I’ll preface this by saying I’m a bad blogger.  A very very bad blogger.  I took no Rhinebeck pictures.  Not one.  If you are looking for sheep-y yarn-y pics, go check out someone more diligent.  I my defense I can only say it was my first Rhinebeck and I was in a daze of wool fumes.  I’ll have to settle for a written report (plus a stash enhancement pic).

We were rolling Rhinebeck in with a larger vacation, so we spent Thursday implementing a masterful car packing plan and delivering the Kitten Overlords to The Boy’s parents (saints I tell you, saints…that’s a lot of kitten to take on).  We climbed into the car bright and early Friday morning.  My role in this family is to fall promptly asleep when put in the car for more than an hour.  I feel a bit guilty about this (somehow I think I should be entertaining The Boy with my scintillating conversation), but I assuage my guilt with a good audio book and the knowledge that if I’m asleep, I’m not asking to take a pit stop every half hour.  He assures me this is a fair trade off.  We stopped at the Bandwagon Brewpub in Ithaca for lunch with a dear friend (and she brought me books…books that will be vital to the project after KCC…because she is awesome and knows my brain better than I do), then rolled on to Poughkeepsie.

The next morning, the scale of this enterprise began to become clear as I realized that our hotel (the hotel 30 minutes from the fairgrounds) was crawling with knitters.  The place was just dripping with sweaters.

I’d heard traffic could be tricky, so we headed out early and got there about half an hour before the gates opened.  We found a decent parking spot (and didn’t get stuck in the mud), so perhaps it was a good plan.  We’d printed our tickets at home, so we got in the short line (the other line stretched back an alarmingly long way).  The line is actually where I started to freak out just a bit.  I don’t particularly like crowds.  Not really at all.  But soon enough, the gates opened and the huddle of knitters dispersed.

I’d scouted the vendor list ahead of time and knew where the 3 or 4 booths I really wanted to hit were, but my general plan was to just sort of meander.  We headed to one end of the fair grounds and worked our way back.  I’m not really sure there’s much I can say that hasn’t been said better by others.  It boils down to ‘yarn pretty,’ ‘sheep cute (and smelly),’ ‘knitters nice,’ ‘food tasty,’ ‘lines long.’

In short order, the grounds got busier, the sun got brighter, and the day got hotter.  The combination of hot, crowded, and noisy makes me want to sit in the corner and rock softly back and forth.  I remained stoic (or, rather, I whinged shamelessly to The Boy and tried to devise elaborate schemes whereby I could be the only knitter in a booth at any given time while telling myself to brass up and get over it).  There were one or two booths I just couldn’t manage to get into as they were packed too tightly for me to stomach the idea, but I eventually found my way into most of them.

Despite the huge selection (or maybe because of it), I was remarkably restrained in my purchases.  I got exactly three things of yarn (I almost bought the spinning wheel I’ve been lusting after for a year, but somehow managed to resist).  Namely, these three.

The first is Briar Rose Fourth of July in a lovely mottled blue.  This is destined to become some marvelous socks for The Boy (and the sizable leftovers will become something for me, I’m just not sure what yet).  He loves Briar Rose colors (he picked this one out) and can easily spot their booth from across a crowded fairground.

Yarn number two is Space Cadet Organza 8-ply in Spice Trade.  This needs no explanation.  Just look at the picture and you’ll see at once why I snatched it up.  You would have too (in fact, two other people stopped me in the booth and asked where that color was hiding).  Stephanie and I chatted a bit, and I think you’ll be seeing more of her yarn around here in the future!

My final selection is something I can’t actually provide a link for.  It’s some lovely super skinny pencil roving (does that even make sense?  is it still pencil roving if it’s that skinny?) in an unabashedly cheerful rainbow.  This was at a booth that sold jewelry, tucked over on the side, and the jewelry maker’s website makes no mention of any yarn or fiber stuff.  But, if you look around on etsy, you can find similar things.  I don’t intend to spin it, just to knit with it exactly like it is.  My first inclination is giant cowl, but I want this one to sit and percolate a bit before I play with it just to be sure it’s the right project.  I have a feeling I’ll love it.

After that, I was getting a bit too warm, and the crowds were a bit too thick, so we fled (I fled, The Boy said things like ‘are you sure you got enough yarn, that’s not a very big bag…’).  Which seems a good place to leave this for the moment.  More ramblings (and somehow more yarn) to come later.