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That, dear readers, is the front of a cardigan that I’m making for myself out of handspun, hand-dyed yarn that I made myself.

Woot! (Maybe I like that word so much because it typo-es as wool.)

I used kool-aid to dye it, black cherry, hoping for a deep red, but I’ve been too impatient to let the wool cool in the hot water, and I realize my microwave’s power is puny compared to most. So I’m getting a (mostly) consistent watermeloney pink that I love. I don’t want it too consistent; I want to be able to say "I made this!" and for the listener to say "I can tell." I think that would be keen. The white/pink ball really is rather a mistake — forgot to turn the yarn while cooking it, but I like it so much I might use it for some kind of striping somewhere.

There’s just something so playful about using kool-aid, isn’t there? Even though you still shouldn’t breathe it in, and it stains everything it comes in contact with (how DO mothers use it for kid drinks?), it still seems so light-hearted. Perhaps I should buy gloves, though. My hands have been pink under the nails for days.

And I realized after I did a gauge swatch and cast on for the front that I had NO idea what I was making, really. I think I just wanted such a basic sweater that I forgot to think about a pattern. I’m doing raglan sleeves and a zipper, that’s all I know. Maybe a rolled neck. We’ll see. I hope it turns out. I remember once when I was a kid, I was lying in bed imagining a dog. I could see all sides of this dog, and it was so cute, and I just knew that when I got out of bed, I’d be able to draw it. I got up, put pencil to paper, and drew a stick figure that looked more like a building. I could see so clearly the lines I wanted to draw, but I couldn’t make them come out of the pencil. I’ve done that in knitting before and it’s one of those terribly disappointing moments. I’d rather not have another of those, thanks.

But this is terribly fun. Innit?

No time or energy to blog much today, so I’ll use Em’s 10 minute method.

New socks! Aren’t the best color? And know what the best part is? I didn’t make them! Lala did. And my feet love them. Happy, happy feet dance….

Treats! From Nurse Knitty Wendy, knitting pencils, GORGEOUS stitch markers, and best of all, CCEggs! I can’t thank you enough. I may make it to next Easter now.

Okay. My tired ass needs more coffee in prep for the week starting tonight. Where do weekends GO, anyway? Coffee, coffee, coffee…. (and chocolate!)

What with all this fiber, you know.

So begins the fiber confession. I have to admit that when I bought the bin at Target and loaded it up, I was slightly horrified.

It’s ginormous. And as we travelled home and it sat on the floor for a day while I worked too much to open it (isn’t that the saddest thing you ever heard?), it grew in my mind, bigger and bigger, until I thought I had the biggest stash in the world (I don’t, by the way. That would be Amy). I was terrified to open it. You know, the whole exploding thing.

Wednesday afternoon, I opened it. And honestly, it’s not that bad. Comparatively. (Let me have this dream,
please.)

See? Could be worse, right? (Adah shown for scale.)

Want a close up of some of the colors? Not like I remember what kind of fiber they are (most should have tags/receipts, but I wasn’t religious about it), but I just LOVED this colorway, actually went back for it and bought it at 5:02pm on Sunday:

And this, I believe, is merino with a bit of mohair, but who knows?

I got enough different batts to make four sweaters, and a few smaller amounts of fiber just to play with, some of that luscious Cormo, and a mohair ball or two, along with some Targhee (is that right?) in crazy colors.

And of course, the prized object was my Joy (sleeping Adah in the background):

Yes, she’s that purdy. I love her. The thing is, with a double treadle you can stop the wheel with your feet, allowing you to be able to sit back on the couch. No hard high-backed chair for me now. Now I can semi-cuddle while spinning. Very important, that. Also, when I got her out of the bag yesterday, a Milky Way Dark jumped out at me from the second pocket. I think she likes me, too.

Happy weekend, all!

Or "Rachael eats the other bloggers."

Proof that y’all usually only see the good pictures, since my camera is the only one that takes decent pictures of me. But this unflattering one that Lala took? Too good to pass up. This is how I got out of the festival with all that fiber for myself. Don’t tell, but I knocked over several of the smaller bloggers and ran off with their fiber, too…. Doesn’t Carrie look scared?

I know, I’m taking my time showing you the Haul. I’ll get around to it, I promise. But first I want to tell you about Monday. Yeah, Thursday’s a good time for that, isn’t it? Man, I’ve been busy lately.

