Sunday was the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival (aka “Rhinebeck” because it is located in Rhinebeck, NY), which always occurs around my birthday and makes for a great excuse to buy things (even though Paul and I don’t exchange gifts for birthdays or holidays).  Although, I REALLY don’t need more yarn or roving for spinning.  So, my plan was to get two things: a yarn bowl and a hand made sterling silver yarn darning needle by Leslie Wind.

First up was finding the yarn needle – of course, they sold out the previous day.   But, I did find a yarn bowl at The Spinning Room booth!:

Ha!  Not just a yarn bowl was found.  Ugh.  It’s so hard to be there amongst ALL THE THINGS.  And Paul is a terrible influence.  When I told him that I was not buying any yarn he looked at me incredulously and said, “WHAT????  How can you NOT buy any yarn????”

So…… there was the Buffalo Wool Co.  We didn’t see any yarn with bison in it in Yellowstone, so Paul said we HAD to get some here, in memory of Yellowstone and the bison we loved seeing.  And at the register, paying for the wool/bison blend yarn (the green skein in the picture), there was a book, Lovely Knitted Lace, which had a pattern in it that I have been looking at forever:

And their booth also had this sign:

….so, you know….things went downhill from there.

I came up with a plan to buy a sweater’s worth of fingering weight yarn because I’ve always wanted to make a lightweight sweater.  So that ended up being the “Juneberry” color of O-Wool up there.  Pattern TBD.

And also at The Spinning Room booth:

There were kits by Laura Nelkin, one of which is for a pattern in her book, Knockout Knits, which I recently won at The Spinning Room, and the yarn and beads were already in it so who could resist that?

And then there were the knitting sticker and pins.  Just because.

And then I had a falafel sandwich and that was to-die-for.

And then.  Then, I spotted Anne Hanson.  She walked right by Paul and me.  She is the designer of Wheaten, the wrap I recently made:

and the Longjohn Socks I’m currently working on (and worked on while flying to Yellowstone):

….and the owner of the Bare Naked Wools Boutique  which we went to in Ohio.  I grabbed Paul’s arm and said, “That’s Anne!!!!!”  He was clueless until I reminded him about our trip to the boutique on the way to his drag racing event.  I had written about that adventure here on the blog and Anne had read it, thought it was funny, and emailed me to say thanks for coming.  Paul said, “Go say hi!” And I said, “No, I’m too shy. I’ll look silly.”  And also I was thinking, she probably wouldn’t want to be bothered.  I’d probably be the millionth person stopping her (she’s got a very successful design business and popular blog) and she probably just wants to shop.  Paul said, “No you won’t look silly.  Go!”  So we ran to catch up to her and I introduced myself, reminding her of my blog.  She got a sudden realization on her face and gave me a big hug!  Then she also shook Paul’s hand to thank him for sending me back into her shop after I came out with only one skein.  The funny thing is that Anne was inside her house, which we parked right in front of with two trucks and a race car while all my running in and out of the shop (across her lawn!) was going on (the shop is right behind her house) and she had no idea:

She was so very friendly and it was great to meet her, especially since I admire her designs and her business.  Her designs and yarns are lovely (you should get some) and her blog is fun (you should read it).  Anne was with a friend, who had read my blog too, and I forgot to ask her name and feel silly now because I was so flustered about seeing Anne.  Hello to Anne’s friend if you are reading this!  (AND I didn’t think to ask if I could take their picture for the blog.)

That was definitely a highlight of Rhinebeck for me this year.  Now, on to figuring out which fingering weight sweater pattern to knit.  Oh, but I also got obsessed with the new Periwinkle Sheep Merino Aran yarn  at The Spinning Room, so I have this set up and ready to start:

Uh oh. I feel an I-want-to-knit-all-the-things-right-NOW phase coming on…..

But WAIT!!! I was making you wait until this post to show you my High Plains poncho and then I almost pushed “publish” without showing you!

love. Love. LOVE.  So cozy and comfy and I. LOVE. IT!!!!