I Feel As Though I Owe a Rhinebeck Post

Or maybe two. I took a lot of pictures.

I've has quite the roller coaster ride the past couple weeks...my long-term business partner/ boss resigned, a great deal of the company is being reassigned to unemployment, and I've been dealing with a pesky and painful reoccurring kidney infection that knocks me out for days at a time. Morale is pretty darn low in my 9 to 5 world. Some quiet meandering upstate was a great way to clear my head and catch up with friends I don't see enough.



It's been a tough few months upstate...all that rain from Irene and a generally soggy fall means the autumnal colors aren't quite as brilliant. Still, it's a beautiful area and completely enjoyable regardless.





It was, dare I say, unseasonably warm for October. Perhaps a little tough to think about woolen things. The best remedy for that is to surround yourself with wool and woolie creatures. Soon the spirit of a woolen wonderland will take you away.



Unusual for me, I did not get to the fleece sale first thing and nab some primo crimpy soft fleece. I think the three fleeces that I have from last year still have me content that I have enough fleece, and maybe I need to start looking for more time to sit down and spin said fleece.

The Loop Booth looked great, as usual. Steph had a rather tough year, and she's missing a digit to prove it. Irene was not kind to her either...her studio flooded and she had to move, all while trying to get enough batts and roving made to fill her booth with goodies.



I'm not really a glitter girl, but her stuff is so pretty.



On to the animals, who are the ones doing all the hard work and producing all the goods (and plenty of organic fertilizer as well).

















Angora goats:







More tomorrow....

Handspun Alpaca

Last summer, I stopped by Winter's Gone Farm in Wiscasset, Maine. Being on a motorcycle laden with camping equipment, I couldn't really bring too much home with me.



(like a live animal)

I was able to squeeze in a 4 oz bump of super soft fawn-colored roving on board.



I spun this up recently and loved every minute of it. I tend to not get a lot of spinning done in oppressive heat, but there was a break and we got some cool rainy weather last week. I pulled the wheel out and also chipped away at a warm woolie handspun sweater. The sweater still has a bit to go before it gets sent to the Glamor Shots studio, but I finished the yarn:







I ended up with more than 400 yards of laceweight 2-ply. It came out surprisingly heathery, which I love. It's very soft and once I gave it a bath and a thwack to set the twist, it bloomed up nicely.

This is destined to be a small lace shawl. I'm trying to force myself to spin specifically for projects as I tend to just mindlessly spin and create yarn and let it sit in a bin once I'm done with it.

Lucerne

I spent a weekend in Lucerne. It's about an hour train ride from Zurich and absolutely gorgeous.



How cool is that, to have a big-ass mountain in your backyard? It makes me think I've spent too much time at sea level.

Lucerne has a quaint medieval old town that had a lot of ritzy upscale shops. This is where the wealthy come to ski and spend money. Still, it had its charms, including the 13th century Chapel Bridge.




There was an enormous city wall surrounding the old town. Unforgivably, it was closed for the season, but the view from the wall is supposed to be amazing.



No matter though. I found Alpacas and Highland cows grazing nearby.







That's the lion monument, which commemorates the Swiss guards who were killed in the French Revolution.


One of these bad boys will get you close to the top of 7000ft Pilatus in about an hour




The nice thing about Switzerland is that any mountain worth climbing has a funicular, a hotel and a restaurant on top. It's -3 with hurricane force winds, but you can be sunning yourself and drinking your coffee while kicking off your high heels for a few minutes.









The mountain really casts an impressive shadow:




The views from the top are spectacular. Nothing but mountains as far as you could see to the south, and occasionally a glimpse of a green valley and a town nestled in there.







There are supposedly mountain goats that roam around, but they head down the slopes to deal with winter.

After having enough vertigo, it was time to head back down to sea level for some fondue and beer and pretzles.



There was good people watching. I honestly thought that guy was Clint Eastwood. Nope.






