Okie! I realized I never posted it…
I will be with Holiday Yarns, like usual, in booth 26D (right next to the entrance by parking).
Gnomespun fiber will be with me, and also in booth 9/10C (other side of the festival in one of the big buildings).
That’s all for now!
~The Gnome
We shall now bend time a little, and report on Rhinebeck before I get around to the full report on my backpacking trip. I figure that’s fair since you all probably care more about Rhinebeck than backpacking. Rest assured backpacking report will also come soon.
So, Rhinebeck! Also known as the NY Sheep and Wool Festival. Like every year, I brought my camera intent on taking lots and lots of photos. Like every year, I didn’t get nearly the photos I intended. UNlike last year, I at least got a few.
So I spent the time between getting back from the aforementioned backpacking trip and Rhinebeck frantically dyeing as fast as my two pots and multi-color colorways would allow. It was… hectic. My dyed fiber and buckets I was filling with inventory filled the living room and dining room. As a result, I seemed like a poultry perambulating while lacking a cephalic nerve control center that hadn’t realized it was deceased.
But I actually got my inventory done and everything packed BEFORE needing to leave. Well ok, not quite. I was pretty damned close but ended up pulling out about 45 minutes later than intended. But with NO wet materials, and (almost) all the things I intended to bring! I failed to bring my sample yarns for people to play with but… can’t have everything.
So I drove through the lovely fall countryside (a much shorter drive from my parents’ than from Worcester!) and arrived at the Duchess County Fairgrounds to help Jennifer (owner of the booth) and Tsocktsarina set up the booth. Like always I swore I was going to take a photo before people arrived… and like always I totally didn’t.
Then I met Terri and Beth… who I also seem to have forgotten to photograph, wow I did worse than I thought. Terri kindly offered a bed in her camper, and fed me! MMm with excellent food too. This made everything much easier. Unfortunately, I was slow getting out in the morning (because I was dumb. I had lots of time, then I had my morning tea and suddenly I was late). So… no pre-crowd booth shot! As things were starting, I did get this…
Um… yeah. And that’s the best I could manage. Really. Besides being blurry, the place was MOBBED. Absolutely mobbed. I was sold out of some of my less populous fibers within the first hour.
We had a slightly different organization thanks to Jennifer’s brilliant mind, which made the booth much more navigable and open. I don’t know what we would have done without the shift, because WOH. I spent fulltime explaining fibers, pointing people to yarns and kits, explaining prices, restocking yarns and fibers, and trying not to be trampled. It was awesome.
Here’s a back view (from behind, while I was restocking)
Patrick manned the payment table for most of the festival.
That’s… pretty much all the photos I got the first day… wait not quite!
Tsocks made socks! From my fiber! A lovely purple cheviot braid in “Balloonflower” became these fabulous socks…
Mmm socks. Pretty! I love seeing my fiber/yarn as finished yarn/objects. This is only the second Gnomespun I’ve seen as a project in person! Also, as always Rhinebeck is a time to see people!
By the end of the first day… this was what all that was left of my inventory.
I tried a new method for put-up, to make it less… snakey and awkward and intimidating for display. Worked great. I’ll probably modify it a bit, but the basic concept? Perfect. I managed to find a way to let people touch and feel the fiber while still keeping it in a disk! Also found a folded method that worked pretty well. My yarn sold remarkably well too. Especially the darker muted colors and browns. ::thinks::
The second day, there was a chance for breathing, though things were still pretty busy. Before everyone arrived (I actually got there on time, though… without my hat, DOH)…
After the hecticness of the first day, I wandered off to actually see the fair. Unfortunately, I’m… well… um… chatty. And I’m moderately well known so I kept getting caught up and distracted, so my wandering the fair took like… 4 hours and involved things like conversations with breeders, other vendors, and demonstrating support spindling and bottom whorls. But… it was worth it, and fun.
I saw sheep!
Here’s the breed of the year at Rhinebeck, the Oxford, which has a nice fleece but almost impossible to get hold of because it grows slowly so if you shear at the normal times you get about an inch to inch and a half tops staple length. Doh.
Cheviot, a good chewy sock fiber (though I still prefer a high quality Dorset). They are adorable little dog-sized sheep.
And of course, pygora goats. Which are adorable, but don’t feel like goats to me ’cause they’re SO SMALL. My goats were big. Even the ones that were supposed to be little (Toggenburgs).
And I ran into a lot of people, most of whom I forgot to get photos of, booo! But I also ran into the fabulously awesome Arak42, Jellycrys, and Arak’s Mom. We talked for like an hour, and they were appropriately appreciative of the geekiness of my scarf (more about that in a moment). And then we took photos appropriate to our ridiculousness.
Then it was time to go back to the booth for more explaining and photos of cool people.
Like Yrallee, who brought some wensleydale I dyed that she’d spun up into an amazingly soft squishy yarn that was becoming a shawl.
TheGeorg
Westfaire
Jennifer, Westfaire, DivineBird, Sandi Wiseheart, and Georg
And before I left, I actually managed to remember to get a photo taken of me with this stuff…
Ok, so you’re probably familiar with the kilt by now. The socks I’m wearing there are also handknit by a good friend, as is the scarf and socks I’m holding.
We’ll start with the scarf. You’ll notice it’s long (it’s also awesomely warm and cozy). That’s because it’s oxygen… that is, an oxygen emission spectrum. If you burn oxygen and refract the light you get through a prism, that’s what you see. It’s how scientists tell what stars are made of. It’s utterly geeky and utterly me. I love it.
