Hi, blog! Long time no see! Didja miss me?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Anyway….

Your normal knit blogger - no, wait, let’s scratch that line of thought on oxymoronic grounds, what was I thinking? - so where was I already? Yes. Your typical knit blogger comes back from a biggish fiber festival with lots of fiber festival pictures, right? Right. Hey, I’ve even been known to do this myself on occasion.

Not this time.

Let’s get this out of the way at once. I have only ONE picture of any part of the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool Festival itself, and even that

is not so much of the festival itself, or even of our booth, nor yet even of this very nice lady whose face I’ve cut off, as it is of the scarf she is wearing. Jennifer is a weaver, you know, and when she saw this

she got all hot under the collar and had to have pictures of it. The lady was terribly nice about it - apparently she is quite used to being stopped in the street and having people marvel at her scarf and fondle it and take pictures of it.

That a little bit of our booth happens to be visible in the background of the first picture, and that there happens to be part of an actual person in the first picture, is sheer happenstance, and you may as well know now that that particular lightning is not going to strike again during the balance of this post, or its sequel(s) either.

So there you have it. We went to NHS&W, we had a great weekend there, we had fabulous weather and we met all sorts of wonderful people, and we have no pictures of any of it. Actually, I never even saw any of it, except said wonderful people, and that’s only because they came to us. I never left the booth except for errands, bathroom, food. I worked, people! I did the schmoozy thing and the inventory thing and the money-taking thing. And the adrenaline thing.

It was busier than I expected, too.

But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. In fact, I’m both ahead and behind, so here and now I toss chronology to the winds and just try to lump everything in in the most logical order I can come up with. And by “most” I mean “not very.” For example, it seems reasonable to begin by telling you about something that happened on the way to the show, but I can only sorta illustrate it with pictures taken after. (You can refer to this post for my thoughts on the grammar of time travel.)

Behold the Vanagon, famed in song and story, in my world the stuff of legend.

The stuff of legend because, though Jennifer has owned it for longer than I’ve known her, I have never actually seen it before, even though we have done two years’ worth of Rhinebecks together. Hitherto… it has always been in the shop. It came out of the shop shortly before our first Rhinebeck, but broke down fully loaded shortly after she set out for the show, leaving her to walk 15 miles through rain and slush to get back to the house, make arrangements to rent a van, transship cargo, tow the… oh, you get the idea. (We were late setting up that year. Sound familiar?)

So it’s out of the shop now, for the second time in as many weeks, and it runs fine, and it got us and all our gear there and back. Mind you, it has its quirks (yes, I’ve driven it now, so I can attest to them), but it doesn’t decelerate as fast as it apparently used to, and as long as you’re not in any big hurry it will get you from here to there and back again in fine style.

Except… that on the way to NH we had to get off the thruway to do an errand, and because we were running late (sound familiar?) we now found ourselves crawling in stop-and-go rush hour traffic in the outskirts of Albany… and the air-cooled engine of the Vanagon started getting pretty hot. So we’re sitting at a red light with no immediate prospect of advancement, and Jennifer decides it’s the better part of valor to turn it off and let it cool down. It was the better part of valor, mind you, but it was also no good deed going unpunished, because when the light changed… the van wouldn’t start. Nothing. At this point Jennifer did the only possible reasonable thing: turned white, put on her hazard lights, cursed a blue streak, then leaned her forehead on the steering wheel and became a statue of despair. (Did I mention we were running REALLY late?)

A couple of eternities later she lifted her head from the steering wheel, gazed blankly around her, and then suddenly became very animated indeed. Sitting in the oncoming lane, so close she could almost reach out and touch it, was - a AAA truck. Not just a AAA-authorized tow-truck, either, but an actual AAA truck itself, large as life.

“HEY! CAN I GET A PUSH?”

“ARE YOU A MEMBER?”

“YES!!!!!”

In a matter of moments they had pulled around behind us, redirected traffic, and physically shoved the Vanagon out of the intersection and into an adjacent parking lot.

Point of information: the battery of a Vanagon is placed behind the passenger seat, so we had to unload a good deal of this

before the nice man could apply his nice machine and get us running again. Which he blessedly did, after which we made a beeline for the thruway, Jennifer swearing that she wouldn’t turn off the ignition again until we arrived.

We were maybe a little sloppy about re-loading, but it hardly mattered because one of the Vanagon’s endearing characteristics, as Jennifer says, is that “the mirrors suck.” Rear-view, schmear-view.

Anyway, we went on our way rejoicing in the cooling rain. And maybe a little nervous at the thought that we might already have used up our whole karma allowance for the weekend on that one episode. Worth it, if so.

