Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Rhinebeck!

Well, it took a couple of days, but here's my Rhinebeck post. I notice everyone else I went with has already posted (hangs head in shame)...

I had a great time with Mad Knitter, Knelley Belley, Costume Chick, and WifeMomKnitter. We got an early start from New Haven. I told Knelley it made me think of Robin Williams in "Good Morning Vietnam": "It's 0-600. What's the O for? O my GOD, it's early!" But the drive was gorgeous, the company was great, and time flew by pretty quickly.

We were all overwhelmed by everything Rhinebeck had to offer. Vendor after vendor after vendor. Yarn, other knitting goodies, and lots of roving. For those of you who don't know what roving is, it's the soft wool (or other fiber) used to spin yarn. It comes natural or dyed, and looks like cotton candy. I currently have no interest in taking up spinning, but I did enjoy "petting" the big, fluffy piles of roving. More than once, I considered jumping into a big pile of roving like one might jump into a big pile of autumn leaves. But I didn't want to have to explain myself to other "guests" of the Dutchess County Jail ("What're ya in for?" "Oh, I stirred up some trouble at the New York Sheep and Wool Festival...")

It wasn't until after lunch that I finally risked opening the floodgates by -- gasp -- buying something. My first purchase was a ball of Opal sock yarn. Costume Chick said it's a good yarn for a first pair of socks. And it's self-striping! I look forward to trying it out soon, now that I've finally learned to use DPNs (again, I have Costume Chick to thank for that).


Then I bought a little alpaca fridge magnet. It just made me smile. I'm waiting for Oscar to notice it on the fridge ("WTF???")


I also bought a skein of silk yarn. It felt so good. It was a little pricey, so I only bought one skein -- I plan to use it for a lace scarf:


And for someone who has never knit socks, I sure did buy a lot of sock yarn. When I found some purple and gold sock yarn, I figured I had to knit a pair of LSU game day socks. Geaux Tigers!


And I'd thought it would be nice to find some knit finger puppets to take to Helen and Matthew. In the last building we went through, I found these:



One more thing I wanted to show -- we saw a very cool Border Collie sheep herding competition. I thought it was very cool, because my sister has a Border Collie. I wasn't able to get very good photos because the sheep were so far away and the dogs moved so fast. But one of my co-workers has a Far Side calendar, and this was Saturday's page:


:-)

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Long Time No See...

Wow, it really HAS been a while since my last post. So what's been happening since late August?

Well, my beautiful new nephew arrived on September 10th. Matthew Stewart weighed in at a healthy 9 lbs., 6 oz. Matthew, his mom, and his dad are all doing really well. Even Truman the Border Collie is handling the new family dynamic fairly well -- can you spot him in the first photo?







And I finished Matthew's blanket and managed to get it to him before he was a month old:



And lest you think that I'm neglecting my precious niece, here's a photo of her at a gathering of Guatemalan adoptees and their families (Helen's the pumpkin):


Not a whole lot else going on this weekend, except that something's got my allergies going crazy. Sneezy, sneezy, sneezy.