Rhinebeck! and a completed project!

So, in case you couldn't gather this from the title it was a very eventful weekend. I went to the NY sheep and wool festival in Rhinebeck and met up with Kate from work and Lindsay. It was AWESOME!!! I have so much yarn now! And while all the yarn does have dedicated projects...I really do wish I could knit faster. The festival was two days long and we went both days. Saturday was really tiring and pretty overwhelming...there was just so much to see! We started the day by going to the main vendor buildings and scoping out the lines for book signings. Then we headed over to the other side of the fair grounds to the barns where there were local farms selling yarn and wool for weaving.
There was also a building dedicated to wine and cheese, which of course, all had samples. It was delicious! We got artichokes for lunch and I ate a whoopie pie with peanut butter filling the size of my face. Overall it was an awesome first day. I also bought all my yarn on the first day, just to get that out of the way (or maybe I just couldn't resist all the pretty colors...) Here's my stash! (and the plans that go with it)

First thing I bought was a skein of Halloween colored sock yarn from Miss Babs:

I'm not sure if this yarn will go with the pattern I'm planning for it...I'll have to look at some examples first.. but I saw some socks that had a cable pattern that looked like a spider for Halloween and I thought this yarn would be great for that. So hopefully I can find some examples of those socks done in a variegated yarn to see how it will come out. Also there's a good amount of purple in this yarn, but it didn't really pop up in the picture too well... I also got some free samples from Miss Babs, not sure what they will become, probably test squares to see if I like their other yarns. But look how cute they are!

I also got a little sample of wool wash. So if it makes my blocked projects smell good, I might invest in a full bottle.

Next, I bought enough yarn to make a Rocky Coast Cardigan. It's an open cardigan with a loose cabled pattern. I knew I wanted to make this cardigan so I began hunting for an affordable and nicely colored bunch of worsted weight yarn. I ended up with 4 skeins of kelly green superwash merino.

I'm really excited to see this knit up. Yay sweaters! You can never have too many, since I wear them almost every day. 

After I bought the yarn intended I still had some room in the budget so I picked up a second skein of sock yarn..I promise I'll cut back after this! But we went to a booth for the sanguine griffon which we heard had really nice yarn so we went and stood in a long line. I'm hoping this knits up nice, since there was such a hype around it...and I really liked this color red, which will hopefully become a nice pair of cabled socks.

After I bought the second skein of sock yarn I cut myself off from buying any more yarn (aren't you so proud?) But I did buy one more thing, which I think was a legitimate purchase since I've been wanting one for a while. It's a sewn sock size project bag, so I can tote my travelling project with style. I put a carabiner on the handle so I can attach it to the outside of my bag and carry my sock projects conveniently. I need to be able to bring them everywhere now that I have so much sock yarn to work through, haha. 

It has inside pockets and everything!

So, after I made all of these purchases and we walked around for a bit longer we ended up running into some people from the Taunton SnB. It was so much fun to get to see everyone again! Then we walked around some more and called it a day. I was so tired, but it was worth it. 

On Sunday Lindsay and I decided to take it easy since Saturday was so tiring... So we got up at a reasonable time and went and got bagels for breakfast before we headed back to Rhinebeck. Sunday was nice and relaxing. We started the day by watching the leaping llamas contest, which was actually pretty awesome. Some llamas can jump pretty high, I was impressed. Also some of them were just confused about why they were jumping in the first place, so that added to the amusement.

llama that was confused...

After that we walked around and I saw some more sock yarn that I wanted and a cool sock yarn kit. Have no fear! I didn't buy any...but Kate bought her first skein of sock yarn, and I did warn her that it's a slippery slope. But there was so much nice yarn there! After that we went to the book signing area so Lindsay could get her books signed by Ysolda, the author of a book she just bought. After the book signing we wandered around until it was time for the cider tasting in the afternoon. We got a half hour lesson about fancy ciders and got to taste them. Some were really good! And some of them were really weird....one tasted like blue cheese...? Then we went and tasted some wines and I bought a bottle of red that's on the sweeter side, and is really tasty (and only $9). And that sums up a fantastic weekend at Rhinebeck. I will definitely put it in my plans for next fall.

Since I spent the weekend surrounded by yarns and knitters (since people travel from all around to go to Rhinebeck) I naturally got a bunch of knitting done. I finished my cabled arm warmers!! woo! And they came out pretty nice, if I do say so myself:

I'm really excited with how these came out. And I'm also excited to have another project done! Woo! 

I also got a bunch of knitting done on my Jekyll and Hyde socks, since I worked on them whenever we were in line this weekend.

Right now the leg is about 5.5 inches long and while the pattern says to knit until it's 7.5 inches long I think I might start the heel flap after 6 inches... My legs aren't that long and I don't want super tall socks. I also measured the leg of my skew socks and they were about 6inches long and I like the way those fit, so I figured it was a good way to ballpark a good length for these. 

Well, I think that's all. Whew! And I'm all typed out. So hopefully you made it to the end of this entry... I do know I can be long winded....but so many fun things happened!