Wool Gathering 2019

My friend, Cindy, and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Wool Gathering in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This festival is held every year at Young's Dairy, a working dairy that produces the most decadent ice cream.  We drove over early to first get breakfast at the restaurant.  I had a stack of pumpkin pancakes that just screamed Autumn.  They were pumpkinny and gingery and delicious.  A gentleman came up to me and asked if they were as good as they looked.  I told him that as long as he didn't have an aversion to ginger they were fabulous.  I am going to have to try to recreate them at home.

The Wool Gathering is a festival that is very spinner oriented.  Many booths featured roving, spinning and weaving.  One booth had a wheel that I had never seen before.  This is the vendor's personal wheel.  It is a SpinOlution Bullfrog.  The wheel intrigued me because of its simple design.  The owner said her friend is a vendor and will have a booth at Vogue Knitting Live, coming to Columbus in November.  Cindy and I are already planning on being there, so I will have to check out the other models at the show.

After we walked through the vendor tents we visited with the animals in the shearing tent.  There were sheep, goat, bunnies, llamas and alpaca.  These guys were a bit agitated with the whole affair.

You can see by the look in his eye that he wasn't thrilled with crowds of people gawking at him.

My purchases were very project focused this year.  I really didn't see any random skeins that I just had to have.  I bought two patterns.  The Banksia Shawl will be used with a skein of cotton I bought several years ago from Woole's.  I need to dig through my stash to find it and put the yarn and the pattern together.

I also bought the pattern for Love Note.  I saw Christina of Chealsea Purls wearing one.  It was lovely.  I don't have any yarn in mind for this yet.  I just wanted to make sure I had this in my library.

One vendor was selling ecoprinted t-shirts.  I just loved how this one looked.

Destination Yarn was at the festival this year.  Jeanne had bundles to make the Birds of a Feather shawl by Andrea Mowry.  I bought the bundle in the Valencia colorway.  Cindy bought one in a blue colorway.  We are going to have our own Knit Along to make these.

Tegna has been in my queue for a while.  I did buy some green yarn during the I-75 yarn shop hop to make it but I found these lovely skeins that I want to use also.  I just hope these two skeins will be enough.  I think I'll make the green version first so that I can see what kind of yardage I need for the sweater.

I couldn't leave the festival without some roving.  This top of polwarth and silk will be dream to spin.

A vendor in the animal tent had fiber from their animals.  This Merino lamb was impossible to pass up.  It is so soft and dreamy.  I can see this turning into a cowl and mitts.

Also while in the Wolle's booth, I pickup up some of her cotton/silk to make into the Sea Salt sweater by Laura Aylor.  The vendor only had 3 skeins left with her.  She's going to mail me the other ones once she gets back to her shop.

My final purchase to share is  a Roly-Poly project bag from the YarnByrds truck.  The chickadee has a special place in my heart.  When I as very young, about 5 years of age, I helped my dad make a bird house.  He called chickdees 'spitzies' and always said it was my spitzy house.  Whenever I see a chickadee I think about my dad.  He was the best dad.  I miss him.  Physically I resemble my mom, but my personality is more like my dad's.  Funny how genetics works.

Four Plus Weeks To Finish

Time for a little math.

Fact:  The body of my Rhinebeck sweater is 8 inches long under the armscye.  

Fact:  The pattern calls for 12-13 inches before the ribbed hem.  (I'll probably go with 13 because I want it a bit longer.)

Fact:  The split ribbed hem is 2 inches in front and 3 inches in back.

Fact: Each sleeve will be about 14 inches.

Fact:  That is 5+2+3+14+14 = 38 inches of knitting. (Yes, I know we aren't talking the same number of stitches for each row/round, but this is how I measure progress.)

Fact:  Wet blocking will take 2-3 days; steam blocking will be only one day.

Fact:  I leave for Rhinebeck in 32 days.