Got to NH long after the fairgrounds were closed, of course, and it was too late to do anything but follow our late-night homing instinct to the hotel, hang up the still-damp skeins, do a quick e-mail check (sing ho! for the hotel’s free high-speed wi-fi, especially after your lines at home have been put out of commission by bird-shot), set the alarm and request a wake-up call, and fall into bed.

Our early morning was even earlier than it should have been because the alarm clock was an hour fast (inverse daylight saving time? grammar of time travel, much?). Somehow we got ourselves pulled together, loaded back into the van, and headed toward the fairgrounds, enumerating along the way the things we were missing. Still back at the farm: the folding chair, the two folding tables, all the hardware for the display rack, and, um, the vendor passes. Yeah, whatever. We lied our way through the gate and over to the building, where our good friend Patrick (whose booth across from ours was already fully set up and organized - not everyone is as scatter-shot as we are, apparently) helped us tumble all our gear out of the van and into the building. And provided us with a spare vendor pass. I then took a five-minute intensive course in Vanagon 101 and set forth for the nearest hardware store, where I stocked up on bolts, wing-nuts, tie-wraps, and a sheet of 1/2″ CDX ripped into quarters. On way back to fairgrounds, stopped to buy Jen a Coke, and enjoyed two side benefits: I was treated to the spectacle of the slowest cash register in New England, and then had a very exciting opportunity to locate the reverse gear of the Vanagon. Also - only stalled it once. And was (whew) able to start it again. Girl can drive, oh yeah.

Back to the fairgrounds, where the nice man at the gate beams approvingly and tells me in so many words that I am a good girl for having my vendor pass at the ready. I smile sweetly and keep my big yap shut.

Back to the booth. Almost opening time. Jen and Patrick grab the bolts and start putting the display rack together; I meanwhile improvise a couple of tables out of plastic bins and plywood, and tie-wrap the fall-apart-y black wire rack to within an inch of its life. Somehow by about an hour after opening it’s all put together, all except us, but we’re used to that… and then the flow starts in earnest.

This is where the Blogger Badness really shows its stuff. I can’t believe how many of our friends came to the booth, including Ravelry friends and customers whom we knew well on-line but were seeing for the first time in real life - and never once did either camera come out of its bag. Not once. I had my picture taken with an adorable knitted octopus wearing miniature shades (and do I know whose octopus it was? no, I do not, even though I had a long delightful chat with the two ladies who accompanied it, and I greatly admired the crocheted squid they were also carrying), but not one shot did I take myself after the scarf passed through.

High points:

• A visit from enigma and husband, who came bearing wonderful home-brewed beer and wonderful home-made ice cream.

  

  The beer deserves a closer look:

  

  You probably can’t quite see it at this size, but the slogan on the pretty label says, “It doesn’t taste like it came from an outhouse” - and we can definitely vouch for that!

  

  The ice cream? Beautiful rich cherry chocolate chip, thank you very much, and with Patrick’s help we devoured as much of it as three people possibly could. Not all of it, alas, because they brought us a freakin’ half-gallon, and wouldn’t you know all three of the surrounding vendors were lactose-intolerant. But we made a noble onslaught on our arteries, and we sure appreciated it. (Note: you don’t see pictures of enigma or her husband or their cute bright kid, do you? Nope. Only of the beer and ice cream. It’s a theme.)

• A visit from friend/customer/contract-knitter/club-member Pat, who arrived with a bunch of friends and bore down on us shouting “Look! It’s the big scammer herself!” (Um… kind of a Ravelry in-joke, kind of. A story for another time, perhaps.) Big hugs all around. Pat arrived with socks and left with yarn, and we had a prolonged consultation over the MegaSwatch - she is going to be test-knitting the tsweater.
• Visits throughout the weekend from friend and club member Colleen AKA Neen, and her very nice well-trained sherpa husband with the extra backpack. Wise shopper, Neen. We had several very pleasant chats including a long one about sailing. On Saturday Neen told Jennifer about how her kids hate pink, so she is always buying herself pink things to tease them. Jennifer promptly reached into our Bargain Basket, grabbed a big haunch of mystery laceweight in a subtle shade of neon fuschia, and stuffed it into Neen’s backpack. On Sunday Neen came back and reported that she had proudly - and of course truthfully - told her daughter “I didn’t put that in my backpack, I swear!” Daughter had replied, “Oh yeah, sure, Mom - so who did put it there, the Yarn Fairy?” I’m not sure the daughter ever understood why her mother - and later Jennifer and I - found this so uproariously funny. Her loss.
• Visits from friend and club member liber, who brought me a hug from friend and club member PetYarn. “She wanted me to deliver it without telling you who I was, but I didn’t want to risk getting hauled away by festival security.” Fair enough. Hugs back to both of you!
• A visit from friend and club member goofball. I knew she was coming, and I was ready for her. goofball is involved in some kind of a complicated secret swap on Ravelry, and as it happened, only a couple of days previously her secret swap partner had consulted me about her tastes and interests. Such an opportunity! So we innocently asked her opinion of some of the Yarn Fairy packages we were offering - and when she picked a favorite we handed it to her, along with a tcirc-keeper, “from her swap partner.” Who was as surprised as anyone by the transaction, because in all the flurry I hadn’t had a chance to give her a heads-up. Hee. That Yarn Fairy, she’s sneaky - she strikes when you least expect it. More hugs all around

