Now Norma Knits

322. Gale Does Montpelier with The "Famous" (Exaggerated Air Quotes) Blogger

Gale Zucker drove up to our li'l capitol last Saturday for a book signing, and turned an otherwise dreary day into a right fine one.  The weather was crappy, but none of us cared, or really even knew, once we were ensconced in the Knitting Studio's lovely warm and comfy new digs on State Street.  There was a great turnout and lots of great conversation and companionable knitting. To a person, everyone there had a great sense of fun and humor, and we had a lovely afternoon together. Leslie and Brigitte of The Knitting Studio were warm and hospitable and made the visit even more fun, even when we got a little rowdy. (Who, us?  Rowdy?)

Gale kept us entertained with her stories behind the book, and we all got to meet and enjoy her book producer/packager/agent (chief cook and bottle washer) Rebecca Davidson of Ravenmark. Later, Rebecca's business partner Linda joined us and another friend for that incredible dinner I told you about on Sunday.

(Gale and Rebecca, showing some proposed cover shots that sadly did not make the cut)

Knitting for and with men was the unintended theme of the day. There were two Cobblestone Pullovers being knit (can you believe how these patterns catch on?!), both in lovely yarns.

 

Sarah's is in a greeny-blue O-Wool Balance, which is a fantastic organic wool-cotton blend from a Vermont company, and Kathleen from Warren (demps in Ravelry) was doing one in brown Kathmandu.  That was super-soft and lovely stuff!  And there I had been thinking (from the photos online) that Kathmandu was the same yarn as the Kilcarra Donegal Tweed in my stash.  No way; not even close. And of course when I wasn't gabbing or taking photos, I was knitting away on my own blue sweater.

(Carol and Sabra; and Sarah's hands with her blue sweater next to mine.)

Carol Farmer and Sabra Massey from Montgomery were both there. I had never met them before, but when they explained that they have a co-op fiber shop in Montgomery, I had to laugh.  I asked, "Um, Dillner Hillside Farms?"  Stunned looks.  "Yes, Jessica is in our shop."

I reached in my knitting bag and pulled out the socks I just finished knitting in Jessica's exquisite sock yarn. They couldn't believe it, Gale called me Willy Wonka (I had something in my bag for everyone), and they confirmed that that sock yarn is no more -- Jessica does not have it made anymore -- so the last two skeins are in my possession, and they are going to be socks for me-me-me! This was before the surgical intervention that occurred on Sunday, and I told the group that I had to add an inch to each sock. I loved Sabra's sage advice:  "Eh, tell him to cut his toenails." 

"And who are you?" asked Sabra and Carol.

The best joke of the day was Gale saying on repeated occasions, "Norma's a famous blogger."  Um, gentle memo to Gale:  Famous means never having to answer the question, "WHO are you?!"

(Gale's Imogen.  Probably not for a male, but you never know.)

  (Someone chronicling the fun.)

Later, Carol and Sabra told us of a wonderful men's knitting group they headed up in Montgomery last year. They taught guys to knit squares for an afghan to be auctioned off for some local cause like, I don't remember, a fire truck or something (I'm making that up, because I really don't remember WHAT it was for, but some local fund-raising venture or other).  Sort of Montgomery's answer to the Men of Maple Corner, I guess. The men and Sabra met at the local bar on Tuesday nights and did their knitting.

What.a.HOOT. I was all like, "You mean real, regular old Vermont men?  Not some flatlander gay guys who've moved in?"  Nope, your regular local Montgomery Joes. One guy they told of had a method for remembering when he was on a knit row or a purl-back row:  Beer on the right for knit; beer on the left for purl. Sometimes he'd get so into his knitting he'd forget to move his beer.  This I wish I had seen and wish I had been involved in.  Totally blog-worthy, and even more:  totally Yankee magazine-worthy. 

Full House - Thumbnail Sketch of a Weekend

People gotta eat.
Marie (A total sweetie. Can I adopt her?) gets knitting lessons from the pro.

My laptop gets tweaked to within an inch of its life.  Alex, you rock.

Parisian marathoners, Adam et Virginie.

Addicted! (score)

Silly hams jambons.

Cashmere yarn got me to knit.  Maybe cashmere fiber will get me to spin?
For Scout.
No Sheep Left Behind Act!  Ha!

Cutest little felted booties I've ever seen.
Naomi, Margot, Rob, Dave
"Hello. We're lurkers*."  (Turnabout is fair play, or:  I lurk the lurkers.)  *translation for non-bloggers:  They read the blog but don't ever comment. Then they come up to The Innocent Blogger (ha!) in random places like sheep & wool festivals and say, "Hello, you don't know us, but we know you."  But now I know them.  It's all very complicated. 

