Rhinebeck

We've just started recovering from Rhinebeck on Saturday.  It was an absolutely wonderful day- but exhausting too!  So much to see and do (and buy).

The weather was stunning. warm with blue skies. 

 

Too warm for Adam to wear his new hat.

 

We hit the fleece sale first thing in the morning, and met some lovely people while standing in line-twice.

 

We ended up buying over 80 pounds of wool to spin into yarn for the mill.  Some gorgeous

Cormo, which I hope to make into light weight sock yarn and a LOT of springy Corriedale for medium sock yarn.  We also got some alpaca to blend with our CVM wool for some worsted weight that we hope will make some beautiful sweaters, hats and mittens. 

 

After the fleece sale we were off to the barns to check out all the shops:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then we saw the animals:

 

 

 

 

 

Adam's parents bought these two Romney ewe lambs, Willow and Ivy, for their farm. 

 

 

 

And the sweater turned out pretty nice, even if it was a bit warm for it.

 

 

 

 

 

Rhinebeck Prep

Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool is this weekend! 

We're really excited and making shopping lists, both for ourselves and for the mill.  We're hoping to get some beautiful fleeces to make some goodies for the mill store.  I have to say that it's a little heartbreaking to be shopping for things that won't actually go into my stash, but Adam keeps reminding me that if we want the business to be successful, I can't view the mill as my personal yarn factory.  Drat.

Because Rhinebeck is pretty much wool mecca, people are kinda nuts about their Rhinebeck Sweaters.  I'm one of those people too, except this year I waited until a week before to become nuts.  The time crunch combined with "must have a Rhinebeck sweater" fever resulted in Adam driving me to the yarn store in Honesdale Saturday afternoon and then swearing that if I knit for the whole afternoon and didn't make him apple crisp for his efforts, he would cut all my yarn into 6" pieces.

I took that threat seriously.  He got apple crisp.  And I picked out an awesome pattern:  Selkie

I justified my insanity because:
1.  Selkie is made out of bulky yarn.  Bulky yarn knits faster.
2.  Selkie is made on size 13 and 15 needles.  So it would totally fly off my needles. 
3.  Selkie is actually a cape/wrap, so there aren't any sleeves.  That makes it really just half a sweater, and half a sweater would be way faster than a whole sweater.  Right? Right?

By Saturday night I had a collar half done:

I LOVE these buttons.  They're handmade and I managed to find four matching ones in the store.  The yarn is Debbie Bliss Winter Garden, which I'm kinda meh about.  One on hand, beautiful feel and colour to it- it's a baby llama, merino, silk and linen blend.  On the other hand, I picked out so much freaking hay and hard linen bits I feel like I could have fed it to the sheep and saved some money on our winter hay supply.  I suppose the name justifies it- it certainly had enough plant matter to be a garden. 

 

 

By Sunday morning the collar was totally done and on my third try, I successfully managed to pick up the 100 stitches around it:

 

 

And last night I cast off, had a hysterical panic attack because it looked too short and then Adam calmed me down and promised it'll grow when it's wet and we could block it bigger and even if we couldn't, it's a wrap and I'll have a shirt on underneath so it's not like I'll have a navel-baring sweater so for the love of all things sane could I just go get a shot of whiskey and get out of his way and let him do it.

 

He did it pretty well:

 



 

Now I'm just waiting for it to dry so I can sew on the buttons tomorrow night and be ready to bust down the gates Saturday morning. 



Also, gratuitous snuggly Niobe and Nagu photo:

The Princess and the Peeves

 

This is Princess.  See how she's all alone?  Looking rather concerned- which is completely natural when a herd animal finds itself deserted.

 

That's because the rest of the sheep are here:

 

which is to say, outside the fence.

 

 

This happens all the time.  Skirted Fleece sheep seem to feel that the fences simply don't apply to them.  We apparently installed all of these fences as a suggestion, rather than an actual barrier.  Grass greener on the other side?  Just duck under the fence and help yourself. 

 

Except for Princess.  Princess could just as easily fit under the wire as her more rebellious counterparts.  Except she respects fences.  So she stands on the other side of the barricade, freaking out that the rest of the herd has such a hippy-dippy, do-what-feels-good attitude toward clearly defined boundaries.  You can practically see the hoof wringing going on.   She spends most of the day at the gate, bleating pathetically that "This just isn't ok guys!  Rules are there for a reason!  You're going to get in trouble!"  And the flock just ignores her, munching away happily.  Princess is our flock buzzkill.  And they drive her nuts.