Hurricane Sandy Knitting

Thanks to Hurricane Sandy giving me a day off (and lots of knitting time in the car over the weekend's visit to the Chiller Theatre convention), I was able to finish two of the five projects currently on my needles.

Project Number One -- Thermis

This is the one that should have made you laugh your ass off when I listed the things that I needed to finish.  All that it needed was the ends woven in, and buttons sewn on, and I already had the buttons with the project since it was a re-knit.  My excuse:  I had to go all the way up to the third floor to find the thread that matched the buttons, and to get my sewing needles.  It turns out, when I opened the hat box I keep my thread in, the matching thread was right on top since the buttons on the first knit of this had been the last thing that I had needed thread for.

Ahem.

So, here it is, and as an added bonus you get to see my Morning Face complete with red mark on my nose from my CPAP:







I will be really warm come the cold weather.

Project Number Two:  Sleepknitting Socks.










I called these my Sleepknitting Socks, because it was a 2x2 rib that I could knit in my sleep.

I also wound my yarn for Color Affection, because the socks were my commuting project and I will need something simple to knit on the train (Color Affection seems like it would be fitting, plus I've been dying to cast on for this).




It's all Tilli Tomas sock yarn, and the colorways are on my stash page.  (That's my way of saying that I can't remember the colorway names and am too lazy to go look it up, so if you need to know so badly then go look it up).

As for the storm, we fared pretty well here in the Dale.  Part of a tree came down in the yard on the other side of my building, and there are some small branches here and there, and some sort of transformer blew out over the train tracks next to us (which is very loud and causes a huge flash -- yes, this happened before, a few months ago), but it was apparently not a danger to us.

Up until the transformer blew, the cats were acting as if it was just another day lounging around the house:

Luciano:




Gibson:




Ellie:




Around 7:30 p.m., I opened a window because I wanted to see what our parking lot looked like.  This got both Ellie's and Gibson's interest, so I kept it open for a little bit so they could investigate:








Luciano was not at all interested (he's not much of a window kitty), and when I picked him up to show him, the wind picked up, so I put him down so I wouldn't get perforated.  The wind freaked Gibson out a little, but Ellie stood her ground.

We survived Sandy without losing power at all, which I'm happy for.  Hopefully the rest of this week will run as smoothly!

May 12, 2012 - New Hampshire Sheep and Wool

On a beautiful, bright, sunny Saturday morning, we headed out to Deerfield, New Hampshire for the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival.

The Deerfield Fairgrounds were a new location for us, and I believe for this festival. If the festival didn't have a sign pointing into the driveway going into the fairgrounds, we would have missed it and ended up driving all over Candia and Deerfield. The driveway was loooooong, and the parking lot huge. I thought, "This place is huge. They must be trying to expand it, hopefully adding more vendors and making it more like Rhinebeck." It turns out, I was wrong.

There was the usual array of gorgeous hand knits:

And beautiful yarn:

And fiber:

There wasn't a whole lot of WTFery going on, but Mike did find this glove that looked as though it would fit a Planet of the Ape foot:

As you could probably guess from the fact that Mike is wearing a t-shirt, it was hot. This particular festival, which is always on Mother's Day weekend, often experiences cold and rainy weather, but sometimes it is beautiful. This day, technically, it was beautiful, but one complaint about the festival was the lack of shade. The walk from the parking lot to where the vendors actually start (which was a bit after the festival gates, and we both had to pee wicked bad and the bathrooms closest to the gates were CLOSED -- WTF is up with THAT?) was, as I said, long. It was also completely unshaded. They should really grow a few trees around there.

After many text messages and calls that I didn't get because the fairgrounds seem to be a dead zone for AT&T, I met up with my friend Lena and her friend Janice. We were all starving at that point. We stopped for Apple Crisp -- an annual tradition for us -- to ease our pain:

IT WAS MELTING FAST!!!!! EAT IT QUICK!!!!

I had pretty much purchased all that I was going to buy:

The two on the ends are Nightingale Fibers Ernestine (sock yarn) in Red Head (had to!) and Hadspen Blue. The other two are Mad Colors Fiber Arts Verity (DK weight) in Midnight Oil and Land of Oz (these two are planned to become a Mordor shawl).

