It’s been a long day and I’m tired, but I am excited and I just have to share this:
Trish with Yarn Ball Birthday Cake
My mommy made me a birthday cake in the shape of a yarn ball! How cool is that?
The baker at work:
Mom Icing the Cake
Eat your heart out, Buddy! Great job, mom! And it was delicious, too!
Seriously, having a birthday on a Wednesday in the middle of a wacky work week is no fun. It was an especially awful day at the office. But, to offset the bad parts I literally had over 100 birthday wishes on Facebook today–overwhelming! I am gobsmacked. Then to come home to a yarn ball cake? Well, is it too corny to say that that was just the icing on the cake?
I feel very loved tonight, even if I feel a little older. So, I guess I’d better sign off and get to bed–the beauty sleep is getting harder to come by at my age.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to drop me a note and think of me today. It was wonderful. I love you all!
Last weekend was the first weekend in May. If you’re a fiber fanatic, and anywhere within driving distance of the state of Maryland, you know what that means. It was the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. Which, for fiber lovers like me, is almost as good as Christmas.
(If I said it was better than Christmas, my family would be even more convinced that I am crazy, so let’s just keep that our little secret, ok?)
So, last Saturday I left the house at about 10 a.m. with my good friend Steve. This trip has become something of an annual event for us. Steve is my best friend from college; we were next-door neighbors at the campus apartment complex and met during a fire drill some 24 years ago. It was a good day. The weather was unseasonably hot, but we considered that a good thing, since the year before I had shorted the electronics of my wheelchair during the previous year’s trip. So, while the heat was a big topic among festival goers, the whole time I kept telling myself that rain would have been much, much worse.
The fairgrounds are about 40 minutes or so from my house, but this year, at about three miles out, we were stopped dead in our tracks. The traffic was truly horrible. But, I was with a good friend and we had Glee going on the iPod, so again, it could have been much worse. Still, it was two and a half hours before we found ourselves walking into the festival gate.
I had been e-mailing my friend Jen all the way, as I knew she had been planning to arrive at the festival much earlier than I was. She reported that she was making a trip to her car just as we were getting onto the grounds, and so we happened to bump into her near the gate.
Trish and Jen at the gate
At the same spot I ran into my friend Karen from work. all before we ever made it inside the grounds! Since we’d been so long in the car, Steve and I arrived at the festival feeling ready for lunch, so we set off looking for food right away.
We found a lamb vendor and someone selling lime fizzes right next to each other. The lines were long, so Steve got in one and I got in the other. The lamb vendor was one I don’t remember seeing before.
Waiting in line for the lamb
I ended up with a beautiful kabob for lunch, and washed it down with a lime fizz, both of which I consider to be a true festival tradition.
Lamb KabobLime fizz
Lots of people tell me that they can’t bring themselves to eat lamb at the sheep and wool festival, with all the adorable lambs so close by. I don’t mind eating meat, so long as I don’t have to talk to it first, and the lamb is something that just makes the whole experience unique. I love the aroma of lamb as it is cooking. My kabob was like a whole meal on a stick, including lamb sausage, peppers, onion, tomatoes, mushrooms, and a baby potato. And the lime fizz was the perfect cooler for such a hot day.
One of the things I like best about the festival is the live music that is played in various locations throughout the grounds. When entering the Main Building, where a large number of vendors are located, I heard this:
Very soon I found lots of things to get excited about. One of the things that caught my eye fairly early on was an electronic spinning wheel device that looked so easy, that maybe even I could learn to operate it. I don’t spin, because I can’t treadle with my feet, and drop spindles and I don’t seem to get along, no matter how hard I try. (Emphasis on the “dropping” part of drop spindles, if you know what I mean.)
Turns out that this device has a foot pedal like that which you’d find on a sewing machine, but you can set it to tap once for on, and tap again for off. So, the kind people at the booth set up one of the machines so that it could be within my reach, and off I went!
