Rhinebeck and Beyond

On Friday night, I stayed over The BF’s so I would be closer to Rhinebeck.  It saved me an hour of travel time, but the trade-off was that he was sick and a little whiney.  I also had to sleep in a queensize bed with a 6'2" guy and his 3 Maine Coon cats. Oh well, it got me to NYSS&W that much faster. 

 This is Wicket.  She is my favorite.  Just don't tell the BF.

 This one is Honey.  This is a regular size laundry basket she is laying in.

And this is Willow.  He weighs 30 pounds.

When I arrived, I met up with two of my girlfriends from our local Ravelry group.  They were quite the enablers, although I purchased a skein of laceweight, a half a pound of undyed Polwarth roving and some delicious fried artichokes before I even met up with them.  lol  

My mission was to get a pound of undyed Cormo, but all the Cormo I came across either felt too rough, or it smelled rancid.  Someone told me that smell was probably because it was from a ram, not a ewe.  We went from building to building, touching, rubbing and smelling everything we could.  Here are some pictures of the wonderfulness that is Rhinebeck:

 boothy goodness

 alpaca cuteness

 3 guesses what these are

 The Ravelry Meetup on the hill

 Angora bunnies, which I am deathly allergic to

 more boothiness

Designer extraordinaire Jesh, Susan and Kathy, who is holding an infamous chicken pot pie

but eating a flourless peanut butter cookie.

And now, pix of my purchases:

 This is the most amazing Alpaca I have ever touched/worked with.  It is 665 yds. of brown/black

sportweight from Times Remembered.  As you can see, I couldn't wait to start making something with this.
 I already emailed them and told them I need more.  lol

 This is a laceweight from Yarn Place. It's called Graceful and is 903 yards.  No clue

why I bought it other than I like the colors.  I don't do laceweight. Yet.

 8 oz. of Polwarth roving from Sliver Moon Farm. I have a total of 1 pound of

this creamy goodness to spin.

 The picture does not do this justice.  The jewel tones are so rich in this, it will be a

shame when I spin it and fuck it all up.  It is an alpaca/silk blend from Gale's Art.

and this is 8oz. of Merino pencil roving that looks great but smells like vinegar.

Beats smelling like wet monkey, but still.  It's all I could smell on the ride home.  For 2 hours.

And my favorite thing:

This is a really shitty picture, but too bad.  It's a pin- of knit stitches!

How cool is that?  Sheesh!  I am such a dork!  lolol

When I got home on Saturday night, I wound the Alpaca into 2 cakes, sat up until 2am finding the perfect hat pattern for the BF, and cast on.  First I made swatches.  Yes, I'm a good girl.  :-)  I doubled the yarn and long tailed 72 stitches on 8's with a 16" cable.  It was torture.  I went to bed.  Sunday morning I went to the store and bought dpn's.  I've never worked with dpn's before.  I transferred the stitches onto them, then decided that they were cold and slippery, and that I need some nice wood ones.  bbwwaaahhhh!!!  Also, there were only 4, and it was fiddly, so I found a plastic 9, and rejiggered the stitches.  Then I noticed that when I switched from the cable to the dpn's, I hadn't completed the whole circle, so it was half a row off and looking pretty wonky.  But all in all, the dpn's were ok to work with.



Soooo, I ripped it out and redid it with a really long cable and magic loop.  This seems to be going pretty well.  He should have his hat by January.