Enchanting Juno

We are everywhere.

Yesterday I was tired.  Well, I've been tired for days, but this was the kind of tired where I squeezed every last drop of snooze-alarmed sleep out of the morning, threw on whatever was handy and failed to comb my hair before it dried (a little funny) on its own.

I left the house in jeans, black suede sneakers and my Maryland S&W baseball shirt from 2 years ago.  It is my favorite, but I rarely wear it out, as I am a little dubious about the flattering.

So I go to work and get through the day and after that I get my list together and go to the market as there is not so much food in the house.  In my Whole Foods there is a brief cheese filled transition between vegetables and fish and I usually book through it pretty quick because there is little in the world that makes me queasier than the smell of fish. 

What I am saying is that I've closed off my senses to get by, so it takes me a minute to respond to the guy in waders who is trying to get my attention.  I'm looking around trying to figure out what he's trying to tell me and gradually my awareness comes back on line and I realize what he is saying is "Does that say Maryland Sheep and Wool"?

Why yes.  It does.

Turns out his mom goes every year.  She's crazy about wool and knitting and spinning, crazy weird as well as crazy fond. 

We get like that.  Lots of fleece? I ask.

Oh yeah, the attic is full.

It happens.  I'm going to Rhinebeck this weekend.

He nods sagely - yes, that's a good one.

And then he grinned in a companionable way - an initiate to the mystery, if not necessarily an acolyte - and returned to his fish.

I grinned back and returned to escaping the fish smell.

I almost went back and asked who his mother was.  I mean, it IS possible we've met.
But then I started thinking about the fact that this man equates me with his mom.  Even though I doubt there were 6 years between us.  That is moderately less warming.

On the way home from SOAR there was a wicked cool car from the 40s, done up in matte paint and four hooded dudes who fancied themselves quite a lot.  The car was cool, enough so that we stopped to comment and admire.  And these guys were horrified; we were not the desired demographic.  The distress was so palpable it was funny. 

Computer says yes.

I've been staring at the blog for a while trying to think of a way of explaining the past week. 
Can't even sum up.  Brain full, heart full.  Rather tired.  Cat mad at me.  SOAR good.  System full.

Maggie Casey taught me how to spin long drawn in about 10 words, something I have struggled to learn at home for a year or more.  Click.

(There were additional words of guidance from Charlene and Kim to my right as the class progressed that helped to solidify things, I very much do not want to leave that part out because they were fantastic and helpful and illustrate beautifully the point that this event is about learning & teaching rather than ego.)

Judith McKenzie McCuin explained something about yarn construction that made my eyes spin around like cherries in my head and now I know I can make yarn that will make a good sweater, instead of just a good skein.  Also, I maybe need a loom.

I spun bison.  I did it well.  I spun COTTON.  Not quite as well.  But I get it now.

From Margaret Stove I learned to make the finest springiest merino lace weight.  Someone spoke to me while I was learning this and I had nothing left to reply, my whole being was in the thread in my hands. 

And that's just the surface of it.

Rhinebeck is so much fun it really maybe ought to be a controlled substance, all these fairs and festivals are wonderful, but they are nothing like this, this intensity of learning and connection, these incredibly generous people - not just the mentors but everyone was interested in making everyone better, sharing technique and information and time and joy and wine and everything.

If we are lucky, a few times in our lives the wall of our mental house falls down - or explodes outward - and we get to step over the broken rubble and walk this entirely new landscape of mountains and possibility and a giant sky and new pathways full of knowledge and our own potential to grow, change and eventually, contribute something.  There is possibility.  And ponies.
And the world expands.

This was SOAR.

If Yo Yo Ma would design my back garden, that would be great, thanks.

Really.

The Music Garden in Toronto is so gorgeous that I want to make something like it at home, but it would just be much nicer to get Yo Yo Ma to do it.  He does good work. (OK, I can't find his name on the link, but I swear someone told me he was involved. Maybe he played while they created this?)

This is the first time I've been to TO in the summer and it really is very wonderful.  My feet were walked down to little blistered nubs, as I am a suburbanite and unaccustomed to kilometers of concrete under my shoes and also I am maybe a bit of a delicate flower.  But even with sore feet I am sad to be home ignoring the yardwork and getting yelled at by my cat instead of hanging out with Steph and seeing new things.