Of course there were also scads of more anonymous encounters. It’s been interesting watching the recognition factor evolve from one show to the next. Naturally there were still a number of people who were seeing the tsocks, and hearing about them, for the first time. But there were also quite a lot of instances of “Oh, look, there they ARE!” and of “Oh, wow, are YOU the TSOCK TSARINA?” And there was one great moment where a lady looked at Vintage and looked at Kitri and said to me, “Hey, those look like Yarn Harlot socks.” I said, “Well… they are.” And she said, “So… how come you have them here?” And I replied, “Um… because I designed them?” (It was a spectacular DUH moment for her, because clearly the question had arisen, not out of cluelessness, but from lack of context. Ooops.)

And no pictures of any of it. None. Not until we were headed back to the hotel. We went a little out of our way to look for a folding chair (never again do I go to a show without one!), and in the course of our search we came across a huge Harley showroom. Of course it was closed, but we had to stop anyway, and that was when we first thought of the camera. Here, Waldmaus, we did our best for you.

VROOOOOOOMMMM!

In front of the CVS where we found the chairs we wanted on sale, we snapped this for purposes of comparison:

So. Not. Vrooom.

Then the cameras went back into hibernation until Sunday evening, when after packing up and leaving the fairgrounds we made a brief stop at the same little store where I had discovered reverse gear. It was even briefer than we’d intended because the place and its slow cash register were already closed for the night. But out came the camera again, to take these:

Yo, Rabbitch! See? In our moment of greatest exhaustion, we were thinking of you!

In the event, that only seemed like our moment of greatest exhaustion, because it was still only the beginning of the slow-deceleration drive back to the farm… but of that, and our continuing Saga of Blogger Badness, more another time.

O hai.

We iz back from teh festivul. We had good tiem, met nais peepuls, soald sum stuff.

We was bad bad blogers. We haz sum good stories, but we haz almost no picturez.

We iz very very tierd naow.

Moar later, kthxbai.

I actually was going to post from Jennifer’s - a tragicomic tale of laundry and lost-and-found… but when I got there it was to find that the phone lines (including DSL) were down, apparently as a result of a windstorm.

Next afternoon, we met the repair guys, who were parked a little way up the road working on the lines. Not the windstorm after all. The switch, it turned out, was damaged.

“By…?”

“Bird shot.”

That’s pretty much the way the weekend is going, so far. Kinda surreal.

I also have a brand new cell phone, which works fine for everybody except my father, who every time he dials the number reaches some guy who says “Still looking for Lisa?”

For anyone who pays attention to the hours I keep - no, I am not still up. I am already up. We got to NH late (so what else is new) after one or two thrilling surreal adventures that I’ll have to tell you about later, because we have to high-tail it over to the fairgrounds and get the booth set up.

Hope to see you there.

Still not panicking. Still trying not to gloat.

• Printing and assembly of all patterns - check.
• Dog to vet - check. (A bigger check than I expected, actually. Turns out he needed some meds and some bloodwork because - poor baby - at some point after we get through the next few weeks he’s going to need some more dentistry. And then all kinds of new-fangled preventive stuff to save whatever he’ll have left. sigh Apparently he has inherited his grandmother’s unfortunate teeth and gums - unlike lucky me. I guess sometimes these things skip a generation.)
• Cat litter - check.
• Bills paid - check.
• New cell phone activated - check.
• The vast majority of the items on the list - check, check, check, check, check.
• Laundry? Packing? Oh, come on. This is ME we’re talking about. For heaven’s sake, we’re not leaving until tomorrow afternoon. What’s the big rush?

The only remaining question is… where are we going? and it’s a good one, because yesterday Jennifer and I took a good look at the listings on the Festival web-site, and… eeek, there we aren’t!

