Tad and I took a much needed break and went the mountains for a long weekend. (A little late on the post, but still, it was terrific!)

There was SAFF! Thank you to everyone who stopped me to say hi - it was SO good to meet some of you in person (and to those of you I missed either through conflicting schedules, momentary shyness or sheer overwhelmed-ness, I am truly sorry!). I only wish that Tad and I could have stayed longer, chatted more and taken a class or two, but there’s always next year! Such a trip might require some actual forethought and planning though, hmm?

There was knitting - though no progress pics for some reason! I’m just over 1/2 way through the first Cinderella Sock, and have started the back of the Slip-Stitch Jacket; The yarn wants to pool at this stitch count though and I’m having to beat it into submission. I also finished spinning the silk for the Ocean/Allison yarn, just a couple ounces of the merino/tencel left to go.

There was amazing hiking (write-up to follow on tadandmel.com)! Just what the doctor ordered.

There also was a very cold final night (spent in a very cozy cabin), gelled biodiesel with resulting disgruntled behavior from our little VW Golf, a very kind & helpful mechanic, some knitting while sitting on the gravel driveway of his shop (knitting saves the day, again), and a much later trip home than originally planned - all in all, an adventure & great learning experience, with no real harm done except a small unexpected drain on our pocketbook (which could have easily been far far worse)! Tad and I pulled together marvelously well, I must say! I’m sure my partner in crime is busy writing it all up in much more colorful detail than I possibly could, so I’ll leave you in waiting for that little story!

ETA: Tad’s post is up on tadandmel.com!

—————-
Now playing: Brandi Carlile - Have You Ever
via FoxyTunes

I’ve been swatching this week:

Splotchy:

My first swatch for the Cinderella socks (Pssst! Come join us at the KAL, over here!) - I want to knit these in tweed. I don’t have a good explanation for this want, I just do. I have no suitable tweed in my stash. I tried to “make” tweed. It sucks. I contemplated plying the two yarns, but after reading Jo’s hysterical post, decided that they would be better un-married. Rrrrrip!

Safer:

Non-tweed swatch for Cinderella socks. I cast on - I love this chocolate brown and I think these will be so comfy, but I can’t say that I won’t be keeping half an eye out for a potential alternate this weekend though, at SAFF (yarn buying restricted. very specific purposes and local/sustainable wherever possible. do not be distracted.)

Hrmph:

Brooks Farm Riata purchased at MDSW last spring for a Lady Eleanor (I’ve been in love with this pattern for a very long time). But this, sadly, just isn’t it - the color repeats are too short and the stripes detract from the entrelac. I contemplated offloading the yarn. Lady E. is obviously tabled, she’s worth waiting for the right yarn, and I’m not ready to purchase it. I had a little bit of hrmph time. And then:

Hurray!!:

Teva Durham’s Slip Stitch Jacket. I’m thinking about working the drop stitches in a single color yarn, like cream, but I love the tweedy look of the yarn in this texture (Ahh, a little bit of tweedy-ness after all. Perhaps this will settle the urge).

I have a couple other swatches in progress to share with you, but they will have to wait until next week. The doggie digestive health is relatively stable for the moment, so Tad and I made last minute plans to rent a small cabin in Black Mountain, NC for a long weekend, do some hiking, have some down time, and get to SAFF on Saturday (Woo-hoooo on all counts!) I hope to see some of you there!

I know, I know, SAFF is months away, but I’m still running off my MDSW high, so I’m thinking a lot about SAFF! It doesn’t hurt that I had a very nice email conversation with Elizabeth - who recommended SAFF and also sent me to JenLa’s SAFF webpage, and then Jen was so nice too. She’s got some great information about the festival on her page and links to bloggers who are planning to go so we can get to know each other a bit before hand. Tad got extremely excited when he thought that Jen had a farm podcast (yes, Tad reads some of these blogs too - I tend to pass along some of them, especially the farming related ones because I know how much he’ll enjoy them), unfortunately, it was a list of links to other Podcasts on Jen’s site that he saw. Jen, note that you would have one (make that two!) very interested listeners if you did start a podcast Anyway, now I’m practically jumping up & down about an event that’s feels like it’s forever away! Well, if it’s anywhere near as great as MDSW was, it will be worth the jumping up & down. Come on along! It’s going to be a great time!! (and if you plan to go - jump on over to Jen’s page and shoot her an email!)