Trish spinning with the Hansen e-Spinner
This is the HansenCrafts miniSpinner, equipped with a Woolee Winder. I fear that I am going to have to get one of these things. I can do it! My first few tries yielded a couple inches of slubby, twisty yarn, but hey, since I’ve never really spun before I still need to get a feel for drafting and holding the yarn. Oh, no! I’m starting to use spinners’ words! I definitely don’t need another thing to be obsessed about, but I feel the bug biting. I figure if stuff a 20 in my sock drawer once a week, it won’t be that long til I’ve saved up, right?
Of course, there are animals everywhere.
Baby alpacaSheepie gets the full beauty treatmentSheepie gets the final touches on the hairdo
And there are lovely examples of what one can make with their wools.
Collection of beautiful alpaca sweaters
Of course, I did some shopping while at the festival. More about what I bought will be coming in a future post. But what matters to me most, I think, about this festival is the atmosphere. I know there are other fiber festivals around the country. I’ve never been to any of them, but I feel like I’ve got the best there is, right in my own backyard. It’s great for people who want to shop, a wonderful place to see and learn about fiber-producing animals, and a wonderful tradition that I look forward to every year. It’s a great gathering place for fiber friends, and I look forward to seeing people that I know there, year after year. I’m already looking forward to next year. There’s so much to do there, I keep telling myself, that I don’t really need to buy yarn.
Yeah, right. Stay tuned for that part of the story.
Like most knitters I know, my knitting goes with me everywhere. Long waits in doctor’s offices or traffic jams (I’m not the driver!) are never a problem for me. I knit in the cafeteria at work, in my den in front of the TV, at PTA meetings, family gatherings, you name it. But I do have a favorite place. Except there’s precious little evidence that I’m ever there, because I’m always the one with the camera.
”
My favorite place? My local bookstore coffee shop. Twice a month, I get together with my knit-buds, and we laugh, have coffee and dessert, and knit. Well, some of get some knitting done. Others…well, did I mention the laughing? It’s easy to not knit at knit group, too. But whether you’re a knitter, or a not-knitter, it’s always fun!
(Click to embiggen.)
Tammy shows off a sundress for her granddaughter while Alice admires her work.
Jane
Kathy
Marie being silly
Rhoda
Sue
Sylvia is becoming a sock lover
There is another knit group that meets there, on Wednesday nights, in this very spot. But I can’t make it to that group. With school-age kids I am the homework cop and the shower supervisor and the don’t-forget-to-brush-your-teeth drone. Wednesday nights are a no-go for me. So, I thought, why not make a knit group that I can attend. And so I posted on Ravelry, and people came! It worked! At first, it was just once a month. Recently we expanded to twice a month. For two years now, we’ve been getting together. We have knitters of all skill levels, from beginner to–WOW. And it doesn’t matter how new you are or how long you’ve been knitting, everyone is welcome. We’ve even had people cross our path in the coffee shop, run across the road to buy needles and yarn, and come back and sit down and knit, on the spot.
The best part is that many lasting friendships have been formed. I love the knitters in our little group. The smell of the coffee, especially on a snowy knitting afternoon, is a really nice touch, but it’s the friendships and the mutual love of our craft, that makes me so happy to be there.
Knitting might be a fairly solitary activity, but knitting among friends… that’s the best.
Today was a fabulous day. Spring is definitely in the air and I am counting the minutes until I can ditch the heavy coat for good this season, but today was not one of the days in which the cumbersome garment was required. For this, I am most thankful.
My kids are with The Nonni this weekend, another thing for which I am grateful. They’ve been sort of at each other the last week or so, and I think the change of scenery is probably doing all of us some good. But with the kids away, I got to do something really special this morning.
I belong to this wonderful e-mail listserver called “Knit Talk,” Which was started by Margo Lynn about 5 years ago, as a knee jerk reaction to some unpleasantness that had been taking place on another, much larger, knitting community. I had been experiencing some of that same unhappiness with that group, so as soon as I found out about Knit Talk, I volunteered to help. It’s a wonderful group, definitely about knitting, crochet, and a general love of all things yarn, but it also incorporates life into craft, the way some other, much larger, groups do not.
