Rhinebeck!

It was a fiber fiend's dream come true! Oh my goodness. Yesterday was a wonderful and very full day.

Brett and I left the house around 8:00 and took a beautiful scenic route to the fair. Brett took care of mapping our route and I'm so glad he did because a huge part of the fun of the day was the drive out. We drove through the hometown of Rip Van Winkle, and along a very steep mountain road with a pretty intense drop off to the right.
the drop to the right here was scary! snow on the mountaintops

The colors were awesome and Brett saw a black bear in the road! At exactly the same moment he saw the bear we were driving past a barn that had a big weathervane in the shape of a black bear, so while Brett was shouting, "Look at that big black bear!" and I was saying, "yeah, that's really neat" we weren't at all on the same page and I missed the real wild bear because I was impressed with a weathervane!

Once we got to the fair, we hit the bathrooms and stopped to check out the arena. We were just in time to catch the leaping lamas competition.

we identified an early favorite leaping lama



but had to cheer hardest for the hometown heroine, Lynn, our neighbor from down the street and her little guy. He was the last alpaca standing in the competition. Way to go Lynn!



We saw the community college students launch pumpkins with homemade trebuchet. It took them a long time to reset everything between launches.
but when they launched it was impressive.



I was most entertained by the dorky non-knitting husbands who spent a lot of time talking amongst themselves about the engineering behind the rigs and episodes of Mythbusters that may or may not have proved one thing or another about the trebuchet's effectiveness as a weapon of war.

We also watched a sheepdog at work and frisbee dog demonstration. These two pups were fast dogs.



There was a ton of fun stuff besides the fiber,


but if it hadn't been for the yarn, we'd have been hanging out at home yesterday not eating awesome gyros and cheese fries. Oh my goodness there was a ton of the fluffy stuff. Brett got a ton of pictures of me walking around with my mouth hanging open and my eyes slightly glazed. And a few were I look like the kind of person who might knock you down and steal your wool if you don't tell me where I can buy it.



(note the one mitten approach to maximize warmth, manual dexterity, and yarn fondling capacities.)




I had a really really nice day.



Also, I came home with sweet loot.






In that mix, I've got some Socks that Rock sock yarn that reminded me of the colors we saw on the trip out, a copy of "The New Stranded Colorwork" signed by the compleately charming Mary Scott Huff (there is a pattern in it called "Norwegian Blue" inspired by the Monty Python dead parrott sketch), some steel grey merino lace for my sweater, a skein of creme colored sportweight that Brett grabbed of his own accord and said, "if you knit me a hat out of this, I would wear it," a skein of solar seawater dyed pearly grey also intended for a Brett knit, and a bump of lovely merino top to spin.

To top it off, on the way home a box magically appeared out of Brett's jacket pocket containing a glorious set of glass knitting needles.

I feel like the Cinderella of knitting! So I need to stop blogging for goodness sake and get to work.