, I miss her already.  I had a great time talking, laughing, getting parenting advice, comparing knitting and just enjoying her company.

Saturday morning, since we’d stayed up a bit late Friday night talking, we got a bit of a slow start.  We got to the fairgrounds at noon, just in time for a little shopping before the big blogger meetup at one.  Thank you Cara for arranging that!  While I took precious few photos (bad blogger me) and bought unbelievably little (though I did make up for that yesterday), the highlight of the festival was again being amongst the similarly afflicted.  It was nice to see familiar faces:  Cassie, Laurie, Vicki, Chris, Elaine, Judy, Laurie, Val, Marilyn, Deb, Katy, Cate, Helen, Lea, Fran, Pat and more that I’m sure I’m forgetting and I whole-heartedly apologize.  I also got a chance to finally put a face with a name/blog:  Cassie, Norma, Melanie (who’s joining the twin mom club), Teresa, and a host of others, also who I totally apologize for not including.  Please drop me a comment if I did not include you. 

I know I spent far more time socializing than shopping. I bought all of one pound of fiber.  That’s it.  Shocking.  I know.  I’ve hit SABLE.  Nancy made up for my lack of shopping with some excellent yarn additions.  Here’s a picture of our combined haul.  I have half a pound each of med. grey and charcoal shetland roving.  You’ll have to wait for Nancy to get home for her details..  I did however make a purchase yesterday that I really wanted to do at the festival.  I wanted to buy a Majacraft Suzie Pro.  I need another wheel like I need a new hole in my head, but hear me out.  I do like to spin in the grease, and I have a pretty darn sizable fleece stash, but I don’t like getting that gooky lanolin all over my wooden wheels and bobbins.  Enter the Majacraft wheels.  They have metal flyers and plastic bobbins.  They’re also decent wheels.  I had a Rose a while back and did like her.  Don’t remember why I got rid of her, except that Chris wanted a Rose and I wanted an electric (early in my pregnancy with bed rest expected).  I sold it to her and used the proceeds towards the Womack.  I got the email from UPS, the thing shipped today with an expected delivery of Oct. 19th.  Woot.  All right so it wasn’t the instant thing that picking it up at Rhinebeck would have been, but it is almost as darn fast AND I didn’t have to schlep it around the fairgrounds. 

There are quite a number of excellent photos from the festival, some really goods ones here and here of the crowd at the blogger get together.  My camera, while with me, shamefully stayed in my bag through that gathering.  I was dealing with cranky toddlers at that time in my weak defense.  Though I do have to say that Deb was a lifesaver in that area.  She brought my pair a birthday gift of bubbles, evening toting the gift bag around for what probably seemed like forever..

Here they are sitting on the ground at the fringe of the mass of bloggers, quietly playing together.  Credit for this photo also goes to Deb.  Thank you Deb!!  On both counts.  Excellent picture and very thoughtful and timely gift.  Oh and the leashes (okay kid harnesses) didn’t go over so well with the willfull little Miss Kat-Kat.  Nor did I expect it to if I’m being perfectly frank.  Thankfully when they do get the nerve to wander a bit (right Elaine, Judy, Nancy and Vicki???) they go in the same direction.  One leads and the other follows not so terribly far behind.  As long as I can move faster than they, I can get them.  I actually got Alex to freeze in his tracks by giving him the order I give him every morning at daycare while I get his sister out of the car:  "Don’t Move".  He doesn’t.  Still need to work on Miss Independent.

As always, it was a great festival.  We stayed until they threw us out.  The parade to get out of the "parking lot" took forever and we finally got home at 8.  I gave the kids something to eat and got them into bed by 9.  Nancy and I had a late salad dinner and then stayed up talking until 2AM.  It was so much fun.  She tells the best stories!  I was needless to say pretty darn exhausted yesterday. 

I think that’s enough for today.  I have photos of the now finished butterscotch lincoln cross and the new spinning project, but they’ll wait until tomorrow.

Craft on

**Edited to add two people who I shouldn’t have missed, but did.  They are both bloggers that I’ve met previous to this festival:  Cece and Nancy.  My apologies ladies, the oversight was in no means intentional, but a limitation of my rather faulty memory.