Yes, these photos were taken on my lap on the way home from the fairgrounds.

I also purchased two bars of peppermint soap, but did not include them in the photograph. Those should be wonderful at the height of the summer.

There were some cute animals there, too! We all climbed aboard the Monorail Alpaca:

This alpaca reminds me of a Keane painting:

They are such adorable teddy bears before they are shorn (and after, too, but you know what I mean!):

These llamas would not take their eyes off a border collie that was close by:

There were some baby goats:

And one trying to make a jailbreak:

Plenty of sacked-out sheep saying, "I'm hot":

And a curious sheep as well:

Mike thought I was going to leave him behind:

But I was just in a hurry to get back to the bathroom before we left. I found him waiting for me by the fountain that was a source of torture when we had to pass it to get to the bathrooms that were CLOSED.

Then we were on our way home. We did make a pit stop in Andover, MA, for a quick nature walk, which Mike blogged about here. He's a much better blogger than I am. We got home, exhausted but happy.

This weekend is the Massachusetts Sheep and Wool in Cummington (hee, hee), MA!

Rhinebeck 2009!

What better way to make a 2 month blog absence comback than a post about Rhinebeck?!?

We left mid-morning Friday and made it to Kingston (where our hotel was) around 3:30. We unfortunately were given a smoking room with the explanation that it was what I had booked. The smell hit us like a ton of bricks once we walked in, but it got a little better after we were there for a while. Unfortunately, most of what we had in that room now smells like cigarettes.

This is what my boobs and I have to say about a smoking room:



I think we may try a different hotel next year, and not just because of the smoking room. We're way overdue for something different. Tradition, smadition.

We got some awesome, but kinda expensive, Mexican food at a place in Kingston called Rosita's. The food was seriously good but a little more than we're used to paying for Mexican, but they did give us A LOT. In fact, half of my dinner will be my lunch today -- our hotel room did have a fridge, and the car stayed cold enough to keep it on the way home.

When we were leaving for breakfast on Saturday morning, about seven turkeys were looking for food along the side of the driveway at the Rodeway:



We were told that it was opening day for turkey hunting season, so I think it was a good thing that they started ducking out of sight when we stopped the car to take photos.

On to the fair!

As usual, there was beautiful fiber everywhere we looked:







As well as displays of projects:





Including some "wearable art":



Her only request for the photo was that I crop out her shoes. She was wearing plain black clogs; I suppose she wished they were painted to match.

There was lots of knitting going on:



And beautiful tools of the trade too:



I barely spun this past year, so I didn't buy a spindle from Golding's. Maybe next year if I'm a good girl and spin more. I love the Tsunami spindles (upper right hand corner), and they do have smaller, lighter weight ones that are fairly reasonably priced (about $44). My other spindles are a $4 job I bought when I decided I wanted to try, and the one I bought from Spinsanity on Etsy for under $20, which is absolutely gorgeous and has the same alpaca project on it from when I first got it about 2 years ago.

Golding's also had this thing of beauty:



HOW BADLY DO YOU WANT THAT? I really wish I had a house large enough to have that on display always. I'm not sure if I want to know the price, if it was indeed for sale.

There were also animals galore:



There were so many super-sweet llamas, but they liked ZMrK more than they liked me, I guess. I didn't get any kisses.



One of the alpacas gave him a kiss as well, and he said they have bad breath.





I only took a few photos at the little zoo. The poor sulcata tortoises were out, and it was freezing! The same with the poor gator. Only a few of the animals gave me good photos:



I really like geese, but they're mean as shit. A couple of them that were much bigger than these once trapped me in the corner when I worked at an animal shelter. I also got bitten by a swan once.

Mike loves feeding goats because they are so obnoxious about it:



It looked like a mosh pit of goat noggins.

A couple of calm ones napped in the back of the pen:



Then there were the bunnies. No shit. They were really cute:









Bunny, meet Dollipede:



Working at said animal shelter provided me with a great many reasons NOT to get a pet bunny: (a), they poop a lot, (b) their pee is very acidic and burned through the fiberglass cages, (c) my eyes and nostrils used to itch like mad when I had to clean their cages, not to mention the little round poops that would roll all over the place, and (d) one of our local shelters is often overrun with homeless bunnies.

