Why Maryland Beats Rhinebeck

This was only one of 4 rows. I always judge an event by how long I have to stand in line to pee. Maryland, I love you. Now if you could only do something about that weather.

If you want to see how I survived the day, look back at yesterday for my second post, in case you missed it.

I Have Seen Hell And It Is Paved With Wool

Post #2: written after the morning's optimism wore off:

93 degrees. Hot barns. Hot tents. Hot wooly animals. Hot giant crowds of grouchy people. This year's Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival was a total bust for me. I don't do hot. I arrived by 10 am and immediately peeled off all the wooly stuff I had put on this morning. Carrying my felted bag on my shoulder was torture enough.



This was the ONLY place to hang out except for maybe the snow cone booth. Going into the vendors booth was like walking into an oven. I felt very sorry for all those folks trying to put on a happy face in spite of the sweltering conditions.



Here is my miserable self just before I bolted out of the place. There is very little in those bags to share but as soon as I am in my right mind again, I'll post about the few things I came home with.
Oh well. There's always next year.

Oh Happy Day!!!!

It is the best day of my life. Right now I am probably elbowing my way through the crowds at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I promised myself that this year, I MUST return home with at least one thing that I don't always come home with. Usually my nerves take over and my brain freezes up and I ride all the way home in a state of deep regret. Last year, as you can see in the headless photo, I managed to fill up two bags with stuff. This year, since it's my last year with a paycheck, I'm taking three.

Procrastination

Puny skein gave me another inch on the latest sheep to sock project. The rather abrupt color change doesn't make me as unhappy as the idea of having to go work with the rest of that icky Corriedale I bought to finish the project. I am using every excuse I can think of to not find the time to drag it out for carding.

Happy Accident?

I hated the awful dye job I did on the sock blank but the socks are not too bad after all. Sock blanks are such a mystery to me. I still don't get how those wide bands of color became these skinny stripes. I am not sure what's going to happen once I get to the stripe-less dark side but for now I am cautiously counting this a small success-or maybe a not-so-giant failure.

A Little Surprise

That unfortunate dyeing experiment is not looking so bad now that I have unwound it into balls. I usually knit from the blank but I just couldn't bear to look at that thing anymore. The resulting yarn is pleasantly tweedy. My slap and dash dyeing habit may have just saved the day as the dye did not saturate all the way through leaving lots of little flecks of white that don't look as bad as a I expected.

Drawing a Blank

I am determined to get what I want out of a sock blank no matter how many I knit and then ruin. Here I go on victim #3. Now that the weather is nice, I am heading out for walks again and nothing is a better mindless knit than a sock blank.