So Monday we wake up, clear out the hotel room (why is there something so cool about just leaving the keycard in the room and not having to check out at the desk? Feels like a dine-and-dash might, all "let’s go!" and burning rubber), get in our PT Cruiser and head north. Or we assumed it was north. Later I gave Lala my compass wristband I got in my Wendy’s equivalent of a Happy Meal, and it was confirmed that yes, New York is north of Maryland, but until then it was only an assumption.

(Note on the PT Cruiser: Lala likes them. She has tried to rent one before, only to be thwarted by the gods that rule rental car agreements. When we picked up the car at the Dulles airport, her eyes widened as we got close to our spot. Yes! That’s ours! The Cruiser! That moment would have been a totally great moment to nod and murmur, "Yes, I got it just for you." Instead I gave up the goods and admitted I had no idea how we ended up with it, just get in! Let’s go! Burning rubber….)

We headed north, our map in hand. We ended up on the New Jersey Turnpike, which is kind of thrilling somehow. Looking into the trees, I tried to catch a glimpse of Tony Soprano-ish houses, but couldn’t see much. People drove very considerately at first, at a constant rate, all polite ‘n’ stuff. It was unnerving. Closer to New York City, the traffic got heavier and ruder, and I relaxed. I’m used to jerks on the road, and I have to admit I can get all passive-aggressive and enjoy pissing people off by leaving large gaps and slowing when someone drives up my tailpipe. But those truck drivers! The east-coast truck drivers are something else. They’re just mean. I stayed out of their way.

We drove over the Verrazano Bridge and into Brooklyn. We were driving in New York! This was awesome! We found our way to Cari’s, and dumped the car in front. It was a close call, whether or not to leave my beloved spinning wheel in the car or not, but she lives in a nice neighborhood, and it was the middle of the day, and I could not see lugging that thing, small as it is, all over the West Village. So we walked up to the subway stop and trained into Manhattan. There is just something so satisfying about doing that, isn’t there? It’s different from BARTing into San Francisco. SF is fabulous, but it’s small. You run into people you know. New York feels so big, and so fast, and so full of things that might happen. I love it.

    With the subway map. I’m a map dork.

Lala was meeting up with an old friend, and I wanted to let them have some time to themselves, so we parted ways at Washington Square Park, and I set off for a little ramble. I didn’t get far, walked up a bit of 6th, and then turned around and came back and settled myself down at a sidewalk Mexican restaurant. I made friends with the bartender, we bonded over Bohemia beer, and I got out my knitting.

Lala and Moira picked me up from there and we walked to another sidewalk place where I got a salad that shocked my fried-food system. Good food, good talk, good afternoon.

And then back to B-lyn for the knitting! Cari invited some of my favorite people, and I flashed back on last year when I’d done this for the first time. And this year, even better. These are my girls, yo. And even better to have My Girl next to me for it this year.

    Iris, Lala, Cheb, Emily, Em, Anne, Cari, Cassie, Jackie

    Those are Lala’s flying fingers in the foreground

    More flying hands

    Sorry, Emily, but this one of Cheb is too cute to resist.

    I love this picture of Cari!

    Dogs steal yarn, you know. But not Diego.

We had a marvellous time. Anne and I had been emailing for a while, and her path crossed with Cari’s, and she ended up at the house to my pleased surprise. And I’d wanted to meet both Cassie and Jackie for a while, and I already knew Iris was awesome, and y’all know that I heart my Em.

New York is all right with me. Yep. And another thing that’s all right is a portable spinning wheel:

I got some interested looks, and one guard came over and we discussed Indian charkas. Okay, I only mentioned the word and he looked pleased. My kind of discussion, baybee.

Tomorrow, stash! (Don’tcha like how I’m drawing it out, much like that long draw above? Blog fodder is not to be squandered.)

Oh, boy. Where do I start?

Let’s start with the plain facts:

1. We had a GREAT time.

2. I slipped, fell, and bought a CRAPload of fiber on the way down. There was none left in my wake. None. People cried. They saw me sailing through ahead of them, buying ALL the fiber at the festival, and they pleaded with me to stop, to leave them just a little bit, an ounce of roving, an inch of combed top, but no, I took no prisoners and left no survivors. There are way too many metaphors in this paragraph. Oh, well.

3. Lala is a really, really good traveling companion.

4. I’m tired. I left work Friday morning after working all night and flew in to DC (boy, were my arms tired). I got home Tuesday afternoon, had an hour at home, and came back to work. A full, four-day weekend, extremely well-worth it. But I’m sleepy.

