As always, SPA was fantastic. How could a weekend away, full of knitting, spinning, eating and drinking with my best fiber buds not be?

Sharon and I headed up on Thursday and had lunch at the Harraseeket Inn. We wanted to check out the new spinning space and we had heard the food was good. The food was excellent – we both had lobster stew and salad – but it was also fairly pricey. And the spinning room, while large, was  quite a distance from the parking lot. Even if Sharon had dropped me at the front door, it would have been  a real challenge for me (in my breathless pneumonia laden condition) to walk that distance with my wheel. We decided then and there that we would make the best of it at the Hilton and find a space to spin. The rest of Thursday was spent meeting up with other early arrivals, enjoying a cocktail (or two!) at the Hilton bar, and spinning in the lobby.

Friday’s spinning

Friday morning we woke up to no power in the hotel. Our room wasn’t cold at all but others were pretty chilly. We gathered in the lobby and found coffee and set up our wheels. Basically we staked a claim! The morning passed quickly but not without drama as vendors and hotel guests worried about what would happen if the power was not restored. Fortunately, it came back  on right before noon. I never saw a look of relief like the one on the hotel manager’s face, I can tell you that! It wasn’t long before the rest of our friends arrived and the vendor room opened. We shopped for a bit and went back to spinning in the lobby. It was crowded but manageable and we had a nice (but long) dinner in the hotel dining room.

Saturday’s spinning

On Saturday we decided to skip trying to find space in the lobby and we spun in Martha’s room as she had a suite. It worked out beautifully. It was peaceful and there was plenty of room for anyone who wanted to be there. The day passed quickly and we headed to the Azure Cafe for dinner. The food was great but the service was poor – and I’m being kind. I was quite disappointed as I was the one who suggested we go there because it was so great last year. Looks like we’ll be on the look out for someplace new next year. We spent the rest of the evening spinning some more in Martha’s room.

Sunday’s spinning

Sunday came all too quickly! We visited the vendors one last time and then found a corner by the hotel bar for spinning. It was nice to hang out with people I hadn’t seen much all weekend and I finished up another 4 oz braid of fiber before it was time to head home.

I am not exaggerating when I say that SPA is one of my favorite weekends of the year.

It’s a Random Wednesday and it’s all about the rest of Rhinebeck.

• The foliage was lovely. It would have been lovelier against a bright blue sky but it was still beautiful.

• I had some great meals with friends. Dinner at the Eveready Diner on Friday night was delicious and our waiter was new and adorable. Saturday night we dined at The Coyote Grill and I broke with tradition and had Bang Bang Thai Shrimp instead of my usual fish tacos. It was a great choice.

• JessaLu sold a whole bunch of box bags. I’m so glad she’s having success with her sewing venture – she totally deserves it.

• There were some awesome carved pumpkins at the fair. I didn’t take pictures but Hillary did and JessaLu did and you should really go take a look.

• Kim brought a whole bunch of sock yarn with her. On Friday night we dumped it out onto the floor of her hotel room and I literally rolled around in it for a bit. On Saturday night we dumped it out onto my bed. I tried to get her to leave it there for me to sleep with but she took it all back. Well, except for the 5 skeins I bought and all the skeins everyone else bought.

• I love sheep.

That is all.

Thanks for being patient with my mini-post yesterday. I was just too tired to come up with much more. But now that I’m home and rested (and well fed) I can fill you in on our adventures.

I know Norma said she thought the fair was less crowded than usual but honestly, I thought it was more crowded than ever. I don’t know if it’s the Ravelry effect or if it was because Saturday’s weather was better but either way on Saturday – UGH. People everywhere. And while I like people in the individual sense (as in, my own peeps) people in the collective sense – not so much.

We made the most of it, though, and decided to approach everything with a sense of bewilderment and amusement. I took pictures to make my point.

This is JessaLu’s face when observing some of the outfits. I know it was cold and I know we needed warmth but honestly, it’s not necessary to wear everything you’ve ever knit all at once.

And this is Sharon’s face when someone hit the back of her legs with a stroller. For the umpteenth time.

Manise made this face when she saw the line for the bathroom.

