Where To Begin?

Writing, for me, is a solitary endeavor, practiced in the quiet of the morning. I find it easiest to think about things at that time, when the dogs and hubby and house are asleep. Of course, my photographs and "life" are on this big computer, in the office and so, I have been very remiss in my postings on my blog. Why? Because it has been so very busy, over here in the "office".

It is Lorrie's "day off" and I have snarled at Rod, who is dutifully winding skeins, over in THAT part of the workshop and so I will attempt to fill you in on what has been going on.

First of all, I can tell you that yesterday, THIS was published. I was very honored to be asked to create a special colorway for Knitty's 10th Anniversary and was paired with the very talented designer, Susanna IC. She created a beautiful autumnal shawl called Beithe, which works so well with the Polwarth/Silk in Knitty's Deep Fall. This colorway will be availble until August and I am happy to see that folks are getting their pattern printed and their skein of yarn ordered for this lovely piece!

Where have we been? Well, this past month, we recovered from a successful (and only rainy on set-up day) Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival, racing home to try to get ready for the east coast shows. We did not find out that we were juried into the NY Sheep & Wool Festival (Rhinebeck!) until late August and I was really sweating it on "being ready". I think that my friends had a lot of fun teasing me about Being Ready and so when we got home from OFFF, the pedal was put to the metal so that we could get just a little more stock dyed and spun before 36 boxes were shipped off to our son, in Connecticut.

We had a little break for pleasure, when we headed down to San Jose to see Peter Gabriel at the Pavilion. It was a MUCH needed Birthday Break and soon we were boxing, boxing, boxing.

Stitches East was kind of odd, this year. It fell on the weekend of the Hartford Marathon, which seemed to keep people from coming, in the droves that had visited the year before. Of course, the following weekend was Rhinebeck and people save their pennies and coupon dollars for the extravaganza that is that event. We do love our friends at XRX and thank them for making everything run so smoothly at these big shows. We will be taking a break from Hartford next year, simply because it will be two weeks after Rhinebeck. No flying back and forth. :o(

We had a little time between the two adjacent show weekends, to hang out with our East Coast Kids, Erik & Vicki, taking in some off-the-charts beautiful days of fall color, in the area around their home. One of my favorite days was the walk around Lake Mohegan. I could just imagine our ancestors walking on this ground.
 ( Yes, I have discovered that I came from people who settled many places in Connecticut!)

The beauty of this place is just remarkable and we got to walk the paths with our kids and Granddog, Myles.

We totally fell in love with the place and more was to come, when we took off for the Hudson Valley, a couple of days later. This was taken from the grounds of The Vanderbilt Estate.

We reached our hotel in Hyde Park and went out exploring the region, being thrilled by the Vanderbilt Estate National Monument. It was one of the first times that I did not complain that the calendar rolled over to 62, this year. *I* get a Senior Discount. :o)

How beautiful is THIS? I never took pictures of the house but this tree knocked my socks off.

Are you getting a sense of this region? Understanding why, as an artist and lover of history, this place thrilled me? Yes.

The next morning, we were treated to a rainy, rainy day, with which to grapple on set-up day at the Fairgrounds in Rhinebeck.

Lucky for us, the Building that we would inhabit for the three days had a big door next to our spot and Rod loaded us in from there. I was so excited to get the Purple Floor down, to see what our space would be. Pretty exciting.

We had to practically shout to one another, above the din of the rain on the roof but lucky for us and all of the happy attendees, the following day was just plain gorgeous. We finished setting up and were ready for the hordes, the following morning.

We had SO MUCH FUN!

Comments

[Mokihana]

Loved your post, Lisa! The photos are just wonderful and I enjoyed them because I've never been back east.

I'm so glad that I got your special Knitty colorway; I can't wait to knit up my shawl. Maybe it'll be cool enough at OFFF next year so that I can wear it to show you. Ha!

Good to see you back here again!

Mokihana

[AlisonH]

Making me homesick. So glad you got to go!

[Caroline]

My experience is, you can take the girl out of the northeast, but you can't take the northeast out of the girl. That's one reason I love going to Rhinebeck...
We went to the FDR museum just down the road from the Vanderbilt one - too bad we can't have him back now.