Not that Knit Talk is small; it isn’t. As of the moment of this writing there are more than 1,600 members. But it feels smaller, and cozier, and lots friendlier, too.
Anyway, so Margo Lynn contacted me about a week or so ago and said she’d be flying into town for the day–yikes! And she wanted to know if I could do breakfast, or dinner, on one end or the other of her trip. She has asked this before and I have declined–sometimes it’s just hard to get away when the kids are around and they’ve got to go here, or there, or whatever. But with them being away this weekend, the opportunity seemed perfect! And it was. We met up with Margo Lynn at the airport this morning and went off to breakfast at a local hotel. I think only in Maryland can you get a gorgeous breakfast plate with miniature blue crab cakes atop your eggs, but man, they were delicious! The liquid centers of the over-easy eggs blended so perfectly with the sweet crab meats and I felt like I was eating something really luxurious.
But the conversation was wonderful, too! Time passed so quickly this morning. Margo Lynn graciously gave me a skein of lovely yarn with yummy blues in it… and I’m already planning the scarf it will be incorporated into. We snapped a quick photo together before we left for the subway station, where Margo Lynn could get into DC and continue on with her day.
Margo Lynn and Trish finally meet
I wish I had gotten a good photo of Margo Lynn in that sweater; it’s made with Noro Silk Garden and it is just stunning!
By now Margo Lynn should be home and maybe even in her own bed after a long day and a long journey for some sightseeing! But I am so glad that she included me her plans and that we were finally able to meet.
I then came home, cat-napped for about an hour, shoved down a quick sandwich, and headed out for knit group today. Here’s a gallery of our photos. As always, click on the thumbnails to make with the biggie photos.
I love Yvonne’s shawl composed of swirly circles knit together.
Alice has quite a stack of books and magazines today!
Dina shows her gorgeous new hairdo, and her beautiful Lady Eleanor, which is coming along.
Julie, another first timer, is also working on sock–from her own handspun!
Kelli is making good progress on her sock.
This was Kerry’s first time to group today. Welcome!
Rhoda’s scarf from sugar cane yarn. Isn’t it lovely?
Tammy knits a sundress for her granddaughter with sock yarn
Tammy shows off her newly almost completed sweater. Gorgeous!
We had several new people today, including Julie (see, I remembered!) and Kerry. Welcome to you both! Poor Kerry… the sun was so bright coming in the window that every time I snapped her photo, her eyes were shut. I’ll try to do better next time.
Dina had a new hairdo and lots of progress on her Lady Eleanor stole to show off. Several folks were making socks or other things out of sock yarn, and Yvonne was making a stunning shawl out of interlocking circles with her Jojoland yarn. She was also working on a complex design with double knitting, and it was stunning! I wish I had gotten a photo but she put it away before I could.
Rhoda’s sugar cane scarf, which she cast on at group two weeks ago, was nearly complete, and it is gorgeous! And Tammy had a nearly completed sweater with bobbles and cables that was a real knockout. But then, everything Tammy knits is gorgeous.
As for me, I got less than one half of one row of my February Lady Sweater done today. I lost my place somehow on a lace pattern row (it’s an easy pattern to “read” and remember, so not sure how that happened), and when I tried to un-knit back to the place before I messed up, I started dropping stitches all over the place. At one point this afternoon I honestly thought I was going to cry. But then, I realized it was a beautiful afternoon and I was among friends, so I took a few deep breaths and eventually got it fixed. Phew.
After knit group I took the opportunity to try a new Mexican place in town with my husband. We love Mexican, and used to go to this hole in the wall place in town that has been long closed. There’s not much good Mexican around here that isn’t some chain restaurant serving something they’re trying to pass as Mexican. So we were excited to try this place. It wasn’t crowded, and wasn’t cozy, but the food was quite good and we’ll definitely go back. Not our same old place that we really miss, but not bad, either.
It’s been a kind of a weird week for me, so I haven’t gotten around to posting about last week’s group meeting until now. We met on the 20th, which, coincidentally, was the first day of Spring. It was a sunny, warm day to mark the occasion, too. Maybe that’s why attendance was slightly smaller than usual… folks were out and about and embracing the springtime. And we deserve it, too, after the winter we’ve been through here in DC. But, I digress.