I had never had a cherry before.  Some where along the way I never met them.  I think I thought they tasted like that weird stuff in commercial pie and regarded the fruit with suspicion.  Turns out, not so much.

We call this Still Life With Beer and Cherries.
And Stupid Knitting (because it turns out I cannot do yarn overs on the TTC.  I needed garter stitch.)  Also, I am the only person in Toronto wearing sunglasses.  That happened to me in England too. 

Paparazzi shot of blogger at work. 

I'd forgotten what good pictures the little camera takes. 

I came home with 6 kinds of sunblock (No fooling.  My dermatologist gave me a bollocking last month for failure to protect and I found the mother load of non-icky, non-sticky, non-FDA approved but it doesn't sting or make me crazy to put it on my face sunblock), a sweater's worth of Dream in Color "Cloud Jungle" (the "Black Parade" was really good too, but there were only two skeins left.  Oh, and the Cocoa Kiss.  Very nice.) (This is seriously gorgeous yarn.  You should get some.) and a determination to do more cardio, but mostly I came home feeling lucky (well, lucky and also a little bitter about the return of regular service.  My desk was a sad sight today.) and remembering the wind on the lake, in the grass, through the streetcar window.  In Steph's face. 

Also, we went on the merry-go-round.  We are four.

Home is really not as good as I remember.

 

Dumbsmacked.

I woke up with a start this morning - at 7:10, because I appear to have set my alarm for 6:30 PM instead of AM - just after the man in my dreams inhaled appreciatively the scent of the skin at the curve of my neck, but before I saw who he was.  It was really quite a disappointment. 

But it's about the only one I can think of of the past four or five days.

So I'm doing OK, I think.

Ah Rhinebeck, the happiest place on earth.  There is just something about that fairgrounds.  It has good fung shui, or perhaps it is on one of those junctions in the earth's energy that causes people to form new religions, or the balance of the hills rolling together at that point throws back happiness like a psychic band shell and magnifies it.  Who knows?  But I've had a great day there totally alone as well as steeped in good company.  This year was no exception.

The first good thing is that my Stephanie was here.  In my house.   I took her and the sock to Princeton for some Ivy covered tourism.  Which was hilarious.  She came to knitting class with me and met many of my local knitting people.  I love them.  I love her.  And you know how sometimes when your worlds collide, it doesn't work out so much?  Yeah, that didn't happen.  It was good. 

And then Cassie was there, and Anj and we drove.  The drive was beautiful - even in the rain, it doesn't get much prettier than the NY State in October - and after a brief stop for breakfast, new pants and some miscellaneous chocolate covered Marzipan, we were on our way to the fairgrounds to drop Anj off for her gig as a booth babe at Spirit Trail and I got to touch the North Ronaldsey meet Jen.  Also there was this cashmere/merino roving...... I feel a little flushed just thinking about it.  I get that way.

I've been trying and trying to sort out more than kaleidoscopic impressions of the weekend, but I can't.  The days are past of my being able to see the festival - any festival, but particularly this one - in discrete parts.  I know too many people, so each moment of "oooh, cormo/silk" (that would be Foxfire.  Or Foxhill (no website that I can find.  Alice Field.  Cormo.  Make a note for next festival). Either way, you should go buy something.) is instantly fractured by a shriek of recognition and a hug and a touch this thing in my bag as we all explode with excitement and fiber. 

I spent some time in the Skaska Designs booth.  I always do.  I love them.  Did you see the yak/silk laceweight?  The camel/silk?  The cashmere/silk?  The qiviut laceweight?  The - brace yourself - 50 buffalo/25 cashmere/25 silk roving?  If I made you touch that at any time this weekend, I do apologize.  I know your life will never be the same.

Linda at Grafton Fiber is doing something different with her batts - a crimpier texture on top of the wonderful color - and I LOVE them.  I wasn't in the door five minutes before I had two in my bag.  I finished spinning the first one last night.  On my new (cough) wheel.  And so it went.  I could go booth by booth, but that would take 12 years and still be missing half.