And Kathy looked like this when she saw the line for the artichokes. I heard tell people waited 90 minutes for one of those little bowls of artichokes. We skipped them on Saturday but did manage to get some on Sunday when the line was only 25 minutes long. God bless the rain is all I can say about that.

I hope our silly faces made you laugh because that is definitely the intent. We had a wonderful time hanging out and shopping. Even with all the crowds I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Rhinebeck was fun and awesome and crowded. I have a few funny photos to show you and I’ll try to get my official Rhinebeck post up later today but I’m not making any promises. You see, I’m tired. It took almost 5 hours to get home and it should have taken 3. And it snowed and there was traffic and there wasn’t even any pizza for me when I got home. Let’s just say it made for a very long end to what was otherwise a most perfect weekend.

Hopefully this photo will tide you over for now.

Later!

This past weekend Dale and I headed north to go to New Hampshire Sheep & Wool.  It was our fifth year in a row of attending this festival and we weren’t disappointed.

We checked into our hotel on Friday evening.  We had a great room with a balcony.  They wouldn’t give us chairs so that we could actually sit out there but that didn’t stop us from enjoying the beautiful sunset.

On Saturday morning we headed for the festival.  It wasn’t crowded at all, in fact, it felt like there were fewer people than usual in attendance.  There were definitely some favorite vendors missing, too.

That didn’t stop us from having a great time, though.  We shopped with our friends for the morning and gathered for a bit of a pot luck lunch at noon.

Claudia and Laurie agree that lunch is serious business.

We spent the rest of the day gabbing and walking and visiting the booths.  The animals never fail to entertain us.

Like these two little goats who kept climbing up on the hay.

And this beautiful alpaca who started posing for Kim, Jean and I the minute we pulled out the cameras.

Cheryl’s afternoon snack included a pickle – of course!

Do you want to know why Manise is smiling?

Check out this fleece she bought!

The day at the festival was over too quickly but the evening was just as much fun.  We had dinner with Jean and her husband Dan as well as Kim and her husband Ken.  We laughed a lot and really enjoyed each others company.

Sunday we took our time driving home through rural New Hampshire.  We celebrated Mother’s Day with pizza from my favorite pizza place in the evening.  It was a great way to end a really terrific weekend!

Apparently one word just doesn’t cut the mustard when it comes to yarn and I need to talk about that yarn in the picture yesterday.

That’s 4 skeins of yarn that I spun up.  The fiber is Lincoln Cross that I bought from Barneswallow Farm at Rhinebeck.  I bought the green and the rose in 2006 and the blue and the cranberry in 2007.  It’s about time I got to them, don’t you think?  It’s more or less a worsted weight and I’m thinking colorwork mittens.  Any pattern suggestions?

The truth is, I’ve been spinning a lot lately.  My motivation comes from the fact that this weekend is New Hampshire Sheep & Wool and I told myself I couldn’t buy anything if I didn’t spin every day for the two weeks prior to the festival.  That was a good little trick I played on myself because it definitely motivated me to spin and it made some room in the fiber drawer, too.  Heh.

Anyway, I’ll be there on Saturday and Sunday.  On Saturday we’ll be doing the traditional blogger meet up at lunchtime in the picnic area.  Who will be there?

Sharon and I decided on the way home that this was the best SPA ever. Of course, I think we say that every year! I guess that means that it just keeps getting better, though, and that’s okay by me.

We went up on Thursday this year and that was a really good decision. We had a whole extra day to spin, relax and just hang out. By Friday afternoon most of our friends had arrived and the party was in full swing! The rest of the weekend flew by, punctuated by uproarious laughter, excellent food, fine tequila, and lots of spinning.

I want you to know that I carried my camera around all weekend. And I never took a single photo. Talk about camnesia! I guess I was just having too much fun being in the moment to try and capture any particular moment. I did take one picture when I got home, though.

This is the spinning I did over the weekend. Two bobbins of Crown Mountain Farm Sock Hop (from back in the Teyani days) and one bobbin of Foxfire Farm cashmere/silk. I told you I did a lot of spinning. Apparently it was all purple!