We’re still waiting for final reassurance on this, but since the booth is paid for and Jen has the vendor passes in her hot little hand I’m damned if I’m going to lose sleep over that minor detail. Actually, Jen thinks it was just a matter of timing - that her booth booking wasn’t confirmed until after the listing went to press. So for anybody who is still wondering, here’s where you’ll find us:

          VanCalcar Acres
          Building 28, Space 30

And in other news….

Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding

Lookie here what arrived in my mailbox today:

How cute are those? They are tiny wooden beads in the shape of bells, and I bet you can guess what they’re for. My thanks to Sherry (AKA KnitByGod) for pointing me to them! They are not as weighty and impressive as the beautiful ones Beth gave me, but they’re light and attractive and will be great for everyday bell markers, freeing up my original set for state occasions. I think I’ll add these to my second set, simply because I can.

Needless to say, I bought out the whole stock. I don’t know how many people are actually going to want to knit either The Nine Tailors or Belshazzar’s Nemesis following my ultra-geeky method when there are going to be perfectly good charts they could use instead. But if anyone does, we’re ready for them and we’ll be able to provide the markers, ‘cos I gots the bells that (don’t) go jingle-jangle-jingle!

And I’m actually nowhere near as far behind on the preparations as I should be by now. (Ptui ptui ptui I spit through my fingers I shouldn’t jinx it.)

My main list of lists has been sprouting check marks like there’s no tomorrow, or perhaps no yesterday.

(One of my favorite tricks for this is to do things I’d forgotten to write down, then write them down retroactively for the pleasure of checking them off right away. Hey - works for me.)

No doubt Murphy is lying in wait behind the next door, getting ready to pounce on me (as Ptolemy is doing with Juliet - the two of them have been waging World War V up and down the house all evening). But at least so far I can tell myself that I haven’t set myself up for it, haven’t overtly asked for it. I think.

The printing is almost done. The time-critical errands ditto. The new ads are ready. The animal appointments and arrangements and reservations are made. The packing is mostly figured out. OK, so I’ve slipped a little on the laundry plans. So what else is new - this is ME we’re talking about. At worst I can still get a few things clean in time and shove the rest out of sight, and that will be counted in the success column - because I say so.

Swatching and knitting have proceeded sorta kinda almost on schedule - though on semi-stealth items I can’t show you yet. And along the way some really exciting plans have started taking shape for the future of Tsarskoe Tsocko. It’s way too soon to specify, but… well… riddle me this, Batman: what is a Tsarina without tserfs, hmmmm? We’ll see. We’ll see.

I had better stop gloating right now because you-know-what goeth before a you-know-what. I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop, the one where it’s two hours before departure time and I suddenly realize I forgot three six-hour print runs and I try to squeeze them into the time allotted and get increasingly full of fail. Or the one where I’m half-way there and realize that I left [A] the stove on, [B] the milk on the counter, or [C] the dog behind.

Yeah, definitely, I’d better stop now.

‘Scuse me while I write “Quit Gloating” on the list - and put a check mark next to it.

There’s no predicting… but I have a feeling things are going to get a little quiet around here for a while. This weekend is the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival, and Jennifer and I will be there with a few goodies. It’s my first time there, and I gather it’s not as wild a ride as Rhinebeck, but still… a show is a show is a show, and a road trip is a road trip is a road trip… so the next few days are all about the organizing and the packing and the printing and the assembling and the planning. Blogging will be irregular at best. Which it is anyway, come to think of it. (Note to self: keep camera handy at all times, and remember to use it. Blogging delayed is not necessarily blogging denied.)

Lists???? My lists have lists.

Astonishingly, I even look at them once in a while, actually do the stuff written on them and then get to check it off. Maybe I’m trainable after all.

I don’t know how it got to be Monday already - I suppose in the usual way, huh - but that basically means I have three days to get my act together and take it on the road. Heading up to Jen’s on Thursday so that we can go to NH together on Friday (mmmmm… car knitting!). Then the show, then back to Jen’s where I will stick around for a day or two, seizing the opportunity to work out a few color details in person without monitors and cameras interfering. I’m hoping this will be our chance to nail down the colors for the tsweater bands and, well, a few other things.

Anyway, I’m about to take the leap into Preparation Purdah, so no guarantees - but I’ll surface when I can.

Sock Club Members Please Note

For the non-Ravelers among you - I’ve put up a series of pages on my regular web site that reflect the more “mission-critical” traffic that’s been going on in the KAL threads. FAQ, Announcements, Notes and Errata, and no doubt some other stuff TBA. I still need to add a few notes, but it’s mostly current and I plan to keep it that way. There’s a prominent link on the Ts Ts home page, or you can go directly to the club info pages here.