Hooking Beaver and Other Rhinebeckiness

Mona, Mona, Mona.  I mean I’m going to make a hooked rug with a beaver motif.  I picked it up at Rhinebeck from Janet Conner.  I noticed a lot more rug hookers there this year, and as Sara and I had both tried (rug) hooking years ago, we decided to give it another shot.  I was leaning towards an ornament-sized project until I saw this.  It’ll look swell on my office chair.

So, yeah.  Rhinebeck.  The best part, of course, is meeting up with other bloggers.  Some, like Erin (pictured next to me) and Annie and Annie and Jess are pals whom I’ve met in real life before.  Others, like Jessica  (pictured on left) and Katy are bloggers I’ve known online, and I finally got to meet.  There were so many more people than the ones I mentioned, and the meet up was a blast.  A crazy blast.

As you can see, I wore my wedding stole.  I let others touch it and pet it, but they had to give it back.  Wanna see some of the stole love?

Here’s Concateknit giving the stole a whirl, then helped me
to i.d. some of the bloggers on my Bingo card.  When I saw Jess handing out Ravelry pins, I figured it was only fair to ask her to model, too.  A few strangers admired the stole, especially commenting on the color.  Next year I’m going to have to get some cards from Scout–she won a number of admirers at Rhinebeck!

I over spent this year, but I don’t regret a penny of it. I couldn’t sleep on Friday night; I was so excited to head out to the festival–it felt like Christmas to me, and I feel like it’s Christmas again when I pull out my new fibers and toys and play with them.  Baskets made by Desto
and Tina, designers and weavers from Ghana who live in the U.S. now and are teaching their craft to their daughter, were the hit of the event.  Here’s my basket filled with the goodies I purchased (click, of course, for bigness). 

The zippy bags are filled with an ounce each of crack  cashmere, I mean.  I was going to buy one, but when Linda Cortright shared the story of the nomad who raised the goats (his picture is on p. 87 of the Fall 2007 Wild Fibers issue–hello, cute nomad, I like your goat’s fur) and that this was the first time this cashmere was being offered in the U.S., and about the struggles the nomads faced, well, I felt like it was a moral obligation to buy a second ounce.  I really did.  The fact that this stuff is so soft that you don’t quite know when you’ve begun to touch it didn’t hurt, either. 

Well, that purchase (cashmere is, apparently, a gateway fiber) led me to lust for a new spindle so I could spin something right away in practice for the cashmere.  Erin subliminally coaxed me over to the Golding booth, where I bought a lovely light-weight Tsunami. I tried out my new spindle on the 4oz. of fiber that I’d purchased from Steam Valley Fiber–"Copper Penny," which has mohair, wool, and some glitz.  There’s a green merino/silk fiber in that basket, too.  That was actually the first purchase of the day–the purchase that opened the floodgate to my wallet.

That other wooden tool?  That’s a lucet.  I’ve seen Dave use his with great results, and I thought I’d give one a try.  Mine is made of beech wood from England, which appealed to me as that was my favorite tree (well, the weeping beeches) when I lived in Oxford.

Before we headed to the amazing Ravelry shindig, Annie, Blogless (not for long) Sara, and I went to Morehouse Farm Merino.  I can’t believe I lived less than an hour away from this place for so long and never visited it.  They’re closing their B&M shop and going strictly online, so I"m glad I got to see the shop–it was so much fun to paw the samples while sipping wine.   I picked up five skeins  each of a chocolate brown and mint green laceweight yarn.  They were $2 each, people! 

In my next post I’ll talk about the Ravelry meet up and a lovely gifty or two, and some animals.  I’ll tell you a secret :  shhh…I think I might start a yarn diet…again!  But I’ve got that feeling of gluttony, like after Thanksgiving dinner, and I totally have more fiber than I’ll use up any time soon.  I’m not ready for any commitment just yet, though.