More tales from MA Sheep & Wool. Sorry it’s taken me so long to post these, but I didn’t even get home until Monday night. (There is a reason for this, but it is a story for another time, a blood-curdling tale of deep-laid wickedness.)

I did the same kind of photo-taking round I usually do at Rhinebeck, and as usual got a nice heap of sensory-overload shots, but other bloggers have pretty much covered that territory already, and there’s so much else going on I’m not going to go into the scenic-yarn-o-rama thing now. Just how many pretty-pretty bags of yarn and fiber do you need to see, right? (Uh-oh. I don’t think you need to bother answering that.)

I did want to show you these two pictures, though - Sheep as Superhero!

Caped Sheep

Apparently this one even has a secret identity.

Sheep Incognito

You’ve already seen pictures of some of the people who visited us Saturday. Add Liber to that list - no more secret identity for her!

Liber’s Cover Is Blown

As a belated birthday gift to Tina I am refraining from posting the goofy picture of her that she was “almost afraid to see” (mostly because it really isn’t as goofy as she thought, and I just think this one is really nice), and putting up a different one in its place.

love(1)

Note the cool Ravelry t-shirt. WANT. (Also WANT the one we jointly fantasized about, the one representing a wtf(1) button.)

Here’s her group at the late-Saturday wind-down meetup.

Bloggers on the Grass

Top: Bloggers on the grass, alas (not).
Below that, clockwise from top:
Socks. Socks. More socks. (You can tell I’m among my people.) ‘Chelle tries to become photovoltaic. Becky is content with her bloglessness.

I have other nice pictures from this episode, but I can’t show them now because they’d be spoilers for the stealth project that Harriet (ack, I hope I connected right name/link to right face - the latter should be that of the sock-puppeteer in the picture above) is working on. We did have a most interesting discussion about the new Noro sock yarn, which got rave reviews from Tina, as witness her brightly stripey socks above.

Hitting the Wal’

Saturday is always the hardest day of a fiber festival. Even if you got fully set up the night before (we hadn’t, and NOT, for once, because of lateness, but because of weather - it was just too windy and wet to do more than put up the tents and secure stuff inside), you have to come in early because there is still a lot of last-minute stuff to do with the booth, and then it’s the longer of the two days, the more active and intense and adrenaline-filled for both vendors and customers. So by the end of the day you’re very, very ready for a drink and a square meal and some serious veg’ing out.

Juno, stalwart soul, was still going pretty strong…

Juno and the Paycock Flamingo

… and Cate was holding up fine…

Cass Is Tired

but some of us were pretty tired. Let’s take a closer look. Yup, Cass is slightly beyond the point of overload -

Cass Is Very Tired

- and though Kellee is still fairly chipper… Jennifer?

Jen Is Tired

I think Jennifer is down to her final brain cell at this point.

Jen Is Very Tired

(Dammit, where do these women get off looking so gorgeous when they’re so TIRED?)

Which might explain why an hour or so later we both found ourselves at Walmart, looking for something they didn’t have, and staring for way too long at… these:

There was a kind of horrific fascination about them.

Maybe it was the weird counterpoint to the other kinds of fiber we’d been looking at all day? I don’t know, but they were just so marvelously wrong that we couldn’t get enough.

PhlelKnits and Waldmaus, need you ask? These two pictures are goin’ out to YOU.

We got ourselves free of the ‘Mart at last, and back to the hotel, where we narrowly escaped another fascinated gaze-fest, because this…

…struck us as so, um, well, paradoxical.

Got up bright and early Sunday morning and packed up everything from the room, pausing first to grab this shot

for Rabbitch. (See how much FUN it all is, Rabbitch? You have SO got to come to Rhinebeck with us.)

Then as our caravan threaded its way out of the hotel parking lot we spotted something in the lot opposite that necessitated a quick stop.

For some reason the nice biker declined to stay in the shot (note Vanagon in background, though), but we got a nice portrait of The Nine Tailors hanging out with some very cool leather gloves.

OK, OK, so it’s not a Harley. But still - VROOOOOMMMMM, right, Waldmaus?

We still got to the booth in plenty of time to get it opened up for Sunday business.

Booth, Sunday Morning Before Opening Time

Sunday morning is always pretty laid-back, so while we finished puttering around we had plenty of time to hang out with our first visitor. He was charming, a quiet, gentle, modest, unassuming young fellow - has been crocheting for a while but has only recently started knitting and spinning, and he had lots of questions about fiber and wheels and needles and gauge and so on. We did our best to encourage and enable, and altogether it was a delightful leisurely chat. It wasn’t until he was actually on his way out of the booth that he mentioned, very casually, who he is on Ravelry… Brewergnome!

How come three people are looking straight into the sun but only one of them looks all squinty-eyed? Sigh….

Support the Arts!

We were so completely surprised that it never occurred to us to say the obvious thing, so I’ll have to say it now. DOOOOD!!!!! We TOTALLY did not recognize you with your clothes on!!!!

There’s more to tell, but the rest of what happened on Sunday and Monday is a separate story in itself, a tale not for the faint of heart. So I’m saving it for tomorrow. Be prepared for something deeply shocking.

Meanwhile… I guess I’d really better go unload the car, huh. Yeah, it’s probably time.

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