Rhinebeck

I was fortunate enough to be able to go to the NYS Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck this year. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and cool enough to wear a warm handknit sweater. On the way up, I finally weaved in the remaining yarn ends on my Fairly Easy Fair Isle cardigan. I wore it at Rhinebeck, and it's growing on me, figuratively speaking.

Here's the obligatory Rhinebeck sheep picture:


We watched a few of the sheepdog trials, and some sheep shearing. I got to see some weavers and spinners too. And...I bought some yarn.

Here I am shopping for yarn (behind the lady who's weighing the roving):


You can kind of, almost, see the FEFI cardigan in this picture, though I was wearing a vest over it:


I'll have to post a better picture of the sweater some other time.

And here are some of my purchases:

The yellow skeins at the top will eventually become argyle socks for John (which I plan to do in a knit/purl argyle pattern that I was going to invent but I've since discovered has already been done).

The other two hanks are from Briar Rose Fibers, which I'd heard so much about from Brenda Dayne in Cast On. The red-purple-olive one is 1200 yards of Legend (DK/sport weight merino wool), which I want to make into a short sleeved V-neck sweater to wear over long-sleeved shirts. For the pattern, I'm eyeing the cap sleeve version of Essential Stripe from Knit and Tonic (without the stripes). The blue and green skein is Grandma's Blessing, 400 yards of sport weight superwash merino, and I don't have a plan for it yet but it is lovely!

John ended up spending more at Rhinebeck than I did -- he bought an amazing double-layered 100% alpaca king size blanket for his uncle who just got married, and an alpaca teddybear for his niece. Okay, so really we bought those things together, but I like saying that John spent more at Rhinebeck than I did.