Rhinebeck, part 2

So, I felt I had to write another post about the fun that was The New York Sheep and Wool Festival, even if it was for no other reason than to post more fun pictures of the animals. Okay, so maybe there is more talking about yarn that can happen, too.

I am still thinking about the yarn that got left behind. Obviously, lots of very pretty yarn got left behind, although there really were women laden with 3 or 4 shopping bags talking about making a second (or third!) trip to their cars, women whose mission seemed to be to pack their vehicles with as much fiber as they could hold. I was not one of those women. I filled one small shopping bag with yarn and a piece of stinky cheese for my husband, who could not make the trip with us.

But back to the yarn that got left behind. Specifically, the yarn that got left behind by me. It was a wool and mohair blend that had a lovely, subtle sheen, in a colorway called Summer's End. It really is the color that has been haunting me ever since we started on the drive home from Rhinebeck. The sun was lowering in the sky, hitting the trees in such a way that the colors of the changing leaves looked like they were glowing. That color- green, with gold and pinkish-red popping in and out- was the color of this yarn. Sigh. It was just too expensive, I would have needed something like $80 worth of it in order to make anything other than a scarf set.

I have managed to knit something with one of my festival purchases already. I didn't know what I was going to do with that stray skein of recycled sari silk and wool, but as luck would have it, I liked the way it looked with the main color for a shawl I was knitting than the yarn I had originally chosen as the contrast color. The variations in the texture and color of the recycled sari silk made for a much better contrast to the gray than the solid blue I had originally picked out. Serendipitous!

More about the festival, though, and I promise I won't bring it up until next year. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of men at the festival. I know there are men who knit and spin and crochet, but I am sure that some of the men I saw were along with their wives or girlfriends as bag-holders. There is also the animal handler contingent, and the people who were there for the mini historical re-enactment area. The fairgrounds seems to have converted a barn into a series of vignettes from the turn of the last century, showing the various rooms in a home, a general store, a woodworker's shop, a printer's shop. They had someone actually weaving chairs in the middle of it all. Outside the barn, they had a blacksmith's shop set up, where the gentleman to the right was doing demonstration. I found the brimmed hat highly amusing, which is why I had to take the picture of him, but find it highly unlikely that anyone would ever wear such a hat while working with hot metal.

Fiber, yarn, animal, cheese, historical re-enactments, cider donuts- what's not to love? Can't wait until next year, when I will have to remember to try the deep-friend garlic cloves and kettle corn. Maybe not together, though.