Rhinebeck Part 1

I start this blog by stating that Rhinebeck is enormous and there is no way that I could cover it all in the time I had. I will be posting my visit as 2 or 3 blogs over the next week as I took 182 photographs in 4 hours.

The photos will show a reasonable representation of the fibre and exhibition halls. I think I covered 8 or 9 halls while I was there. I did not visit the animal halls or the fleece sales which I would have enjoyed thoroughly. I hope I can bring the essence of my experience to you here. I had a wonderful time.

The day started early, before the sun rose with us driving down out of the Catskill Mountains to Kingston, where we pulled into the Services for coffee and a muffin. I was in need of the restroom so was not paying much attention but did notice a lady hurrying in the same direction. My sainted husband told me that she had arrived before us and her car was full of YARN!!!

Standing in the coffee queue a voice said I must be going to Rhinebeck if I was wearing this. I replied that I was and all the way from the UK too. She offered me a sneak preview and we arranged to meet outside, with coffee in hand.

On reaching her car and opening the boot, Karin from Periwinkle Sheep, reached into one of the bins and brought out this skein of beautiful yarn in my favourite colour and gave it to me telling me it was her Rhinebeck colourway for 2011. This lovely gift made my day extra special. When we parted I had a huge grin on my face which I believe I wore for the rest of the day. I acquired yarn before even entering the gates. 

The parking area was empty when we arrived. We were in the second row.  The building in the distance is the gate.

People where being allowed through the gates although it was barely 8.30am in the morning but the roads to the halls were empty with a few ladies hurrying off to their classes. We spoke to a few carrying spinning wheels who were very excited and the classes sounded great but I cannot remember who they were with or what they were about.

While we were waiting for the exhibitors to ready themselves for business, we found this gorgeous sand sculpture which had suffered a bit under the night's rainfall. 

My first glimpse of Hall A which was actually 3 halls next to each other, each one with two aisles like this one. 

There were baskets on the right

and this fabric and rug stall

and my first glimpse of yarn on the left which I did not find very exciting.

Then it just kept getting better.

Woven scarves for sale on a rack at the next stand

and knitted hats in the middle of another yarn stall.

I think my heart actually stopped when I saw Golding Fibre Tools. The workmanship is absolutely exquisite. Just look at these gorgeous drop spindles

 and these lucets.

 Then there was yarn again.

This stall had the most beautiful felted Christmas decorations. Don't miss the beautiful log cabin quilt being used as a table cloth.

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At the end of the row there were two ladies spinning on the Hitchhiker Spinning wheel.

Aren't they cute? I could fall in love.

Near this was the wonderful stall full of fleece of every kind

and against the far end, more traditional wheels on display for sale. 

This was only the first aisle and I did not even photograph every stall. 

Around the corner, I met the lovely ladies from Wales. Polly, the blurred lady (she was walking towards me) is the shepherdess of a small flock in Wales and all the yarn you see displayed, is from about 40 sheep that she tends. Her shawls are all hand knitted by contracted knitters. We had a long chat and she was lovely. I was sad to bid her adieu

but I had spotted the Skacel Stall and the lace work was absolutely beautiful.

You can barely see the shawl behind the lady which is a brown and cream crocheted lace and when I admired it, she gave me a copy of the Piecework magazine which has the pattern in it. They are planning to attend Woolfest or Wonderwool here next year, I am not sure which as they spoke about both.

The next stall was a felting stall with pretty bags all along the top. As you can see it is getting a lot busier now and there will be many more blurred people in the photos.

This roving / tops is waiting to find a new home.

I fell in love with several of the buttons. Why did I not win the lottery before I left home?

This is the first stall, Handspun by Stefania, where I spent money. Can you spot the hole in the wall of roving? It is where 7.7 ounces of Indigo Dyed Coopworth & Silk once lived before it found a happy home in Hampshire. I cannot wait to spin it. Don't miss the tops of the spindles at the bottom of the shot.

I spent a long time contemplating yarn in the Spirit Trails booth. I was looking for some Cormo to spin which they only had in a colourway that I did not like so I left without any purchase. The ladies where very helpful and friendly and they had several bags of rare breeds fibre dotted around the stall that did tempt me.

All too soon, I was back at the entrance to the hall where this lady was spinning on this lovely wheel which her husband built for her. He had a small picture of the wheel from which he reproduced it from. It has a 'Sleeping Beauty Spindle' at the bottom of the perpendicular shaft. The wheel is very thin and has three grooves in it. She is busy replacing the drive band in this shot. The wheel is 15 years old and when they came across a real one, found that the size of her wheel was only out by about 10%. It was very interesting talking to her.

Outside the hall, against the wall of the one opposite, this man was preparing pumpkins for Halloween.

Now folks, this post is ONE hall. It got a great deal more busy after this and good photographs were very hard to take. I have a busy few days ahead this week but will attempt to post the next part in the middle of the week. I hope you all enjoy this.

Webs

When the Sainted husband said that the American trip was for my pleasure, I totally underestimated his determination to make it be this way until he said that it was no problem to drive four and a half hours to Northampton and back, to take me to a weaving shop, well, yarn and fibre and patterns and needles and samples and ..... weaving too:)

I thank him again, for his unfailing determination throughout our entire trip, to make sure that I was having the time of my life, which I truly did.

Webs was an experience.

When I mentioned on one of the Ravelry weaving forums that I was coming to visit, the lovely carpeyarnum contacted me and told me to look her up as she works there. When I arrived, she took me under her wing and showed around and then left me to wonder around and make those BIG decisions. 

Very quickly I had a basket full of yarn and was offered a trolley.... I realised what I was getting into. The Saint had deserted me for coffee.... I put everything back and started again, remembering that Rhinebeck was yet to be visited and I have not won the lottery yet....

The view on entering the store is of 2 large rooms, the one at the back looks as though it is for staff only but it is not!! It is just filled with more racks of yarns as you will see later.

In the front of the store is a seating area for long suffering husbands/partners to sit and drink their coffee and ponder the damage to the bank balance. This photo is to the left, where all the weaving books were and the start of the weaving yarns. I may have liberated a book or two in my second, more thoughtful venture around the store.

These two occupy the shelves above some of the weaving yarn.

Weaving samples labelled with the yarns and patterns used, some of the drafts were free. I may have liberated some of these too. On the right of the photo is the entrance to a classroom/conference room.

I did not want to bore you with all the pictures of the weaving samples. I will do that in the Rhinebeck post which will be the next post.

Then there is the yarn which is arranged by weight 

and samples everywhere which are both interesting and gorgeous.

There is a corner of the store dedicated to fleece which is probably the size of the average UK yarn store. Does that give you a little idea of how BIG the store is?

That was just the FIRST room.  The second room is Pandora's Box which holds packets, cones and bargains on racks

and more racks

There was a great deal that I did not remember to photograph like all the wonderful knitting needles. 

I came away with lovely weaving loot and looking forward to the Rhinebeck adventure too. The staff at Webs were amazing and wonderfully friendly. Everyone I spoke to was a weaver and a spinner. They were knowledgable and shared their experience easily. It was a great morning.

Walking through Northampton after lunch, I came across the LYS and had to visit it too. It was a lovely shop and I bought a pattern here. I loved the window display.

Although it was an 'all yarn day', we did drive past this sign on the way out of town that made us both laugh. I told the Saint that he had missed the opportunity to visit it while I was yarn shopping!