But Mike really loved them, as you can see. They are so damned cute. But no, we didn't come home with a bunny.

There were also really cool carved pumpkins:



And the meetups! Woo hoo, the meetups! I went to the Rav meetup "on the hill", and met up with other members of the Lazy, Stupid and Godless group:





I also managed to look like I had a missing front tooth:



That wasn't the only silliness on my part that weekend:





Red Heart Penis For The Win!!!!

Mike got into the silliness as well:



Not as obvious a penis replacement as my Red Heart.





Not silly or perverted; I just like the great big red-eyed tree frog representative for one of the dye companies.

I also finally met my favorite fellow Rubbernecker, Terri:



She blogs even less than I do.

We had to hit the road shortly after meeting up with and kissing her. Getting home was pretty clear until we hit the Mass Pike, which is the majority of our trip:



Yup, snow. FUCKING SNOW. IN MID-OCTOBER.



It sucked this much:



As it turns out, it only added about an hour and some minutes to our return trip, but that was an hour we could have spent drinking beer.

Now the big question is, "What did I get?". I certainly got less than I did last year, which was less than I got the year before:



I don't think I can leave Rhinebeck without buying one of the Tsock Tsarina's kits:



When I saw the drawing for Golden West, I knew it would be spectacular. What stupid me didn't do is take a photo of the display of the finished object. Well, she's got one on her blog. It is so fucking cool. I hope my skillsnesses are up to knitting this one.

I also got Candy Cane self-striping yarn from Holiday Yarns:



As much as I was tempted, I did not get the Bacon colorway. I think I'd be so hungry every time I looked at my feet (although it would make a really cool scarf, wouldn't it? BACON SCARF!!!!!!)

Also, this:



770 yards, multi-tonal orange, superwash merino sock yarn for $20. Enough to make socks for both Mike AND me! This was from Fessler Spinning and Weaving, not one of the "big name" yarn sellers but really nice folks from Pennsylvania.

I think that Ellen's Half Pint Farm is the best kept yarn secret there is:



475 yards merino/bamboo/nylon in a gorgeous pinky blue colorway (should I call it SkyBluePink?). I used her merino/bamboo blend last year to make the Fawkes socks, if you recall.



This is 400 yards of merino/nylon and the photo doesn't do it justice. Plus it's the softest shit I bought all weekend.



Again, photos don't do this justice. It's 400 yards of worsted-weight merino in a cool light green color that I got from Oasis Farm Fiber Mill. They're in Maine, and I had never heard of them prior to yesterday. I'd love to use these to knit up my friend Amy's patterns for an embossed leaf beret and matching cowl.

Y'all know I have the best husband in the world, right? And that sometimes I let him buy stuff for me? Yup, he got me this:



Something about it just spoke to me. I love Burgis Brook Alpacas, and the project sitting on the spindle I linked to earlier is alpaca from them. I think that goes back to 2007, but I'm embarrassed to look.

We got a sheepskin rug for the cats:



Once we realized Ellie would be making bread like crazy on one of these, we knew we had to get one. We did, for $38, and it's pretty darn nice.

I also purchased Hiya Hiya DPNs in US Size 00 and 000, for tiny little projects, and some Addi Turbos in US Size 3, 20" for a current WIP that I don't have photos of, and more cheese than we have had in our fridge for a long long time.

We finally got some deep fried artichokes! At 10:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, there isn't a long line for them. We didn't get the artichokes french (maybe next year), but the deep fried artichokes were worth the wait! I also finally made it inside the booth for The Fold, which is always super crowded (also less crowded on Sunday morning, once they decided to open, which was probably around 10 a.m.), but I wasn't blown away by it at all, nor was I blown away by the colorways of Socks That Rock that were left. I think I am an Ellen's Half Pint Farm/Holiday Yarns loyalist.

Overall, it was a great time. I went with lower than usual expectations; I don't know why, but I felt like I was setting myself up for some sort of disappointment as far as socializing goes. Maybe it was my own social anxiety getting in my way. As it stands now, I think it was the most fun we have ever had at Rhinebeck. I'm already looking forward to next year!