I only snapped a few photos, because for once, I was pretty involved with my own knitting. But there are a few to share.
Sylvia proudly shows her first sock
This month our group started a knit along for first-time sock knitters. And here is Sylvia, proudly showing off her very first sock! I so wanted to join the other sock knitters, but I don’t want to lose my current momentum with my sweater. Way to go, Sylvia! We’re so proud of you for trying something new, and for having such fabulous results! You’re a sock knitter now! I hear that sock addiction is quite unavoidable.
Rhoda brought some yarn made from sugar cane
Rhoda brought along some yarn made from sugar cane. I’m not sure if it was this yarn or not, but whatever it was, it has to be some of the softest yarn I’ve ever had between my fingers. Perhaps someday I will add some to the stash, but I’ve been doing quite a lot of stash enhancement lately. (To be the subject of a future post, so keep your eyes out for future yarn candy photos!)
Jen and Heather winding yarnDeb knits a scarf–or is it a wrap?Alice with some luscious yarn
It was a great day, and, because I am a week late with this post, our next meeting is coming up THIS Saturday already. I can hardly wait!!
It was really cold today. So cold, in fact, that I actually considered for a moment staying home and napping instead of going to knit group today. (Please don’t tell my family that I am so easily swayed… they’ll order cold weather every time.) Everyone was slow getting out the door, me included, but out we did go, into the wind. The cold wind. (Can you tell I hate cold?)
Boy I am glad I decided to go! By the time I got there, there was a long row of tables already set up, and it was already mostly full. I couldn’t believe it! Was I that late?
I sat down next to two newbies, Cathy and Susan? It was their first time joining us, and they were trying their hand at the Knit Picks tote bag kit. I own this kit myself but have not started it yet. And then I looked over and who should I see?
JENNIFER!!
Trish with Jennifer
Jennifer is someone I met through Ravelry, I think the first time was in a thread on the boards about blindness and accessibility of websites. Yes, we talk about just about everything on Ravelry. (She’s jinniver, a prolific Raveler whose post count would take me another 10 years to match). I’m lucky to have her as a regular reader of this blog, and she frequently comments when I post, which truly is the juice that keeps me going. (To think that for years this blog was actually a static website, and I never did receive the added energy from getting comments. Nowadays, I could not imagine that!)
Jen and her husband recently moved to Virginia from Texas and so of course I said to her once that since she was in the area, she’d have to come check out our group sometime. Now, she’s about an hour away, and I never really thought she’d actually ever come. In fact, she came today without telling me, so that I’d be surprised. (To further the surprise, she threw me off by commenting on my blog at nearly midnight last night and didn’t mention that she’d be coming…) Wow! What a treat for me! And I immediately discovered that Jennifer is not shy and she just jumped right into our group as if she’d been coming all along. How cool is that?
But of course, Jennifer wasn’t the only person at group today. In fact, we were rather crowded for such a cold, blustery day. Here’s a gallery of photos from today’s Knit Group. As usual, click to embiggen:
I wish I could say I got a photo of everyone, or that I even remembered everyone’s name today. Sadly, I am remiss on both. But the photos above give the flavor of the many activities of the group and show, I think, how our group just “clicks” and people help each other. A lot. It’s one of the coolest things about our group. Today there were people paired off winding yarn, helping with knit fixes, teaching new techniques, and mulling over patterns yet to be cast on. It’s the kind of thing I was hoping for when starting a knit group. People coming together over yarn and coffee, and getting energy and inspiration from each other. It’s great!
Time to leave came too soon for me, as usual. But, I’m glad that starting in 2010, we are now having regular meetings twice a month instead of only once. I know I won’t be able to make every meeting, but knowing that they’ll be there again in two weeks? Awesome. I already can’t wait.
going on the iPod, so again, it could have been much worse. Still, it was two and a half hours before we found ourselves walking into the festival gate.