I started to think about all the people I talked with and saw again and met for the first time and chatted with and, and, and, and I was going to tell you all about it and then I got to 66 people and I still wasn't done.  I can't.  I'll leave someone out.

67.  No, shit, 68.  71.  Juno stop now. 

Particularly I would like to thank anyone with whom I fell into conversation who eventually sort of casually mentioned that you liked the blog - as well as anyone who just came right boldly up and said they liked the blog.  Rhinebeck is full of pleasures but there is none so equally squirmy and uncomfortable and yet profoundly gratifying and humbling as being told that some of you like to spend part of your day here with me.  It means a lot to me.

Last night I took Steph to the airport and started a scarf in the airport bar with the Foxhill Cormo/silk I ran back and bought at the end of Saturday because I just couldn't bear that the colors might be lost to me, and came home and ate toast on the couch and passed out cold and today I am back at work and have lost my voice from the talking, talking, talking, talking, talking and the laughing and the wine. 

Reading back over this, apparently I love everything, which you would really never know if you met me in real life.  Much crankier when no wool involved.

Also - this information I give you as my gift.  Do not under any circumstances drink the Goats do Roam.  When someone defended it to me while I was pouring it down the drain I said this:  "I so rarely have an opinion about wine.  If I say it is shit, it is shit."

Honestly.  Put it down.

Also the Dyed in the Wool Sauvignon Blanc.  Walk away.  You'll thank me in the morning.

Infinite space.

So I went to Cummington this weekend and had myself some revelations.

Maryland was great fun but overwhelming in its largeness and complexity.  It isn't like I didn't find some wicked cool stuff or have a wonderful time, but I finished the weekend almost flattened from sensory input.  There were great things - meeting Lanea, seeing both Rachels revel in the experience - but these joyful moments were found in the quiet corners of the chaos, on the grass between the barns, in the quiet at the end the weekend, and there were as many fleeting moments lost in the swirl of the crowd.  I was high on my new wheel, which would have made the weekend a success alone, but I've had trouble making sense of the kaleidoscope of memory.

Cummington is much much smaller, and for me was essentially all joyful quiet corners. 

But the real joy was the people.  I can't do a whole list of who was there and who said what and what happened.  Just know that sitting in a room full of wool and wheels and knitters and spinners and spindlers and spinning can fill a part of you you didn't even know was empty.  Having a chance to wander around with someone you only know a little bit and finding common ground, amusement, a new place to keep your spindle or a chance to spread the virus is an immeasurable privilege.  And spending the whole weekend like this just makes you better.  A better person.  Made me a better person.

I realized Saturday night that the festival, wonderful fun though it was, was almost incidental.  If all I'd done was sit around Cate's dining and living rooms with those people,  felt that energy, it would have been reason enough to be there.  I've said this before, but I think the Internet wants me to be happy.  If it didn't it would not have brought me the friends I have been fortunate to find in the past year or so and the intensity of my gratitude is difficult for me to convey.  Wool, knitting and spinning particularly have been a vehicle of self discovery for me, as well as a path to friendship and creativity,  and the means to begin to put some pieces of insight together in ways that are quite literally changing my life for the better.

We realized on the drive up that this weekend is my first spineversary, and Laurie's too.   And Kristen's.  And Cate's second.   So clearly Cummington is a festival of great power.
This year it manifested in a sudden explosion of wheels - Elisa, Kellee, Cassie all went home with new ones, Kristen ordered one, I picked up the purple wheel all repaired and buffed out and spinning fine from Dave.   And a rush on Bill Hardy, Forrester and Phil Powell spindles you could hardly measure with existing technology.  And fleece in every corner.  I myself came home with - ahem - four.  (I gave two away, so it was only a net gain of 2.  Shut up Cassie)  A Romeldale, a small yet stunning Coopworth, a beautiful Mary Pratt Rambouillet cross and a Shetland so tiny (1.25 pounds) that it hardly counts at all.  Plus three spindles, a new proficiency in spindling and some other stuff I can't show you because it is all in the freezer and I'm embarrassed anyway.

It was all good.   Pictures to make up for the lack of swag documentation.  Who wouldn't rather look at sheep anyway?

