I'm baaaaahk from Rhinebeck. There are many sheep & wool festivals
around the country but the
biggest one,
which takes place each October at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds in Rhinebeck,
NY, at the height of foliage season in the Hudson River Valley, is so
well-known amongst knitters that it is simply referred to as
"Rhinebeck".
I'm absurdly spoiled living within walking
distance of WEBS, the largest yarn store in the world.
(They even snagged the URL
www.yarn.com).
WEBS is yarn mecca – genuflecting when you go in the door isn't
required, but it is encouraged – and knitters, crocheters, spinners, and
weavers from around the globe make pilgrimages there.
They have, as you would expect, a vast
selection of fibre and knitting tools, from the cheapest, tackiest acrylic to
the most expensive luxury yarns, and they carry some hand-made and local
products in addition to the major manufacturers.
But, due to volume, they cannot offer
products from most of the small, independent fibre and tool makers (although
they do support and promote them generously).
These are the sort of artisans you see at fibre festivals.
You don't go to Rhinebeck to buy 10 skeins of
mass-produced yarn to make a sweater; you go there to buy one special skein of
hand-spun, hand-dyed yarn from the vendor's own sheep. Rhinebeck is its own kind of pilgrimage, and
I think it is honestly the single event I most look forward to each year. I just got home and I am already feeling down
that it's over for a whole year (no, I can't afford to go both Sat. & Sun.;
I know that's a sacrilege but it's too far to drive twice and I can't afford a
hotel, let alone two days of yarn shopping and eating overpriced fair fare).
Rhinebeck is a two hour drive from my
house, through the Berkshires and down the Taconic State Parkway. Scenic is an understatement. And the Taconic even has parking spots for
making out at scenic overlooks, although I have yet to bring a date to
Rhinebeck. The only downside is the
astonishing number of deer grazing along the Parkway. Each trip I worry that this will be the year
one of them leaps in front of my car.
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You gonna have the lamb or the lamb? |
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The interminable lamb line. |
Before we get too intoxicated with fibre,
let's eat. Lamb, appropriately enough,
is the featured dish. It appears in many
forms at the food stalls. There is also
traditional fair food, of the fried dough and cotton candy variety, but most
people ignore that in favour of the local vendors selling seasonal treats. You will find plenty of cider donuts, hot
cider, apple crisp, and pumpkin pie.
Since I'm surrounded by these at home, I ignore them and focus on the
lamb, despite being a militant vegetarian the rest of the year. Alas, so do thousands of other
people. The queue for the roasted lamb
sandwiches each year has to be seen to be believed. I waited exactly 50 minutes for mine today
and made myself even angrier and more frustrated reading about the election on
my phone whilst I was queuing. It's an incentive to bring a friend because you can take turns holding a place in
line and not miss so much yarn fondling time.
There's usually a substantial queue for
every food stall at lunchtime but today I noticed one, new this year, without any
line. Curious, I read the menu: Lamb sausage sandwich with side of chickpea
salad or lamb stew. No prices. I went up to the window and the vendor was
grinning at me a little too enthusiastically.
Then I saw the fine print: They were each $20. That explains the shit-eating grin on the
vendor. He was looking greedily at the crowd
and thinking he was going to make a killing.
But knitters aren't that stupid, hence the lack of a queue.
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Roast lamb, onions, mustard. Worth the wait. |
In addition to the food stalls lining the
walkways, there is one building devoted to local food purveyors. There are gourmet chocolates and cheeses,
baked goods, dips and spice mixes, jam and sauces, and, above all, wines. You could spend the entire day sampling local
varieties, although I don't recommend it if you have to drive home.
There is a vendor who sells a spice mix called "Gobs of
Garlic". Each year I buy three tubs
of it and throw it into myriad recipes.
It's the secret ingredient in about half the dishes I prepare. One can order it online but it's become a ritual for me to get it there.
By making a Herculean effort to completely
neglect all of my responsibilities, I finally managed to input my entire yarn stash
into Ravelry over the summer. A total of 127 different stashed yarns
doesn't win me any largest stash awards, but it certainly gave me pause. Rhinebeck was, obviously, going to test my
yarn diet willpower, and the first temptation came when I reached out to pet a
skein whose deep wine colour was like a siren's song. It was soft.
