Sunday, October 19, 2008

Rhinebeck!! Take 2

This weekend was Rhinebeck! The second time I've been. Just like last year, I made a day trip of it and just went on Saturday. I was there with Diana, a visitor to our department this year, and Chloe, a classmate of mine who I taught to knit on Wednesday. It was pretty great. Highlights:

Hot apple cider. Mmmm.

We hit every yarn booth, I think. It was fabulous. I bought yarn...



This is yummy Bargain Bunny from Oasis Farm. It's 10% angora and 90% merino and really really soft. It will totally make a great pair of Dashing, maybe, for Snowflake.



Silver Moon got me last year, and they got me again this year. I wasn't planning to buy yarn from there, and then this absolutely gorgeous 1000 yards or so of fingering weight superwash merino caught my eye. I don't think it's enough for the Apres Surf Hoodie (a real shame, that) but I may be able to pull off Jeanie.

In the afternoon I finally made it over to the Blue Moon Fiber Arts booth...



This is sock yarn in Lenore, one of the colorways from the Raven series. For those who don't know, these are colorways that are overdyed in black. Basically, the amount of color you see relates to the amount of light there is around. Love this.



This is a great colorway called Jabberwocky.

By the time I got there in the afternoon, the Blue Moon Fiber Arts booth had definitely sold out of a lot of stuff, and the line to pay was still pretty long. But pretty much everyone in line with me had been there that morning and glanced at the ridiculously long line then. They were glad they waited, even though they just ended up with the occasional hank of yarn, rather than huge armfuls. This was actually my first experience meeting Socks That Rock in person, and it was really great.

And that's all the yarn I bought. But... I met Veronik Avery!! I didn't know she would be there. I was hanging out in some tent and I heard an announcement that she was doing a book signing, so I rushed over. She is one of my favorite designers and I was reduced to a fawning fangirl in front of her. And I was wearing my Dollar and a Half cardigan, which she designed! It was great! I have been thinking about buying her book Knitting Classic Style but hadn't done it yet, so that was great opportunity for me to buy it and get it signed. Yay! (Meanwhile Diana and Chloe humored me by coming along and waiting for me, and Diana ended up with $75 worth of lovely gray DK alpaca for a sweater.)

Although I didn't go crazy buying yarn the way I did last year, I did have a lot of fun shopping with Diana and Chloe. They were fun. Chloe went a little crazy with all the beautiful yarn around, and Diana got some great stuff too. Big fun.

The other crazy thing that happened was with the knitting competition. I finished the Bayerische socks last week. I immediately wore them to school, where Kathy (big knitter/owner of sheep/etc., also part of our department staff) told me I should enter them in the competitions at Rhinebeck. I thought about it, but then I sort of forgot. Well anyway, we saw that the item that won the small items competition was the EXACT SAME PATTERN as the one I used. Bayerische socks out of Wollmeise, while mine were out of Shibui. I still haven't decided how to feel about this development. But I think that it has made me realize that maybe my knitting is good enough to enter in competitions. Next year!

We also saw some fun animals: sheep, alpacas, llamas, goats, and from afar a huge turtle, lemurs, and a kangaroo. Then we went home. Yay!