The socks I’m holding are very very special. You might recall that ages ago I went to an estate sale and got a ton of fleeces. Well I gave one of those fleeces to Tsocks, then for my birthday she gave me beautiful batts from that fiber (Romney) blended with some silk and mohair. Well I spun it up into my first handspun sock yarn (plus some extra she made me in grey ’cause my yarn was a little thicker than I intended). I then mailed the resulting yarn across the sea to my friend in the UK who is way too generous for her own good. She knit me these fabulous socks and sent them back. So now I have socks that were prepped by one friend, handspun by me, and handknit by another friend. And they feel great. What could be better?
So… it was a very successful and enjoyable Rhinebeck for Gnomespun. I’ve got a bunch of Exmoor Mule dyed up and other stuff on the way shortly.
That’s all for now!
~The Gnome
Ok! So, obviously between computer, camera, and other things, there was no update.
Rhinebeck is this weekend!
As always, Gnomespun will be at the Holiday Yarns booth, Building 26 (by the gate) Booth D! Come visit!
Dorset, Shetland, Wensleydale, Romney, Polwarth, Perendale, Southdown, Tunis, Merino/Bamboo, Merino/Angora, BFL, Finn, Rambouillet, Border Leicester!
Also Phouka sock yarn.
One of the reasons I’ve been on such radio silence, getting ready and then recovering from this massive thing!
Well. I brought 80+ pieces to Rhinebeck. Which is nothing for “real” vendors, but for me, it was massive, especially since I’ve been working on my dissertation at the same time.
I was a TINY bit less poleaxed than last year.
I thought enough in advance to get a photo of the booth when it was just set up…
and even more importantly, since I FAILED last year of me, Tsockstsarina and Jennifer who run the booth with the additional help of Patrick (who I don’t seem to have a photo of, bugger).
Getting a photo of these people is insane.
I did manage to get one photo of Thegeorg unlike last year. Though I admit it’s not a very good photo.
Had a delicious dinner with excellent people at a diner place.
In the morning, they let people in FIFTY minutes early. Which made for… a rush. Just before they hit, I got some photos of my stuff up, though only the first batch. Obviously with 80 things, I couldn’t have it all out at once.
The fiber and some yarn
the rest of the yarn
and my stitch markers
Then came…
the seething hoards!
I failed, again, to see everything (apparently the genuine AFLAC duck was there, who knew?) but I did wander around more than last year.
I met a bunch of people for a group shot (not my camera)
And yes, I was wearing my kilt and a double layer wool “ranger” jacket. It was lovely, comfy, and I wasn’t cold at all.
Lots of good people there. My good friends ZaftigWendy (of Yarnivore) and HoneyChild (of HotterFasterBetter art)
Honeychild and I wandered around quite a bit (mostly having horribly inappropriate conversations, which was excellent). We met these adorable little goats.
And the Serta Sheep
And a wensleydale that just begged for love
At the end of the day, for going to dinner and such, I needed to change. Luckily, it’s easy in a kilt. So I changed in the middle of the booth.
Then it was back to the diner for dinner with a different set of friends!
The second day, I aspinnerated the two Cyds, Cyd-Squared?
Don’t they look happy? “OMG, I’m making yarnz!”
Hrm… that’s about it. Oh, we took down the booth and I drove back home (2.5 hours, not bad, yay GPS!) in an ice storm (icky).
Oh, right, phat lootz. I didn’t buy much, I was very restrained. I got a couple pounds of dorset for dyeing, two abbybatts from Carolina Homespun where I was also viciously and mercilessly ASSAULTED by this evil thing.
It’s a Spindlewood, top whorl, laceweight spindle. I don’t know what wood it’s from, as the label had fallen off. I’m told it’s something from the Rosewood family. I also know that it’s a little under 0.5oz. Which for some would be ideal, but it’s totally not the sport of spindle I buy. I really love my 0.8-1.2 range spindles.
But… well… it hummed. Those who know what I mean will understand, and to the rest, lets just say it didn’t give me much choice in the matter. It was sitting next to a *gorgeous* piece made of amboyna burl and birds eye, and yet this one was clearly the one. And I’m loving it. It’s currently working on one of the abbybatts (Merino, Silk, Cashmere).
People often ask if the square whorls cause a problem. The answer is no. It’s basically like having 4 notches, and rim weighting. It spins amazingly long for such a tiny spindle. I love it.
So that’s Rhinebeck.
I’m currently working on reopening and updating the shop. It’ll be a bit. I’ll post when that’s done.
~The Gnome
Ok, so I’m primarily gearing up for Rhinebeck. Which means a ton of dyeing and spinning.
I will be with Holiday Yarn’s Jennifer and the Tsock Tsarina in Building 26, Booth D
So, I’m going to put up a subset of stuff on the shop at a time, but most of it will go to Rhinebeck.
So, here’s what I just put up on the shop.
EDIT: Over the course of writing this, three of them are already gone. Woh. As always I post the first announcement, before coming here, in the Ravelry group.
Here’s the stuff for Rhinebeck so far. If you feel you can’t live without some piece of it, drop me an email at the usual gnomespun address and I’ll write you up an invoice.
That’s it for now. More soon. I’ve got polwarth on the way, finn and wensleydale waiting, a bunch more romney, cotswold, and BL…
~The Gnome
