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....

Rather Predictably, a Post about Rhinebeck

NYS Sheep and Wool festival was a Magical Shopping Experience this year, as always. The weather was beautiful, the trees were ablaze with color, the company was excellent.

The fleece sale had some rather impressive selections:



Not all mine, of course. More on those later. It was refreshing to see other people fleece-crazed spinners haul off much more than that.



Also, anytime I think of telling regular everyday people that I go off on the weekends to paw through fleece, I'm pretty sure they get a mental image of this:


Therefore, it's best that I just stick with the story that I was "Upstate for the weekend with friends".

Perverse as it might be, lamb dishes abound and are delicious. The lamb chili is just what you need to take the chill off.



Afterward, the sheep give you disapproving stares, but I assure you, the guilt is totally worth it.


This was an Oxford sheep, which, incidentally, I find unspinnable, or at the very least, not a lot of fun to spin. Therefore, it's a meat breed. Guilt absolved.

This Lincoln Ewe was sweet as can be, and super-soft to boot:








I don't think I had ever seen karakul sheep in the flesh before, but as soon as I touched one, I was like, "Oh, it's a karakul".






Angora goats, reluctantly being shown. They were all like, "Don't judge me."







The yarns were beautiful-





These are gorgeous skeins of natural-dyed yarn from Hope Spinnery in Maine.

Best of all, it was great to catch up with friends.



They were good to have around- we talked each other out of several purchases, and yet somehow facilitated several more.


photo from KnithoudBrooklyn.

We all left a few dollars poorer, but richer in fiber. We are like bran in that way. It's really what makes the weekend great.

Oh, also: Uma Thurman was there, and she rear-ended someone coming out of the parking lot in her giant black SUV.


She was tall and willowy and very elegant looking, and not really handling the situation as I would have expected The Bride to (which is a good thing).

Mothball Mohair

I had been looking for a baby mohair fleece for a while now. I'm not a huge mohair fan, but the superfine baby stuff is amazing. Really amazing. It blends really nicely and adds strength and luster to anything you mix it in with.







Kid angora goats are absolutely adorable as well.

At Rhinebeck, they have a separate sale for mohair and alpaca fleeces. I got there kind of late since I was petting the Leicester Longwool sheep and watching the nice people from Colonial Williamsburg do a combing demo. They still had lots fleeces left at noon, but it seemed like the really primo ones were gone already. Nothing was striking me until I saw this:



That's my golden fleece right there. It is the first shearing of a six month old angora goat. It had long, silky ringlets of the most gorgeous golden brown color. 6-7 inch staple length throughout, clean as can be. Did I mention how soft and silky it was? Anyway, I was in love.

I took it to the checkout table and the refreshingly honest gentleman there gave me a warning: this fleece had already been returned once because it smelled of mothballs. MOTHBALLS! I shrank back in horror. Slowly, I crept back to the trash bag of fleece and with shaky hands, opened it back up. I inched closer and let my nose hover a couple feet above and took a whiff.

Yup.

There's no mistaking it.

Mothballs.

I whipped out my phone and started calling fleeceophiles and goat breeders I knew. Has anyone ever dealt with a fleece stored in mothballs? I was assured by one goat breeder that the smell would wash out with a little ammonia added to the bath. Other people said that there was no way it would wash out. Finally, we had a very nice goat shepherd stop by, kvetch about how terrible it was for someone to store their fleece in mothballs, but assured me that it would wash out.

A ten dollar discount made me feel better about the situation in general. Baby mohair isn't exactly cheap.

Once home, I set about to washing this right away. The smell was strong- what I didn't originally pick up on right away at the fairgrounds was now filling my apartment with that awful chemical smell. I think the reason why I failed to originally detect the smell when I chose the fleece was a combination of all the sheepy and goaty smells that might have overpowered it, and the fact that it was cold enough out to make my nose run a bit making anything but the most odoriferous smells hard to detect. Once it was home, it was definitely the only thing I could smell.

I did my standard fleece-washing treatment- hot water and a whole lot of Dawn.



Mohair has a wee bit of lanolin in it. No where near as much as a sheep, but enough to leech a little brown into the bathwater. I would usually only give it one wash, and then a rinse or two.

After the third wash (with lots of soap) I finally felt as though maybe the smell was dissipating. I did two rinses with a whole lot of vinegar. Most of a bottle, and a little bit more for good luck.

I then dried the fleece on a window screen with about a dozen of cedar blocks tossed in and a fan in front of it. Once or twice a day, I would come by and give the whole think a flip.


That's my fleece drying condo, built right next to my alcoholic beverage condo.

I'm happy to report that the mothball smell is completely gone. I bagged some of the fresh clean fleece up and passed it around to some knitters and spinners at my local meetup, and it passed the test. Not a hint of mothball remains.



On a side note- I found out it was Steph from Loop who originally bought the fleece and then returned it. Thanks, Steph.