5. I am organized. Before we left, I’d made a little packet. I was semi-embarrassed to admit it, but I’d gathered together our plane e-ticket info, rental car reservations, directions from DC to our hotel in Maryland, from the hotel to the Sheep and Wolf Estival, from the hotel to Cari’s house, all put in order in a plastic sleeve as we’d need ’em. And the most amazing thing? The papers worked! On Monday, we woke up in the Maryland hotel, got in the car, and drove to Cari’s. In Brooklyn. We had no real map, just verbal directions from Google maps (which were really good, btw), and we had no earthly idea where we were going, only that it was north. We didn’t know which states we were going to go through (since we apparently both slept through all of Geography). And eventually, after driving a long time, we pulled up in front of Cari’s very door. Amazing. But I get ahead of myself.

Maryland Sheep and Wool:

The people! The wool! The smell of those fried little cakey things that I can never ever remember the name of, have to think "bear claw" before I finally get to…. no, still don’t have it…. Funnel cakes! That’s it! Oh, just think of the smell of those wafting through the air, mixed with the scent of lamb cooking up, which is both disturbing and reassuring at the same time. To me, anyway. I can imagine how it could be only disturbing to others.

Best parts (becase apparently I am still in List Mode):

1. The people. I can’t even begin to remember to list all the people I saw and hugged, so I won’t. But I got to meet a bunch of readers, every single of them sweet and charming and funny and lovely. And I got to love on a lot of old friends, which did this heart right.

2. The fiber. I had to buy a storage tub from Target to get it all home (thanks, Claudia, for the idea — I hadn’t the foggiest about what I was going to do before you mentioned that). A storage tub! A huge one! It took all my body weight and a whole roll of strapping tape to get it closed. Then at the airport when the guy told me he’d have to open it, I said, "No, it’ll explode if you do that!" That’s not the right answer, if you were wondering. I managed to convince him that it was just a slip of the tongue before he evacuated the terminal, but it was close.

3. The wheel. Oh, yeah, did I tell you I bought a wheel? I was out of CONTROL, people. I bought the one I wanted, the Ashford Joy, from Morgaine at Carolina Homespun, like I promised her years ago I would do if I ever started really spinning. Yes, I went to Maryland to buy a wheel from a woman who lives fifteen miles from me. Oh, well. It has its own cunning little backpack, and I adore it. I might sleep with it. You never know. (I carried it on the plane with me, and when the security guy saw it on the screen, he said, "Whoo-ooh-oow." I agree.)

4. The food. We ate nothing that wasn’t sugared or fried for three days. I am not exaggerating. It was like Disneyland, only you could get a coke for less than seven dollars. I feel like I have never run a damn day in my whole life.

Want some pictures? You’ve been very patient. I actually didn’t take very many. Lala has the good ones — I’ll ask her to either blog them or send them to me in the coming days. But from my camera:

This lil lady has dreadlocks.

Lala’s getting into it.

Okay, really into it.

Yep, there’s my baby. The wheel, not the Harlot, although she is babelicious (you know you were thinking it). All that fiber in those bags?  Mine, also. But I lied through my damn teeth about it:

None of that is mine. I swear. Nope.
Also, speaking of lying to Stephanie, we pulled our very best prank on her — Lala made me buy some cotton candy and put it right on the very top of all my fiber. "Just LOOK at this pretty roving!" Stephanie ooohs and aaahs and says it looks like the color of cotton candy. "It IS cotton candy!" Fits of giggles as Lala and I fall about, thinking ourselves the cleverest twelve-year olds at the Festival, Stephanie undoubtedly thinking it was high time to run for the hills.

There is nothing sweeter than a shorn alpaca. It’s like when a three-year old cuts the whiskers off a cat, so wrong-looking and so funny.

 

Now that’s cute.

 

Saturday night was a rare treat — after an Indian dinner with Greta and Maggi (both of whom I’d been dying to catch up with and love on) and my fiber-genius friend Deanna and her cool friend Shelly, I got to meet Joan-in-Reno, one of my favorite readers. She was an absolute delight.

And our Maggi learned to spin! Greta was her teacher, and Mogs picked it up like nothing I’ve ever seen. Lala was impressed, as you can see.

Me, Nathania, and Wendy. All I can say is, what happens in Maryland, stays in Maryland. But I believe there was gin involved.

 

I got fiber and a wheel — Lala got yarn and a hat. I know who scored more.

Tomorrow, some New York pics, as Maryland could not come to our girls, we brought Maryland to them.