As a follow up to all the shearings taking place this spring with the Guild farmers, our Thursday night event was a fleece sale! Woo-hoooo! One of my goals for the year is to take a fleece from shorn fiber to finished knitted product. This is why you don’t see any pics of an actual fleece from MDSW, although there were many there to be had. I was holding out for one from our local guild - it just seems especially nice to know the farmer and also possibly the animal that the fleece came from as well. With Tad’s and my interest in alpacas, I very much wanted to get some fleece from Cathy at Kipling Pines Alpacas to gain some experience working with the fiber. I also couldn’t resist a pound of Kelly’s shetland, Colleen, who had beautifully soft and lovely champagne colored fleece. These women are incredible to me. Several of them have “real” jobs in addition to their farms, I don’t know how they do it. They are a great source of friday afternoon daydreams, and one of the (many) reasons I love our guild. A couple other reasons might have something to do with the unexpected (and unnecessary, though much appreciated!) generousity and general fun-ness of the other members. Namely Kathi, who sent me home with a bit of her own fawn colored alpaca “just to try - I’ve got tons!” and Kathryn’s brownies which she unloaded on me as she left (and I can’t stop eating them. My first mistake was sharing with Tad as instructed. He’s going to have to fight me for the rest. I will win.) I could go on & on - am I making you sick yet? Suffice it to say that they all pretty much rock.

Now I just need to figure out to do with these amazing fleeces! I did take Nancy’s Spinning 201, but this will really be my first go at it! Anyone have cards or combs they wouldn’t mind lending? Maybe I’ll do some washing this weekend - scratch that - NEXT weekend, I have some serious knitting to do this weekend! Update to follow.

Edited - Pictures of the lovely girls that these fleeces came from - These are courtesy of Kelly and Cathy, the owners:

From the minute we arrived at the fairgrounds in West Friendship, MD, we felt a sense of belonging. It started with the bumper stickers on the cars (not to mention the incredible number of them) and the general excitement of all the people headed for the entrance. I wasn’t the only one practically skipping, that’s for sure.

We started off with the animals - what fun! I know we will have fiber animals (scratch that - I know we will have a FARM!) at some point. Tad and I are working toward a more self-sufficient, sustainable lifestyle, and this is part of the plan - I’ll save my musings on all that for a future Pipe Dreams section update. So, walking around and seeing and interacting with all the animals was great.

Those who know me in “real” life know that I am really very shy. I can force myself out of my shell, but it takes some effort & courage. In my corporate world I’ve taken the Myers Briggs test a few times, and though I fall close to the center on most of the measures, I always come back as a strong introvert. I think it’s one of the reasons I’m enjoying the whole blogging thing so much. I get to be a part of the online knitting community in a fairly anonymous, safe & non-threatening way. So, despite my excitement about the festival, and about the chance to meet some fellow knitbloggers that I admire - I almost chickened out and skipped the meetup altogether. But I’m so glad that I didn’t. A major highlight was meeting Dawn. We’ve corresponded a bit, and despite the fact that I don’t know her very well, she somehow feels like a soul sister. We had exchanged cell numbers and she gave me a ring around the time of the meetup, so Tad and I had the pleasure of meeting her and her husband in person! Our meeting was brief, but terrific. Dawn, please keep in touch and keep me posted on Knitapalooza for next year! If you and Captain America are ever in the Raleigh area, please look us up!