Kathy.  Hottest (and maybe the proudest) Grandma-To-Be Ever.
Amy and Pippi.
Making Johnny Cash proud.  (They dared me.) 
Lee Ann and Twinkletoes meet Llama.

Saturday Sky.

"My Mother Has An Aversion to Enemas" and Other Profound Things Norma Said at the Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival

Ahem. I think I've said quite enough, don't you?

So instead, I will give you some visuals and try to keep the commentary to a minimum, just adding words sparingly, as necessary for clarification. (ha! This is me, remember?!) Anyhoo, in random order, much like the randomness of the things I might say on any given day. (see above title)

My camera inadvertently stayed at home for the first part of the day, and joined me by the goodwill of my most excellent husband, so I give you what I can.

Juno, who is as enchanting as her blog title, wearing Cate's Birch. Gorgeous, dontcha think?

Juno, Lee Ann, Cate, Twinkletoes et moi, weary shoppers.

Fig balsamic vinegar and stunning seafoam natural-dyed Island Raised Romney. Thank you, Cate!

A new (to me) chair, for the grand price of $35. I now have a "collection" of Bosworths (2). This one is grenadilla wood with a bloodwood shaft. Oh my. And a two-minute conversation with Sheila Bosworth, and take a look at that spinning on that spindle. I spun that.

I highly recommend a two-minute conversation with Sheila. Worth its weight in gold. Speaking of gold (well, orange), that's Fantom Farm Romney. I'm a goner. Totally gonzo.

Jacob (on the left) and more Fantom Farm Romney.

Alpaca Lace Scarf kit (photo doctored to prevent copyright violations)

Cassie, please go get a Kleenex before looking at the next photo.

What?!  If I dusted, I would need one of these. Stop teasing.

Abigail is getting a new souvenir t-shirt. We had breakfast AND dinner at Libby's Diner. Convenience of location and reputation won out both times. We had enough home-cooked sausage on biscuit, corned beef hash and eggs, blueberry pancakes, hamburgers and fries, turkey club sandwiches, and apple- and blackberry pie to last us a lifetime. And on the way out, the most charming conversation EVER with a diner waitress. Falls under Stephanie's heading of, "Our plan for world domination continues apace." We're dumb, because we did not get a picture of this lovely woman. It was such an eminently bloggable moment, and we blew it. Well, except for the telling of it and the memory we share of the encounter.

Juno's uber-great boots. I want some.

And my most favoritest purchase of all. New edition, EXTREMELY LIMITED edition sock yarn from a sheep farm about a 1/2 hour away from where I live. (Juno got some, too - in natural grey.) This is the best part of going to festivals - special finds like this that you would not get anywhere else. Notice the names of the lamb and the goat from which the yarn came. And of course, all natural-dyed. The vendor was tickled 13 shades of pink that we liked her sock yarn. There was only one skein of the green, and that's not enough for a pair of socks, so I had to get the plum too. (oh, darn.) This will make heavy boot socks.  I await your guidance as to patterns for a woman's no-nonsense boot sock to be knit in sport-weight, or slightly heavier, yarn.  My intention is for these to be socks that I wear with my slippers at home when it's cold around here. Any patterns out there?  I think I'll make the cuff one color and the foot the other, rather than do stripes.

Next year, are you coming to Vermont Sheep & Wool?

A Finished Eris

No, not mine.

Laurie's. That Laurie (of no blog).

Isn't it gawgeous??! She knit Eris in Lana D'Oro. (which, coincidentally, I have in my stash, and Laurie seemed to remember that.) She modified the hemline a bit to make it symmetrical and sewed in the openings a bit. "I'm just not an asymmetrical kind of girl," she says. Neither am I. I hadn't noticed that the hem in the pattern was not symmetrical.

She is looking pained in the photo, she explains, because she has found out that even though she has this fabulous Rhinebeck sweaterage, she will not be able to go to Rhinebeck this year. Her work is not cooperating. What a shame. She was an integral part of the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool experience this year, and Rhinebeck last year. We're going to miss you, Laurie!

I offered to model the sweater at Rhinebeck, but she was having none of it. Damn. I tried.

Congratulations on a lovely, lovely sweater.

Street Rods and Yarn Shops - How Do They Mix?

First off, let me thank the National Street Rod Association. They were responsible for bringing Carole to my neck of the woods. Her husband Dale, seen here modeling The Emperor's New Wristers,  had a band gig to entertain the street rodders. Here are the wristers he would have been modeling if I had remembered to bring them: Completed Friday night, for my husband, in Cascade 220 (doubled throughout) and Mountain Colors 4/8s wool, held together with a strand of Cascade 220.

