Rhinebeck 2011!!! Best Rhinebeck ever?

We hit up this year's Rhinebeck as part of a whirlwind October (we traveled three weekends in a row - the other two being to Los Angeles, CA and Parsippany, NJ, which I hope to address in another blog post). It was promising to be a fun time, with about 12-15 folks from the Ravelry Rubberneckers group coming, and most of those staying in the same hotel in Poughkeepsie. We stayed in a different hotel, down the road from theirs, but close enough to hang out.

The first night (Friday) we had dinner at the fabulous Table Talk Diner in Poughkeepsie:



(That's GrannyG/Genny, Minkeswim/Andrea, MaCanary (Bluecanary/Barbara's mom), Weebil/Aileen and Jay, GrannyG's daughter, who may or may not have a Ravelry account.

I must have been feeling incredibly hungry, because I ordered the Thanksgiving sandwich (turkey, cranberry sauce and stuffing!) with sweet potato fries, and a beer (Sam Adams):



I ate most of it, but not all, and I felt like I do after Thanksgiving.

The next morning, bright and early, we hit up the Everready Diner in Hyde Park for breakfast and, after a couple of odd turns, found our way to the Mulberry Street gate of the Dutchess County Fairgrounds.

Mike was really excited to be there and finally get another Diet Coke:



There was yarn. Lots of yarn. Amazing yarn.



There was also yarn with hidden messages in it:





And gorgeous finished objects!!! Absolutely beautiful!!!





I aspire to someday knit this much lace.



This is a really cute lacy bolero.



Yup, I should have purchased that pattern. Derp.

This was made out of quiviut! 8 balls of quiviut at $85/ball (show special price):



I should have taken a picture of the whole thing. It was some sort of shawl/shrug with a 24-stitch cable on it, and was absolutely gorgeous but oh-so-expensive. I would feel so elegant and luxurious in it though. AW SHAWN TAY!

Some displays were a little less elegant and luxurious:



Um, yeah. I'm sure this booth got many people taking a photo of THAT.

Of course there were animals! Llamas:



Alpacas:



Sulcata tortoises/alligators/lemurs:




A goat that completely macked on my husband, who was feeding it:


Ridiculous goat!!!

When we got back to our car, we had a surprise waiting for us - Andrea, Pearl and Lisa had left us some gummies:



Mike went for it:



We went back to our hotel, where I ogled my new stash additions:



I do need to photograph everything individually, so I can show it off.



There were more additions made that night/the next day. I may have purchased more this year than I have since my first Rhinebeck in 2006.

We hung out in one of the hotel rooms that night and had beer and pizza:



Both of these are New York breweries. I preferred the Hurricane Kitty to the Bear Naked Ale. I'm not sure if I can get either locally, but I'd buy more of Keegan's beers if I found them. They apparently have a milk stout that is quite tasty (though I'm not much of a stout fan).

The next morning was time for another great breakfast at the Everready before day 2 of the Festival!



And our Rubberneckers meetup at 12:30:



I'm really bad about taking photos of people rather than of animals, yarn, and other stuff. It may be because I'm awkward about having my photo taken, and assume everyone else does.

I did get a photo of Fennel/Jamie getting a photo of me:



I love my friends. We had so much fun.

Getting out of there was a real drag. For one, we were SO TIRED when we arrived at the Fairgrounds that we forgot to turn the car engine off. Yup. Our car sat there, running, for about 5 hours. Thankfully the battery didn't die, and we had no problems getting home except for awful traffic jams.

This is how tired we were:



I passed the time by taking photos of some of my recently finished FOs that I haven't blogged about yet.

This is my Lace on a Train scarf:



So called because I knit most of it on the train. It's from an insert booklet that came with Interweave Knits around 2006 or 2007, i.e., long before I ever considered knitting lace. The yarn is Malabrigo lace in the "Lettuce" colorway.

These are my Thelonius Sock Monsters from Cookie A's Knit. Sock. Love book:





The yarn is sock yarn from Holiday Yarns, in the colorway "Fiji". I purchased that yarn at the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool back in May (I think).

I'm debating trying to wrap up my year of projects since my last post in March. I may have a couple without photos, though. I think it's high time I start getting my words and photos onto this screen again.

Until later!