This youngster was in the middle of an shave and haircut and gave me the most offended look for interrupting.  But not as offended at this magnificent fellow.  A Jacob ram.  Dig the double horns.

Jager Farms.  I came back for the lamb roving on the left later.

French Hill Coopworth.  Though not the one I got.   (Mine's even better)

Like a beauty queen in her bathrobe. 

Drop in and spin.

Even out of focus, the smile is pure joy.

This one too.

Another kind of spinner.

Spinner's DNA.  We leave it on everything.

Great Big World.

One of the things I liked most about this festival was the way it reminded me that my own little corner of the Internet is not the only little corner of the Internet.  I think that we bloggers can sometimes get into a little loop, a closed circuit where we read mostly the same people.  Perhaps it tends to happen that you know and recognize the people who were here before you and perhaps got you interested in blogging and then also the people who turned up at about the same time - your freshman classmates with whom you first felt bold enough to comment or correspond.

Once you have a blog - beloved time sink that it is - you no longer have the same amount of time to wander around following links and exploring side bars.  I try and keep roaming, I do, but it doesn't happen as much as I would like.  But the festivals bring it all out and shake it up, snow dome style.  It's been really good to wander the field and see other tales, other adventures, other moments.

Good to remember.

One of the things I tried this weekend was a Golding wheel.  I've never touched one before.  I was afraid I'd do something terrible to it and who can afford it, you know?  But I feel OK about my spinning these days, and I asked if I could take it for a test drive.

He asked me what ratio I preferred and I really didn't know how to answer.  I still am working on sorting out the mathematics of spinning in my head and while I understand the concept of ratio it isn't the terminology I think in.  But also I don't think of it as an all or nothing.  I am not particularly interested in fat yarn, so you can leave out anything like 4:1.  But other than that?  Depends on what I'm aiming for, I guess - what fiber, what weight - anything from laceweight to aran, Shetland to CVM.  One of the reasons I like the Suzie is that the range of ratio possibilities is very flexible.

The demonstration wheel was 21:1 and that felt like a pretty good one for my treadling speed and the fiber he had there - I don't know what it was other than lustrous, a bit coarse and longer stapled than I have tried before.  This wheel is really nice.  Really, really, really nice.  Perhaps because of the alloy wheel rim, the motion is particularly smooth and it was a pleasure to use one of these ornate, clever, beautiful machines.  I didn't run home and start a piggy bank for one right away....but I thought about it.

My phone rang while I was spinning so of course I couldn't answer it - I was with a new wheel and I could have stayed there all day, duh.  It turns out it was Cass and when I didn't answer she knew I was spinning. 

So she went to the Merlin Tree booth. 

And I wasn't there. 

And she was confused, very confused. 

Until Laurie called her back and told her what I was doing. 

And then it all became clear.   

When she joined me she asked if I wasn't afraid to spin on this Maybach of wheels, afraid I'd want only it, afraid the temptation would ruin me.  And the answer is - well, no.  I will happily try it again any time I get a chance - spinning on different wheels is joy and a pleasure, but for all the smooth beauty of it, the Golding isn't for me.  It was wonderful....but I didn't want to take it home for more than a fleeting instant (I want to take any wheel I meet home for at least an instant).   It didn't feel alive in my hands, it didn't feel right for me, it was too...refined, I guess.   I drive a jeep, not a luxury sedan, and I would even if I had the budget for a bimmer. 

There's a lid for every pot, you know?  And I found mine last October.

Which brings us back to The Merlin Tree.  This weekend I took delivery of my new baby and I cannot even tell you how much I love it.  The Canadian Production wheel is rustic, powerful and beautiful in a simpler, rougher way.  It's quirky, not precision.   But so am I and I adore spinning on it.  The single treadle is quick and powerful even with a fairly leisurely heel-toe pace.  It's size and scale suit my long legs and muscular strength.  I can already tell that I'll be able to spin for a long time without feeling like I'm pedaling, without feeling tedium, without tiring.

Every couple of hours this weekend I had to go back to Dave's booth and play with it.   If you wanted to find me, that was where I was.   And I can't quite bear to think about the sublime goofiness I was wearing on my face.  But you know, I'm basically happy to look foolish in such a good cause.

