Rhinebeck part 4 .. the end.

This was a prize, I think I could wear just this fiber forever. Cormo and silk and lovely color. I don't know what it will be yet, I would have bought more but this was all there was..alas. I wish Fox Hill had a website!
This was a purchase of nostalgia but I had to do it. Tongue River Farm Icelandic wool... Susan Briggs died this year and this was the last of her farm's production. It is wonderful natural, rough but rugged yarn, and I had bought some patterns from her last year and made one pair of wonderful boot socks with her yarn. What these will become remains to be seen, but the CD is a great pattern resource and it was so sad that this is the last of it. This is sock weight, and should become softer with washing so I might try a shawl.... I am not the filmy shawl type, so this could be lovely.
This is Mountain View Farms, 50/50 Lama Merino in a gorgeous deep black that is obviously hard to photograph. SOOOO soft and lovely though.
Obviously I fell down at the Fold booth where they had all the wonderful Socks that Rock colors. There are presents here, but not telling for whom or for when.

It was a great day, and fun was had by all, I can't imagine anything better. The only sad part was we missed the Mingorelli Farm Stand.. I think we were laughing too hard over being mildly lost on the way back to the expressway and passed it... or they closed it early on Saturday. Perhaps I shall choose to believe the first reason. It sounds like more fun.

Rhinebeck part three

OK, one more before we deal with stash enhancement.
This was my mantra for the day.... or one of them, the other was "no, you cannot have a rabbit".

I really focused in on feeling the difference between Blue Faced Liecster...(Spelling is probably WAY off there) and Romney and Cormo and... and.... and.... There are so many types of sheep and so many blends and ways to combine them that it can be an educational process, and the best place to feel the difference is at Rhinebeck. I am becoming a yarn snob. I can't help myself.

First off, I am learning to appreciate undyed wool... just look at these
aren't they gorgeous?
and what about these
yummy.

Feeling the undyed yarn just reinforced my belief that if I were to buy just one fibre (as if that could happen!) I would buy cormo wool. It is just perfect. Problem is there is not much of it.

I own shares in the Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm's CSA because they have Cormo sheep and I have a Google watcher on the word Cormo, so they came up and I bought shares. All Cormo, all the time, that's my other mantra.

They are now starting a second CSA at their second farm the Hudson Valley Fiber Farm. They mix the Cormo with mohair from their goats too... It was such a rush to open the box and see the distribution from my first year's shares!!

I also bought some yarn this time from Alice Field of Foxhill Farm. They also have lovely Cormo wool that is mixed with Tussah silk and they dye it into some incredible colors. I am hooked, you will see why but they seem to have niether a website nor a blog.. sigh.

ANYWAY... the other wool of choice was obviously Merino, and there was a lot of that to pat on also, and I stepped WAY outside the comfort zone with a couple of purchases.... tomorrow..

Rhinebeck part two

Am I the only one who is a carnivore and loves lamb, especially good lamb sandwiches, but thinks it a bit ...ummmmm......insensitive.... to eat lambs in front of lambs?
Well... I did it anyway but I made sure no sheep were within spying distance while I did it.
and then there was afternoon snack.
I suppose other people go to Rhinebeck and don't blog about the food, but dudes... the fudge was to die for and so was the sandwich. I blogged about the food at IKEA for heaven's sake, how could I miss this chance?

Oh yes, I did go to Rhinebeck!!

and I want to talk about what fun it was. Even though we managed to get lost in the Bronx on the way out of the city, it was a sineage difficulty, not a direction one. Thank heaven Blogless Nicki has a sense of direction, because mine was eluding me. I have no pictures of the detour, but it was through a park of some sort and then we were back on the expressway going the opposite way we wanted to go, but it all sorted itself out.

Once we were actually on the road, it was great. The Zipcar's name was Mack. He had a rattle that we couldn't diagnose and no windshield wiper fluid, but he got us there and back and all was well. This is the first time I have had ANY problem with a Zipcar, so I am going to think it was a singularity in the ocean of Zip and move on. I will also add he had advertising for Zipcar on him and we are SO thankful for that. Once we got to the general vicinity of where we had parked we just cast around til we saw the ad on his side. Without that, we might still be up there in that HUGE parking field saying "Do YOU remember what make car it was?"

Yes, of course there are pictures.. I will spread them out over a couple of blogposts because I haven't taken pics of the stash enhancement that took place... sigh. I was NOT going to enhance it quite as much as I did, but more about that later. Once we got in, it was obvious that there was something for everyone!After I got home I found that although I had many pictures of "animals that produce fibre" I had not a single picture of a sheep... WHAT was I thinking? But I got seduced.
How could anyone resist those eyes?
Or that little smudgy nose?
Or that bad bad bad haircut?
Or fail to be impressed by the haughty stare of someone who knows EXACTLY what they are good at?

I stood a loooonnggg time at that rabbit cage.. The internal dialogue went something like..
"I am sure Sienna would love him"
"Right, Sienna would LOVE him, but not the way you are thinking now. She loves Romeo and Clementine too, but that doesn't stop her from trying to herd them into a corner and keep them there. "
"I have heard they can be housebroken"
"So have I, but it is a process and there are lots of little tiny squishy black dots while the process is taking place......"
"He is SOOOOOO Cute!!"
"Moving right along... you could think about where to put an Alpaca too."
"Hmmm... He could live in the studio"
"THE ALPACA???????????"
"NO... the bunny, what do you think I am? Crazy?"
"Keep moving, you really don't want an answer to that question."

To be continued.... without any additions to the menagerie.