Really soft. I read the label: 50% cashmere/50% silk (400 yards,
fingering). Ah. That
would explain it. Yes, it came home with
me.
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Green! (Yes, some of that came home with me, too.) |
My other temptation was any skein of forest
green yarn. It's my favourite colour,
and surprisingly hard to find in yarn.
Blue, my least favourite colour, is one of the most universally
popular colours across all cultures on earth, leading to a glut of shades of
blue yarn and seemingly very little green.
If there is green, it is a warm green, not my green. The first forest green skein I spotted was,
alas, mohair, which makes me itch, so I passed on it. I had better luck later, as I perused each
booth in my methodical OCD way (another reason I go by myself: I trek building
by building, row by row, to be sure I don't miss anything. For some reason, this drives other people
nuts, but skipping around and missing things would drive me nuts).
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A wheel & some roving. |
Knitting is the gateway drug. After awhile, you crave a deeper connection
to the yarn in your hands. So you try
dyeing. And then you get a little roving
and a drop spindle. Then you want to
spin more yarn faster, so you invest in a wheel. Then, oh, what the hell, you pick up a
fleece, just to try carding it yourself.
And from there it is a surprisingly small step to owning sheep. I'm sort of at that point. I haven't yet convinced my landlady that
letting me keep sheep will enable her to sell the John Deere riding mower in
the garage (bonus: I could actually park my car in there then, instead of
outside in the snow), but I do own a sheep share at a local farm. Twice a year, the farm owner invites the
sheepholders to come meet the lambs and watch the shearing.
Some knitters take a detour into related
crafts like crochet or weaving.
Rhinebeck is dominated by knitters but it is truly a festival that
celebrates all fibre arts – for better and for worse. There are booths with everything from tapestries
and rugs to needle-felted dragons. There
is wool clothing and hats (even horse blankets this year!), woven tea towels
and bedspreads, and a variety of fibre artwork, most of which has one thing in
common: it's absolutely hideous.
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I told you there was a felted dragon. |
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Fancy wool coolers. Would love to get one for Silas. |
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I liked the yarn art featuring horses. |
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I'm not the folk art type but the horses are charming. |
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Be sure to dye, responsibly. |
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Handmade drop spindles |
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This tool is called a niddy-noddy. I shit you not-y. |
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Spinner in her booth sneaking in a little spinning between customers. |
And sheep may be the stars of the show but
they aren't the only fibre animals there.
If knitting is the gateway drug, wool is the gateway fibre.
Knitters are notorious for making yarn from
any animal with hair.
I have in my stash
a skein of dog hair yarn.
(It was given
to me by someone who hates me (seriously) and I am keen to get rid of it, if
anyone wants it.)
For awhile, I saved my
dogs' undercoat when I brushed them, with the idea of sending it to the
Malamute Spin folks, but I eventually came to my senses and gave it to the
birds for their nests.
Basically, if you
can hold it down and sheer it or comb out its hair, someone, somewhere, will
spin that fibre into yarn.
Rhinebeck
vendors sell yarn made from llama, alpaca, angora rabbit and goat, yak, vicuna,
and, uh, possum (this is apparently big in Australia, where nothing surprises me).
I didn't see any yaks or muskoxen
(qiviut – the most expensive yarn) but the other animals were represented,
along with cashmere goats and myriad breeds of sheep.
There are also yarns made from every kind of
plant fibre you can imagine (cotton, linen, flax, hemp, soy, sugar cane), and a few substances
you can't (milk).
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Get yer quality yak fibres here. |
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Please don't blame the Romney sheep for the abysmal
presidential candidate named after them. |
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Baah, baah, black sheep. I have plenty of wool, thank you. |
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Hi. |
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Freshly shorn. |
As the clock struck 5 and I made my last
purchase of the day, the vendor told me that she is also running the NYC
Marathon. We wished each other
luck.
I attempted to start a knitting blog many
moons ago but, like so many UFOs, it has been hibernating for years. Once I revive it, I will link to it from
here.
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Lamb roasting. |
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My tiny Rhinebeck haul. I'm broke so I was very restrained. |
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