Unfortunately there was a slight...and I can hardly bear to write this...mishap on the way home.

   

There was some depression.  Maybe some outright crankiness.  No tears, because I have SOME perspective. 

I was very not happy.   

But I've talked to Dave and repairs will be underway ASAP. 

I'll keep you informed.

In the meantime:

 

Happy now?

Gluttony: or I'll have it all and ask for more.

(something is weird with my pictures.  Click for big and, more importantly, clear.)

Oh festival, that parts me from my wallet, I cannot resist you.

Really, I'm going to have to stop going if I keep up like this.

So, you might have heard there was this little get together in Maryland?

Friday Cass came down from the city and watched me run around like a fool forgetting everything and failing to find the rest of everything else.  Fortunately we are nearly one person, so she found the things I couldn't and we took turns reminding each other of the things we needed to pack.  It's a bit scary. 

Then we drove to Maryland, checked into the hotel with the Etherknitter, met up with Cl audia and Sil, Theresa, Julie, Jenn, Norma and Rachel H.  And suddenly there was a little party going on.  There was wine.  And spinning.   (So maybe not a party by some standards, but that's pretty much my speed these days.)

Bright and early the next morning Laurie and I were off to the the fairgrounds.  Cass very sensibly stayed at the hotel, and drove over later after coffee and more rest.

It's a blur, okay?  I saw SpindleRose and her friend Carol and The Village Knittiot and her fabulous and  charming husband Mr. Knittiot.  I met my new wheel.  That bit is all clear. We all walked and talked and shopped and sat and talked and ran into Cara and Jodi and Rock Chick and June (June!), and Wendy and her friend Phyl and later Naomi and her friend Kristen and Lanea (Lanea!  Love the Lanea.) and Judy and her sister Linda and, and, and....it was wonderful and completely overwhelming.

Sunday was much quieter as people wandered less frenziedly and said goodbye and I ended the day sitting on the grass with Cass and our shopping bags - very much as last year ended.  It was a pleasing  end to meet ourselves going that way.  Circular and peaceful.

I'm only just getting myself sorted now, but I have some photographic evidence for you.

Bloggers at large:

      

        

Loot:

                    

Fini:

Bonus Picture:

(I'm too tired to link.  I'll add them tomorrow.  In the meantime, use your google-fu.)

More wisdom from the road of excess.

Or something.

Does it seem to you like people have a Rhinebeckian hangover?  Yeah, me too.
I get very excited still when anyone asks about what I did last weekend, and talk a lot very fast and make people touch the fiber, but I'm starting to come down.

Which means that I might have  enough self possession to share the loot now.

The Big Picture:

The color is bad I am afraid, as it was late and there was no good light.  But the effect is....powerful.  This is the sum total of the contents of my car when we left the festival.  The pile on the floor belongs to Ms. Too Much Wool.  The rest, ahem, is mine.

I comfort myself with the fact that my lack of self control provides endless amusement for my friends, but really, I think I might have gone a little too far.  On the other hand some of that is presents and after I loaded the car with 6 boxes this morning, the house seemed a little more under control.

The blow by blow:

Two bags of cormo blended with black alpaca from Foxhill Farm.  I love cormo.  I love the lady from Foxhill, who was very much into the spirit of my quest, even on Sunday afternoon.  So much so that when I loved a color but confessed that mohair makes me itch, she dove under a table and came up with this:

The desired color way in cormo silk.  The green tint isn't coming up so much in the photo, but this is the most ravishing red, purple and green grape colors.   The silk even gives a look of frost.  Divine.

From Carolina Homespun, two skeins of merino/tencel which I plan to ply together.  Orange with a twist, what could be better?  I love the sheen of the tencel.

Icelandic wool roving blended with merino and alpaca from the incomparable Tongue River Farms.  Some evil soul beat me to the lamb roving, but I am content with this beautiful stuff.  And I am not quite sure how I failed to buy some of their amazing Icelandic mohair laceweight.