Lucky me, it was cold enough to wear all my knitwear, all at once:



I'm wearing my clapotis scarf from a couple years ago, my Simply Marylin sweater, and unseen by the camera, my Jaywalker socks. Which is so ironic since I got yelled at for jaywalking while I was there.

A worthy afternoon was spent at the Rosengart Museum. It had a huge collection of Picasso and Klee, and it was the perfect size as to not make your eyes glaze over with a case of museumitis.


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I have FOs and some new yarn to show off..tomorrow!

Seven bucks later...

Sunday a carload of Brooklynites piled into a car and drove out to the Garden State Sheep & Fiber festival. It was a pretty sweet little event. It was very small but it had some quality vendors- lots of small farms from Jersey and PA that don't make it to the big festivals. Attendance wasn't really high so it was nice to be able to stop and chat and not feel rushed.

There were lots of sheep:



Icelandic and Shetlands made up the majority of the breeds, but there were also some BFL, Cheviot, Romneys and CVMs. This moorit CVM caught my eye:



And there were alpacas:



That's a Huacaya on the left and a Suri on the right.

And there were bunnies. Fabulously soft angora buns:





These are like human babies, but softer and cuter. Added bonus that you can spin from them. I'd like to see you try and do that with a human baby.

There were also mini-donks, which made me think they could flap their ears and fly away:



I can not resist the power of cute.

They did have fleeces for sale. The one that spoke to me was an 11 lb white cormo. Long staple, super crimpy, free of VM. I kept going back to it trying to justify it, but I still have a whole lot of my MDSW cormo fleece at home needing a good spinning, so I walked away. They had a few nice Shetland fleeces, and I do have a weakness for Shetland. It's the opposite of cormo- straight and silky, and the colors in each fleece are pretty amazing.

What was surprising was the amount of crap fleeces I saw. The majority of fleeces up for sale there were dirty, full of second cuts, matted and felted, not skirted (!), sunburt or worse. Granted, most of these fleeces were priced accordingly, I found the fleece auction to be underwhelming.

My sole purchase for the day was some angora fiber, which set me back $7. I have never been able to get to a fiber festival and come home just seven dollars poorer. Also, instead of spending my Sunday night washing fleece in the bathtub, I went for a walk, knitted in the park for a bit, made dinner, spun, caught up with a friend.

Maybe I'm just atoning for future purchases.

Back from alpaca la-la land

I'm back from vacation, swamped with catch-up work and other nonsense, and desperately trying to cling to my vacation aura.

Two weeks is a long time to be gone (not long enough?) and I did have quite a few adventures while I away. The weather was gorgeous pretty much the entire time- sunny warm days and coll fall-ish nights. Perfect for getting back into warm knitting projects and fondle fiber animals.



Have you ever seen anything more awesome in your life? I have a weird urge to try to bite it. It's that cute.

These are cria Huacaya alpacas at Winters Gone Farm in Wiscasset, Maine. I do love the mid-coast area, and bonus points that this wonderful little farm is there. I would highly recommend stopping by if you are anywhere near them.



Judi, the owner, has a delightful little store on the premise. Most of it was Peruvian made alpaca coats, sweaters, socks, hats, and gloves. All very nice, but that wasn't what I was after. She also had yarn spun from her herd of alpacas, which seemed nice. And yes, she had roving.



That's four ounces of light fawn roving, amazingly soft and fluffy and just waiting to be spun up. Sadly, we arrived on motorcycle and it had to be packed down to nothing in order to make the journey off the farm. It's fluffed back up nicely and seems to have fully recovered.

The farm was beautiful- they encourage you to walk around and pack a picnic. They have a trail that goes around the pastures in the woods, a pond, a little bird sanctuary and lots of places to sit and relax and watch the exciting alpaca action.



The farm is actually very close to Halcyon Yarns in Bath. We passed it right by- there's no way I could go there and not try to squeeze something else on the bike. Trying to bungee cord a loom onto the back would have been a tad awkward.