Home again, after a whirlwind extended weekend trip to New York State, where I visited my University roomie and her family, and spent a couple of days - well, probably day-and-a-half - at the New York State Sheep and Wool festival, a fibre-fanatic's fantasyland of all things wooly.
Thursday night, we drove partway there, dropping off some class supplies with a Buffalo contact, and getting to somewhere in the Rochester vicinity for the night. Friday we covered the rest of the way to Peekskill, to see my friend Ev, her charming hubby and absolutely stunning daughter.
Saturday, the bunch of us drove about an hour back towards the Upper Hudson River region to Rhinebeck, and joined the herd (flock?) of fibre nuts at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds.
I should have thought to take a score sheet or organize something on Ravelry for "Rhinebeck Bingo", because there was something every which way. I saw, spoke to, bumped into, or walked past: A hundred or so Ravellers, including Casey, Jess, and Mary-Heather, Amy Singer and Gillian Moreno of Knitty and Big Girl Knits, the Yarn Harlot herself, several of my Waterloo-area neighbours, the Bosworths, several of my OHS Spinning certificate class, one of the Twist Collective promoting that 'zine, Toni from the Fold (Blue Moon's Eastern dealer), oh, and on and on...
Saturday night Adam was good enough to indulge my wish to attend the Ravelry party, which was interesting and cool to go to an included a door prize raffle of heaps of stuff. I think I'm happy to have gone, and said Hi to Casey in person, but I'm not sure it was really my sort of thing - they planned for 400 or so people and probably hit 600 within the first hour. It is really something best attended with a posse of Ravellers you already know, so you have a start on the networking. I found myself wandering the crowd with my nose at people's lapels looking for Ravel-names I recognized, and many others were doing the same. There's some disconnect still between our evolving online social lives and the real world. There's just no elegant way to walk up to someone and introduce yourself saying "I stalk you online because you say the raunchiest stuff and knit really cool lace". I did bump into and say Hi to someone I sold my Addi Turbos to, though.
Sunday was a shorter day - having scoped out the site, caught up with my other spinning class deliveries, and gotten oriented on Saturday - oh, and already bought a fleece - I could browse for a few more specific things and run. We did catch the beginning of the Punkin' Chunkin' competition, where competing school teams build catapults and launch overgrown gourds the length of a small stadium. After team 3 got hung up with technical difficulties, it got pretty boring.
We headed back to Peekskill. My friends had joined us Saturday but not for the 2nd day, and we ran home to take them out to dinner as a thanks for their putting us up for the weekend. We checked out a brew pub now operating in the town and I was impressed with both the complimentary "Brewmaster's sample" of the local beer and the food. It was an early(ish) night, as I'd stayed up chatting with my friend for hours both Friday and Saturday. Monday was our start home, after a leisurely brunch and tearful goodbye from Ev's daughter Robyn - she does not like people leaving, and tries to keep a stiff upper lip but it doesn't always work. We'll just have to visit more, I think.
Monday night we crashed somewhere around Syracuse, and had a decent dinner and uneventful evening, resuming the drive on the I90 for today. Mostly straight, flat driving between Syracuse and Buffalo there, a bit of dodging through Niagara Falls, a very disappointing lunch at an under-attended yet still under-staffed Montana's Cookhouse, and home again. So it's all over but the laundry. I have the rest of the week off but plans for most of it already. Off to tidy up and tuck myself in for now, I think.
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2 comments:
Like a whole fleece? Very exciting!
Small but yeah, whole fleece - already washed! I probably paid a premium for it but it's exactly what I was on the hunt for - pale grey, fine, and beautifully cleaned without being over-scoured (which I am afraid I may have done to the one I washed myself). It was from a Romney "hogget". My spinning course told us a sheep older than a year, younger than two was a "hogget" but the seller said it was the same as lamb's fleece, basically the first shearing of a young sheep. I think it's just lamb if it was 11 months old and hogget if it was over 12. Happy score for me.
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