An explosion of girliness: three different shades of pink roving made it home.  I'm too lazy to go looking for the labels, but the dark raspberry on the left  is Romeldale and silk, and the ice pink is CVM, silk and tencel, both from Three Bags Full via Carolina Homespun.   I have a notion to ply them together. The loose roving on the right is the exquisite 50% alpaca, 25% silk, 25% merino work of Indigo Moon Fibers.  It has little glints of yellow in the pink and reminds me of summertime and pink lemonade.  Sigh.
I love them all so much it is impossible to say which is my favorite, but all that rosy goodness makes me indescribably happy.  I can't wait to clear the fiber currently on the wheel and fire one of them up.

On the left, 2 of the 13 skeins of organic merino from Greenwood Hill.  If you buy no more yarn in your life, buy some of this.  I swear, I have touched nothing like it. 
Also, hairsticks from Grafton Fibers, a beautiful spindle from The Fold, and a fine selection of Woodchuck Products' wares -  a noste in something stripey and smooth, a tiger maple diz, and tiny robot Tinkertoy niddy noddy that I bought just because it charmed me so, and a WPI stick in purpleheartwood.  And that's after I whittled my selections down.

When I got my bearings Monday morning the first thing I did was take the fiber I am currently spinning - a Grafton Fiber batt from Stitches - and diz it into this:

Good enough to eat, yes?

And it wouldn't be a wool festival for me without a picture of Cass amid the spoils.  Does this not look like a happy woman?

And in closing, I would like to introduce you to a little someone I found on the ground of one of the barns - the demon sheep of Rhinebeck.

I think he makes a suitable mascot, don't you?  Something certainly possessed me last weekend.

Perhaps it was just greed, gluttony & lust.

The happiest place on earth.

Because I assure you, Disney hasn't got a thing on New York State Sheep & Wool.

Oh dear gods, where do I start?  I'm so over stimulated I've developed a twitch in my eyelid.  And I just told my mom she'd have to call me tomorrow to tell me something because I just don't have any ability to process information today.  I'm exhausted.  And it looks like the amazing technicolor dreamsheep exploded in my living room.

Let's just start with it was the best day ever, twice over.   I saw friends, and acquaintances and met so many people who were new to me, all of us excited and eager and happy. 

Friday night Cassie and I drove up in a state of total disarray.  I picked her up at the train and told her we couldn't leave yet because I hadn't packed, and then the poor thing had to watch me wander vaguely and distractedly round the house picking things up and making terribly terribly difficult packing decisions for an hour (These jeans?  Those? This knitting? That?), then we had to find the directions.  And gas.  And diet coke.  And it rained, and rained and rained. 

We stopped at a rest stop on the NYS Thruway and spotted some cash dropped on the ground - I thought I knew which people in the crowd had just gotten out of that car and went chasing after them, while Cassie followed more slowly with the money we'd found.  She told me later she was so tired that it took her a few minutes to recognize what she had in her hand as currency, so I am glad I was not alone in my spaciness.

But then we were there at the Marriott, and there was a warm room full of knitting folk and wine, (a personal favorite of mine on the combination front) organized by Norma on behalf of Nathania's upcoming nuptials.

Jackie and Cassie (the other one) were there, and the Divine Ms Em, of all of whom I can never have too much, and Norma of course, so lovely to see again, and Teresa whom I met at Claudia's but this weekend really had a chance to talk to a little bit, and Cara who was the only one brave enough to be knitting on something with a chart at such a time, and I met Jen, and Ann and Vicky, and Nathania and Laura J  with the mammoth tooth spindle I covet,  and later more people came in from dinner and Claudia was there, and Leigh and Carolyn, and Alice (who, shockingly, has no blog) and my girls Laurie and Julia and this was all just Friday night.

You see how it might be overwhelming?  We hadn't even gotten to the wool yet.

Saturday is just a kaleidoscope.   In no particular order, an incomplete sampling:
In the car we learned something about Julia and incense that made us all laugh so hard I almost drove off the road.   
Judy recognized my shawl.   I was beside myself.  Woman, you made my day.  Really.
The woman in front of Julia and me in line for lunch had an exquisite pullover draped over her arm that she was kind enough to let me photograph.  She said the pattern was Greek and she lost it a long time ago.  I was very  taken with it.