Meeting Dawn was so great that I actually stirred up the courage to go over and say “hi” to a group of potential knit-bloggy looking people (in other words, they looked friendly and some were knitting!) while Tad had run off for a second. When he returned I was happily chatting with Gryphon (and the lovely Lia!), Susan, Teresa, Stephanie, Mary, and Larissa, who I’m so glad that we got the chance to meet! I knew of Gryphon’s blog from Ruth, who had shared her call for submissions with us on the design workshop (more on that in an upcoming post), but others were new to me and I discovered some great people and great new blogs! All were so friendly and accomodating of my jumping right into their group - it was brief as well, but so great to chat with them - I’ll be keeping up with you all via your blogs and Larissa, please email or comment! There were apparently some other knitbloggers meeting up as well, possibly in another area of the fairgrounds - not altogether suprising, as Gryphon said, we weren’t entirely sure how to spot each other so I thought it was great that we found as many as we did. Next year we’ll devise a clever way to find each other (and I’ll swallow another cup of courage - it was so worth stepping out of my comfort zone to meet you all!)

We knew that time was running a bit short, so we made the vendor rounds again, this time to actually make some purchases after scoping things out in the morning. My first intent was to find some eco-friendly fibers for a couple of the design ideas I’m working on, but came to the realization while browsing that there are some great ones out there that are readily available over the web and this was really a better opportunity to choose some things that aren’t as readily available where I live or on the web (as it turns out, most of the things I purchased ARE available online - go figure). So, I restricted my yarn purchases to just one - two beautiful skeins of Riata by Brooks Farms, and made a few selections of beautifully dyed fiber - Some Merino/Tencel from Bonkers!, and some Tussah Silk from The Flock Bransonas. In another couple weeks I will complete my knitting crunch and then I plan to devote some more time to my wheel. I also found my dream travel wheel (Robin Spinning Wheels - I about drooled!) but it will be some time before I’m in the market for one of those!! I also saw this amazing shirt, which I failed to get a shot of, so check out the link. Christine, the wearer, was terribly accomodating when I asked if she would mind stopping and to show it to Tad!

On our way out, we had a very happy meeting with Heather, from my local Spinning guild, and her friend Amber, and had a great time sharing pipe dreams (and plans!) with them, and then to top it all off, Frith and Catherine showed up too! Here we are!! I also had the luck to bump into Nancy (my spinning teacher) and Kate during the day as well - what an awesome group of people we have in our local guild (and how cool that so many made the trip from NC to Maryland!).

I am so fortunate to be part of this talented, eclectic, smart and kind community of knitters, spinners, bloggers, fiber artists and farmers - it’s difficult for me to put into words, but it was a truly awesome day. I felt so at home with all these people, and I think Tad does too.

I have to say, I think that Tad was a bit of a pleasant surprise for folks - like Dawn’s husband, he was there as a willing participant, not just a “pack mule” (as he was referred to by one knitter we met in line for lunch!). He joked that he could probably pass himself off as a knitter just by using the terminology that he’s absorbed by being around me (when we were at one booth, which had some felted moebius bowls a la Cat Bhordhi, he said “Whoa, that’s a moebious right, like from that book?” Mind you I don’t even have this book. “Yes” say I with a big shit-eating grin. “Would your knitter friends be impressed that I know that?”, “Yes, very!”) He’s pretty darn great, I don’t know what I did to end up with a guy like this who listens and obviously remembers all this knitting stuff that I yammer on about, but I count myself very lucky.

To top it all off, we spent Saturday night with a very dear friend, Carrie, and her husband Jason (who we had only met very briefly before) - We met Carrie the first year that we walked the 3Day in DC, and have walked with her every year since. We seldom get to see each other more than once a year, but she is an incredibly special person, and it was so great to spend some time with Jason too and to see what a great couple they make (and to meet their sweet dobe’s Apollo and Molly). Unfortunately, in enjoying their company I seemed to have forgotten that I had my camera, but I did get this one great shot of Jason & Apollo.

How did I get so lucky? Great husband & family, great friends & new acquaintances, a hobby that is intensely satisfying, and a wonderful community that we only see becoming more and more involved in - it doesn’t get much better than that.