The rest of the weekend you’ll just have to imagine.

I was searching the internets for blog content a week or so ago and I read something that said it was okay to recycle blog posts. The point was that many readers come and go and the current readers of a blog might have missed the post. Fair enough. So, I’m trying it because I think last year’s Veteran’s Day post was a good one.

Originally posted November 11, 2007

I did a lot of knitting and spinning yesterday and while I was doing that I thought about Veteran’s Day. I thought about the sacrifices that our veterans and their families make. I thought about how so many of our families are separated right now and how lucky I am that my family is together. I also thought about how unprepared our country is to deal with the rising needs of our veterans. I heard a statistic from a new study that says that 1 in 4 of our country’s homeless are actually veterans. That is wrong on so many levels and, while I don’t have the solution, I’m certainly aware of how desperate the situation is. And with awareness comes change, I hope.

So, allow me to take this opportunity to say “thank you” to our veterans. And to their families. Your sacrifices do not go unappreciated.

I promise to stop talking about Rhinebeck after this post. And I really wasn’t going to post about it again but then I remembered a few random things about the weekend and decided I just had to tell you about them before we all moved away from this subject. And so, a Random Rhinebeck list.

~We saw so many February Lady Sweaters that I came up with the February Lady Sweater drinking game. Every time you saw one you had to drink. If you talked to someone wearing one you had to do a shot of tequila. You could get drunk almost as fast as playing the Sarah Palin Debate Drinking game. (You know that one, right? You drink every time she says “maverick.”)

~Go read Kathy’s post about our issues with beer. Honestly, I think I’ll be hearing the sound of clanking beer bottles in my head for a long time.

~Some people asked about what I bought. It really wasn’t that much. Some cormo/silk from Foxfire (white), some cormo from Foxhill (also white), two BFL braids from Cloverleaf (shades of hot pink), two skeins of Botanical shades for Selbuvotter mittens (one gold and one green), and enough yarn to knit Dale a vest (dark blue). I know you’d like to see a picture but, as Sandy pointed out yesterday, the dark days have arrived and its damned hard to get a photo during the week.

~I was really happy to meet Scout. And I hope you don’t think I’m too weird when I tell you that she smells really good.

~I ate artichokes french.  And drank beer.  I truly love that this particular fiber festival sells beer.

~That is all.  Carry on.

Ahhh, Rhinebeck. Those of us who go can’t get enough of the recaps and those of you who don’t go are probably sick of hearing about it. Too bad.

I left on Friday morning and drove out to upstate New York by myself as Blogless Sharon couldn’t go this year. It was strange to be on my own and driving that far (it’s about a 3.5 hour ride) since I don’t even drive myself to work these days. Anyway, I arrived at the hotel just before check in and bumped into Julia and Brandt. I settled into the room and started texting Cheryl and Kathy to see when my roomies would arrive. I also texted Terry to check on the status of her class and I texted Sandy to see if she was there yet. It wasn’t long before I had a roomful of friends and the real fun began.

The highlight of the weekend is spending time with all these wonderful friends but the festival is pretty good, too. The sheep are cute.

And the foliage is gorgeous.

There is oodles of fiber and yarn to shop. Of course, that assumes you can actually get near it! It was quite crowded on Saturday and I didn’t feel that Sunday was that much less crowded. It sure didn’t seem like the economy was tanking given the number of people shopping.

Really, though, it’s all about the friends. I did take a few snaps of people I was with but there were many many more who never got into any of my photos.

Here is Cheryl and Jennifer at the Spirit Trail booth.

And Jackie and Elisa, two blogging friends who now live way too far away, I feel.

Of course this is Scout, Kathy and Margene with me. I was so happy to meet Scout and having Margene there was just the frosting on the cake of the weekend.

I also shopped with Jessalu and Risa and Jean and Kim and bumped into lots of others, too.

All too soon it was time to head for home. Having Margene ride back with me was such a bonus, though, as it felt like the weekend wasn’t really over yet. We had a nice time Sunday night and Monday morning and then it was time to head to the airport so she could fly on back to Utah. Come back, soon, Margene!

It was a fabulous weekend and I’m already planning for next year!