Some things I learned about Carole:

1. She is not a stalker.

2. She is a baaaaaaaaaad influence in a yarn shop. If she comes to your neighborhood, it might be best to lock your wallet up at home and just go along for the ride.

3. She (and Dale) are a BUNCH of fun and very generous souls.

4. If your navigating skills are really quite a bit of shite, she will not embarrass you TOO much. She won't even remind you about a thousand times, as well as tell the entire internet, that one should never say the words to Norma:  "You know the area. We'll follow you." But Dale said it right when he said, "You have a WEIRD state." He was referring to the road markings at that particular moment, but he might have been generalizing more than that. I can't argue that point. Not a bit.

But let's get down to brass tacks. I feel outrageously self-indulgent and a little worried that I have two sheep and wool festivals breathing down my neck, because of all this:

1.  2.    3.   4.

5.   6.

Carole is not directly responsible for ALL of this. Only a large part of it. Because clearly I couldn't be responsible. Could I?

Some explanations?

1. I had 17 skeins of Mission Falls 1824 in the color Raisin in my stash. I heard that Mission Falls is going out of business, so clearly when I saw that new color called Rhubarb at Kaleidoscope and how beautifully it coordinated with Raisin in a refreshing new way, I had to buy 8 skeins to do the sleeves in a Ribby Cardi with the Raisin. Right? And even though I have this and this and this already on the needles, I had to cast on right away. Hm? (I couldn't get my old copy of the Ribby Cardi pattern to open, and although I am pretty sure I printed it out the last time, I could not find it, so I had to order and download a new one.)

But don't worry: I haven't forsaken my beautiful Koigu sweater. The sleeve went along with us yesterday and saw all the sights and was pulled out to be admired by all at Kaleidoscope, where I bought the yarn.

2. This is not really as bad as it looks. Really. And Carole told me it was "me" and I had to get it. And I already had the yarn. It's not the yarn called for, but I swatched last night and came in with a statistically insignificant difference. AND.I.LOVE.IT and I love the way the yarn looks, and I'm going to love the jacket, if I don't commit suicide first, doing an entire jacket in moss stitch. But actually, I was enjoying it and whizzing right along last night. I actually had a hard time putting down the swatch and casting on for Ribby. It was a tough decision. I bought the yarn at a deep discount in a closeout sale last spring at Herrschners, so at least I feel good about that. Lauren is the one responsible for that one. She made me do it. What?!

3. Until this week, I was a Knit Picks virgin. I feel like I've graduated or something: I ordered "Panache" for the cover scarf on Knitting On The Edge. Well, I also ordered the Sienna in picture #5, not knowing which one I would choose, if either, for the scarf. I chose Panache. If that yarn stays nice, it is an amazing bargain. The yarn called for in the scarf, as Sharlene has pointed out before, is $250!!!! With the Panache, I think I'll make the scarf for $35 or less. I'm likin' Knit Picks.

4. We saw the knitted sample of this scarf at both Kaleidoscope and NEFA. It.was.GORGEOUS. I already have the alpaca (not Frog Tree) that I bought at Maryland last spring, in a wonderful green color. So this pattern was a must.

5. The one time Carole was trying to avert financial disaster for me was when I said I was going to buy Knitting Vintage Socks. She said, "You don't knit socks. You don't knit socks. You don't knit socks." But when I showed her that Margene's name was in the acknowledgments, she had to agree with me that we both needed to buy it. Carole put together a Kaleidoscope Project Bag, and we chose the colors together. Lovely golds and reds that included this particular colorway (Firestorm) of Mountain Colors. But we noticed how much the skeins, even within the same dyelot, differed, and we both really preferred this one, which (surprise) had more gold in it. We made Jill run upstairs to get more so we could choose one for Carole and, well, I could say that I felt guilty that we had done that once we realized Carole only needed one, but you know this was not about Jill and more about Norma, don't you? Yeah, I thought so. And I picked up the Rowan 36 that they had on reserve for me there at Kaleidoscope. And a baby sweater pattern at NEFA. Why? Carole kept asking me. What baby?

Just like the "weird state" question, I have no good answer for this one.

6. And last but definitely not least, after all that, Sandy, I saw lots of Lorna's Laces, oh, yes, I did, and guess what? I didn't buy Gold Hill. I bought Tuscany. And take a look at how well it complements the colors of the Ribby Cardi. Pssst, everybody: Take a closer look at the bottom of that photo. I slipped in a little eye candy for you. Mongolian Cashmere. Ahhhhhhhhh. Plenty of it and plenty of Lorna's Laces, as you can see, at kyarns.com.

Now, I'm gettin' knittin'. I've got a lot of catching up to do!