After lunch I ran for the fleece sale, where my plan to follow Mamacate around and suck wool knowledge from her like a parasite was thwarted by the fact that I was 20 minutes late and there were so many people in such a small tent that I almost turned around and walked out.  And yet I managed to get a fleece anyway.

Yes, I bought a fleece.   It is so beautiful it deserves a post of its own.  Her name is Gladys.

And I saw Mindy but was seduced away from her by Amy dangling the lure of Norm Hall's wheels and never found her again.  I hope you had fun....I'm an immoral wheel floozy and I'm so sorry I failed to re-locate you.

I remember my darling Melanie blowing me kisses across the hill, and the worst sandwich I've ever eaten but I was so hungry I didn't care, and a whole group of us ransacking the Carolina Homespun both. 
I was so out of my own body I actually bought patterned sock yarn.  Sock yarn!  I've never done that before. 
I think I hugged Kay in the sock booth.  I know I touched the sleeve of the black denim cable sweater worn by her daughter, which has so converted me to the possibilities of denim yarn.  Of course they don't make the black any more.  Bastards.
I know I bought a sweaters worth of silver organic merino yarn that is....you know how people always say things are like butter?  This is -  butter, or full cream, or velvet, like a 19th century heroine's complexion.  It is THE yarn, the yarn that all other yarns hope to live up to, or perhaps be when they grow up.
And pink ivory (which is somehow wood) mini needles/hair sticks at Grafton Fibers.
I remember watching a nice woman showing Cassie and Jen how to spindle spin (watching these two succumb to the lure of the spin was the most fun thing out of all the fun things that happened this weekend) and realizing halfway through that she's Emmajane.  Wait, I know you.  Sort of.  Hi, Emmajane.
I saw Risa and her twins, and met Carrioke and Marcia, and saw Marcy (who should know I almost had an accident when I got to try a Norm Hall wheel).  And I met Stephanie, and her Eris which is so beautiful I can hardly stand it and now I know what I am doing with the Silkroad Tweed DK in the stash, I can tell you.
I met and saw so many people I cannot even begin to sort them all out in my head.
And I saw so much fiber and met vendors and was rained on, and baked in the sun and saw a juggler with the most eye-searing orange polyester argyle ensemble that it hurts to remember.

The whole day was like being caught in a river - the current eddies you together and then sends you off in another direction and you are carried along.

In the evening many, many knitters and bloggers gathered in the lobby and there was pizza and knitting and look what I got and talking.  I met Kelly there, and Elisa and Stitchy and sat at Melanie's feet admiring the beige she is knitting for love.

Sunday I began with Adelaide and Cassie and Norma and Icelandic wool - which is a pretty damn good way to start any day - and then met the New York Girls who were just arriving and spent pretty much the rest of the day with Valentina and her soccer ball and Heather and Sara and Gi and Sarah, somehow acquiring in the process an enormous bag of fiber, including another 1/2 a fleece, a Mary Pratt blue ribbon that I split with Kim.  Yes, bunnycrack Kim.

We wound down the day remembering to say goodbye to anyone we ran into (many thanks to Ann for the fries I filched - inexplicably served in a cardboard bowl shaped like a pet bowl, but nonetheless delicious)  and shopping, and eating lamb ravioli - oh my god the goodness - and the Best Chocolate Ever (No fooling.  The best. They are on 'a mission to serve incredible chocolate treats' and boy do they) and we came to rest on the benches by the 4-H booth where Cassie advanced the cause of spinning in the world by teaching Sara and Heather and Valentina how to drop spindle with this gorgeous blue  Finn-mohair that the proprietress at the Fold included with the spindles we all bought, bringing her (Cassie's) total number of spinning converts for the weekend to five.

She does good work.

This is what the car looked like.  Bear in mind that the suitcase is Cassie's - my bags were in the back seat.

Then we drove home and got everything out and admired it and took pictures and I'll have to tell you about that in a separate post because  I am tired and the links took a long time and I have to go to the gym.   I have some thoughts about the marvelous flexibility of this community - room for everyone from Orthodox nuns to tattooed young goths and not an eyelash batted.  I'll have to see if a few hours sleep can help me develop them.

I think I'll take the fleece to knitting tonight.  No one could possibly mind the smell, could they? We don't want to be separated.