Now for the math.  I prefer wet blocking.  In order to do that and have it dry before leaving on the trip, I need to finish knitting by the 29th day.  To finish in time I need to knit an average of 1.3 inches a day.  Sounds doable, but the problem is I don't knit everyday.  Since I am working full time, most of my knitting is done on the weekends.  So, my real goal is to knit 9.5 inches a week.  Using that average, here's the knitting milestones:

September 22:  Body complete, front rib complete, 2 inches of back rib complete.

September 29:  Back rib complete, 8 inches of one sleeve complete.

October 6: One sleeve complete, 3 inches of second sleeve complete.

October 13:  Knitting complete and ends woven in, soak and block.

October 16: Pack for Rhinebeck.

Other knitting cannot distract me.  The August installment of my Jimmy Beans shawl came.  I haven't finished it yet.  Two rows left, but the rows are getting long.

It'll have to wait.  Maybe it will be my car knitting, along with the September installment, when I head east.

I'm Back

August flew by in a blink.  I'm not sure where it all went, but the last week and a half was spent travelling.  With some easy knitting (since I get nervous when I fly), my husband and I headed to Seattle to take a cruise to Alaska.  It was my first time there; my husband's second.  Actually, he lived in Alaska for about 6 months back in the mid-80s.  When he graduated from college, he went to visit an aunt and uncle who lived in Anchorage.  He intended to look for work up there, but spent most of his time fishing with his cousin.  When his money ran out, he headed back to Ohio and ended up with a job at the company where I worked.  We met about 2 1/2 years later and the rest is history.

Anyway, back to the trip.  This was our 8th cruise.  Just the two of us to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary, which is coming at the end of September.

The cruise ship had a contraption that lifted about 150 feet above the ship.  We went up and got a fantastic view of the ship and Seattle across the bay.

After a rough first day at sea, our first stop was Juneau.   I knew it would be small, but I really didn't expect it to be as small as it was.  We didn't do any excursions; just walked around.  

I found a yarn shop and purchased a lovely skein of yarn from an Alaskan indie dyer.

When we went back to the ship, we noticed a bald eagle flying around.

The next stop was Skagway.  It is a cute, little town tucked in a valley along the water. 

 We took an excursion that went out of town on the only road up into the Canadian mountains.  Lunch was spent at an outpost that had an Iditarod dogsled team.

One the way to and fro, we stopped to get pictures of the beautiful mountains.

And lakes.

And roadside attractions.

Once we got back into Skagway, I popped over to a little yarn shop I spotted as we left in the morning.  It had qiviut, arctic fox and arctic hare.  I really, really wanted the qivuit, but I couldn't pull the trigger with the $180 for 2 ounces pricetag.  The lady at the shop then tried to entice me to buy the fox by showing me a beautiful scarf made with it.  Again, it was above my threshold.  I did end up purchasing the hare.  Unfortunately, Ed walked into the shop just as the lady announced how much I owed.  He was shocked.  I just tried to ignore him and focus on how lovely the skein is.

From Skagway, we sailed into Endicott Arm and saw the Dawes glacier.  We couldn't get very close because we were on a very large ship.  Later I heard someone say the captain was concerned because there were predictions of 60 mph wind gusts.  He didn't want to risk getting us stranded.  I appreciated his carefulness and concern for our safety.

Along the sides of the fjord were tons of streams flowing from the mountainsides.

We came across an iceberg with seals hanging out.

Once we got back to the Inside Passage, we started seeing whales again.  (We saw many whales and dolphins while we sailed through on our day into Juneau also.)  This was my one good shot of a tail.  Most of my whale photos are of the water spouts and maybe a dorsal fin.

After another day at sea, which was much smoother than the first, we landed in Victoria, British Columbia.  My parents had been to Victoria over 20 years ago.  I remember them raving about Butchart Gardens, so I knew we had to see it.  I can't imagine it being more beautiful than it was.

The morning after Victoria, we were back in Seattle and headed home. 

We got home at 1 am Saturday morning.  About 5 am I woke up hearing Squeaks crying at our door.  Ed doesn't want her in our bedroom, so I got up and went downstairs to sleep on the couch.  She curled up on the ottoman by me.  I think she missed me.

You know what?  I missed her also.