Rhinebeck 2011 - The Yarns

Finally the day was upon us!

This year Nancy and I decided to arrive Friday night instead of Saturday morning. It was a good thing too because it literally took us an hour to go the 11 miles from our hotel to the fairgrounds! The traffic was unbelievable.
When we finally were in the fairgrounds we learned that some of the parking fields were too water-logged to use. Not long after we got into the parking lot, they stopped admitting cars and began stopping cars about 2 miles back, parking them off-site, and shuttling people to the fair.

Nancy is wearing her "humoring me face" while I take her picture.

After grabbing a cup of coffee and a snack, we hit the ground running. They moved a lot of our favorites to the buildings up by the food court. If you've never been, it's complete sensory overload: the assortment of vendors, their fibers and the walking fashion show that are the other fair goers.

This display of Patriotic dyed yarn was beautiful, the yarn is from Misty Mountain Farm.

I loved the center skein of silk lace (no surprise there). I wrote it down and had to keep walking, this was one of our first booths and I wasn't ready.

Our initial, calmly thought out, and logical plan was to walk through the entire fairgrounds and make notes of what we liked and then revisit what we could the first day and then continue on the second day. This plan quickly fell by the wayside as we were overcome by yarn fumes and lost all grasp of rational thought.
Nancy made a very interesting observation that served us well when we were slipping over the edge over a skein and couldn't make up our minds. She said that some yarns were pretty as a painting and that you could appreciate them for their color and move on. When there was doubt over a yarn purchase we would ask that question - it really helped.

We visited one of our favorite dyers, Dianne of Creatively Dyed Yarn. I really love her color combinations.

Nancy and I were both wearing knits we made with Dianne's yarn. Nancy is wearing Radiance, a shawl she thoroughly enjoyed and knit in light fingering/lace weight yarn. I'm wearing Just Enough Ruffles knit in worsted weight yarn.

Since I had yarn left over, I designed a pair of fingerless gloves to bring out the most of this fabulous hand-dyed yarn.

Nancy is testing the pattern. It could use a name though, suggestions are welcome.

We loved the yarns at Fiber Optic Yarn's booth. Kimber has incredibly vivid colors as the name suggests. We were drawn to this booth as if by gravitational pull.
Nancy and I both bought a skein of this heavy lace weight yarn that is a blend of merino, silk, and cashmere with 625 yards.
I did not go after my usual hues of purple and blues. Instead I was drawn to greens, pinks, and plum (not purple in my book). This yarn was from a vendor new to Rhinebeck, Dancing Leaf Farm. They had awesome colorways and fibers. We visited this booth both days.

Miss Babs had a booth, and I shared my Ishbel shawl with them, knit in their "yummy sock yarn".
She had these absolutely adorable 82 yard skeins of fingering weight yarn. This was the answer to my Rambling Ruffle dilemma. Now I can restart this project and work it in three colors. The purple is the same color I knit my Ishbel shawl in and I have leftover. I am totally psyched about this.
Miss Babs gave away a cute little stitch marker as a gift with purchase. That was a nice surprise.
I found a few vendors selling Claudia Handpaints. I'm on a mission collecting Koigu and/or Claudia Handpaints for 2 different projects: the Koigu Linen Scarf and

The Chain Lace Big Fat Scarf

At the end of the day, Ann, Nancy and I share our day's bounty.
Ann buys very happy colors of yarn, that make her very happy.

Nancy had a blast. She found richly dyed yarn in all her favorite colors. In the past she has shied away from variegated yarns. This year she was inspired by what she found and really took a step out of her normal "go to" colors and vendors.

Tomorrow...designs and patterns.