FRIDAY:
After my cardiology appointment, which went fairly well, I drove home and met up with Lisa of Can't Stop Knitting fame. We drove out to Northampton to stay with her parents. We made it to Webs about 15 minutes before closing but we each still managed to pick up a few items. I was buying Malabrigo chunky for two friends, so I picked up a skein for myself and also managed to reach out and snag some lovely handpainted sock yarn. Of course, none of this came out of my Rhinebeck budget because we weren't at Rhinebeck yet.
The Webs bus was scheduled to leave at 7:30 am. Lisa and I set our alarms for 5:15 am. We were both overly concerned about missing the bus. We each set our phone alarms and then we set the alarm clock in the guest room where I was sleeping. We also got a little panicky and worried it might be daylight savings time. I ended up checking it out on the internet. Afterwards, when cooler heads prevailed, we both realized that daylight savings time always starts at midnight on a Saturday night, so it wouldn't have affected us. As I write this, I also realize that we "fall back," which means that instead of missing the bus, we would have been an hour EARLY if daylight savings time was in effect. All of which just goes to show you how excited we were to go on our trip.
SATURDAY:
After a quick stop at Dunkin' Donuts (I run on Dunkin' iced tea), we arrived at Webs well before the bus. In fact, we would have been well before the bus even if we arrived at 7:30 because the bus driver had a little trouble finding us! Lisa noticed a tour bus driving past the entrance to Webs, and speculated jokingly that it was our bus missing the turn. A few minutes later, the same bus drove past going the other direction. Eventually, the girl from Webs who was running the tour went out to the main road, met up with the driver and then rode back with him to give him directions.
Once we were on the road, the group leader from Webs asked several trivia questions. The winners got prizes ranging from Webs water bottles to pretty knitting bags complete with either the materials for drop spindle spinning or knitting a project! Lisa immediately won a water bottle. I stunk at the questions, so I won nothing. As we pulled up to the fair, the group leader announced that the first three people with birth dates coming up would win $10. Lisa was one of the big winners!
Now to describe Rhinebeck. It reminded me of the Topsfield Fair (for those of you in Massachusetts who are familiar with it), except that almost everything was fiber related. We started out in a big building with a ton of vendors. I immediately bought a skein of silk/merino blend, while Lisa got yarn and a pattern from the same vendor. The crowd was insane. It was difficult to move in and out of some of the booths, and I ended up giving Lisa my skein and some money, because by the time I was done shopping, she was about 10 people ahead of me in the checkout line.
She sent me on a mission to find the Blue Moon booth while she waited to check out. We had been warned that the Blue Moon would sell out in the first hour, and we were both interested in checking it out. She met me at the booth, which was pretty crammed. We each grabbed chose a skein and headed to the checkout line. There were about 4 people in front of the counter, but as we headed to the end of the line, we saw that it went around the corner...and all the way across the giant hall, where it then doubled back. There were at least 50 people in line! We both turned right around and put the skeins down, because that line just wasn't worth it.
I was pleased to see a lot of rug hooking vendors, and ended up buying a punch needle kit, pattern and some wool thread for the project. Because I TOTALLY need another craft to do! I also got some great ideas for my etsy store (I'm working on your pin, Lisa!).
We spent an inordinate amount of time trying to locate the Ancient Threads booth. The Rhinebeck website said it would be located between building 26 and 27, but we just couldn't find it. On the bus ride home, Lisa noticed that it didn't appear in the guidebook we got at the fair, so they probably weren't even there this year!
Here are a couple of "friends" from the fair:
We wandered around aimlessly for about 40 minutes trying to locate the Ravelry meet up as well. We wanted to get our Ravelry buttons because we heard a rumor that some vendors would give discounts to Ravelers (I didn't get any discounts, so I don't know if it was true or not). There was a vague description of the meet up site, and a map with an arrow pointing to nothing. Eventually we banded together with another Raveler and just stood in the general location suggested by the arrow. After a little while, Casey, the Very Nice Man who programmed Ravelry showed up with his brother-in-law, another guy and beer in hand. Several of us immediately used the opportunity to get photos with him, which made him very shy and prompted him to remind us that his wife, Jess, who thought up the idea of Ravelry, would be there soon and wouldn't we rather have a picture of her? Lisa and I just thanked him and grabbed our buttons so we could get back to the vendors.
That's little crocheted Bob in his pocket!
Here's what I bought:
- Decadent Fibers Creme Brulee in a semisolid blue (2000 yds)
- Socks that Rock medium weight sock yarn (3 skeins, I was out of control)
- Ellen's 1/2 Pint Farm sock yarn
- Shelridge Farms sock yarn (3 skeins), a Lucy Neatby scarf pattern, and a Cookie A sock pattern
- Briar Rose DK weight in deep reds and blue (1000 yds)
- Spirit Trails sock yarn in semisolid blue
- Some silk/merino blend yarn from a vendor whose name escapes me (blues and greens)
- Creatively Dyed sock in semisolid silver
- a punch needle design, wool thread and punch needle set
- 2 kinds of goat cheese for Jim
- Swedish Fish for the kids
- a Go-Monkey project bag (check out their website)
I might have left some stuff out, I'm doing this from memory. If you have access to Ravelry, you can look in my stash and see everything. Or you can just look at a picture of the whole thing here:
There were a lot of people wearing their Rhinebeck Sweaters. Lisa was wearing her beautiful February Lady, and about 1,000 people stopped us to compliment her. A couple of people even stopped to compliment me on my very detailed Talbot's sweater because they assumed I'd knit it myself. Sadly, I didn't even come close to finishing my Wisteria sweater in time for the trip.
After a long day of shopping, we trudged back to the bus. We were told at the beginning of the day that we had to be back at the bus by 4:00 pm. Lisa and I picked up some apple crisp and ice cream and made sure we were there by 3:45. Some people had such large purchases that they opened the luggage compartment under the bus! We all dragged ourselves into the bus and waited while the group leader took attendance. We had a few stragglers who showed up just before 4. She took the final attendance and one person was missing! The missing lady was apparently traveling alone. No one knew her and no one had a cell phone number for her. The store tried calling her home number and no one answered. Eventually, the group leader left the bus and went back into the fair to have her paged, to no avail. We finally left at about 4:45 without her! We are very curious as to what happened -- my guess is that she met up with someone she knew and decided to go back with that person.
On the drive home, we played a yarn version of "Let's Make a Deal." The group leader called out the description of an item and the first person to show one got a prize. I won a water bottle and a little kit that included needles, a pattern and a skein of yarn.
It was such a fun weekend. It could only have been better if we'd gone with a big group of friends. I hope we can get more people to go next year!
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