The Grand Finale---Rhinebeck

Okay, so I’m probably the last knitter to post on Rhinebeck. That’s just how I roll. Sorry. I guess I’m trying to keep the high as long as I can, and what a high it was. Again, we had to wake up at the crack of dawn~~~yuck~~~to get our place in line. Because, you never know, things could be sold out before we had a chance to see them.

As you can see we picked up some stragglers along the way. These are our friends who we’ve been to the Loopy Ewe Spring Fling with. It was great to see these girls again.  Hopefully, we’ll all see each other next year again.

Anyways, we finally got into the festival and got out our credit cards. I have never seen so much fiber in my life. It was a feast for the eyes.

And not only pretty yarns but also the little creatures who provide us with such lovely yarn. I could have stayed with these guys all day long.

They even had some puppies. I couldn’t take a picture of them because they were so rambunctious they didn’t sit still enough for a photo session.

Luckily, I got pulled away from them and discovered there was much more to see. Like food, and lots of it.

 

One of the famous things they serve is fried artichokes. I didn’t feel like waiting in the extremely long line them. But I hear they were great. It was such a nice cool Autumn day we had some hot apple cider and apple crisp. Which was also delicious.

Waiting in line for my food I saw this content little guy. It was such a beautiful sight I had to take a picture of him all snug in his wrap.

We also saw some knitting celebrities.

This is Casey who founded Ravelry. Yeah Casey. Where would we all be without Ravelry?

Then there was Anne Hanson.

And Ysolda.

A lot of knitting paraphernalia found it’s way home with us.

 

That night we all went out to dinner and back to the lobby of the hotel to reminisce on our wonderful day. We found another person we met at the Spring Fling, Sharon. Who kindly gave us some peanut butter cups she made herself!

 

Which, by the way, they were also delicious. Then it came time to say goodbye to all our friends. That is always the worse part. The next morning we got up—at the crack of dawn again—Thanks Dany. We all had flights we had to take back to our cities. It was very hard to say goodbye to Maria and Dany who I had just spent the perfect week with. I dropped them off at their gates (and grumbled about how early they got me up). To top off my week I upgraded to first class on my flight home. It was perfect.

Salem, Ma

I thought it appropriate to post about Salem on Halloween. The whole month of October they celebrate with the Festival of the Dead. Around every corner you can find a physic, medium, fortune teller, palm reader. The stores all sell books on spells or potions. It was a lot of fun to see all the things they had.

 

One of the first places we saw was the Witch House.

This is the house that the judge during the witch trials lived.

They had those statues that were people. The first time I saw somebody dressed as a statue it was is Salzburg. It was the middle of winter and I was standing right by it. Then I saw steam coming out of his nose. FREAKED ME OUT!

These statues had lots of people around so it was easier to tell.

We stopped at Ben and Jerry’s and had some Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream. We should have shared with this guy.

He looks a little hungry.

Then we made our way to the Witch memorial. It’s a stone mall with stone’s protruding for seats. They have the names of all the witch’s that were put to death and the way they were killed.

It’s hard to believe that this really happened in our Country. But it did and I hope we all learned our lesson from it. I hope everyone has a happy Halloween and watch out for the Ghouls.

The Perfect Day

Dear God,

    Thank  you for allowing us to have this perfect day. You have made 3 knitters very happy and we will be forever grateful.

Signed,

Me

You know how the unplanned days sometimes turn out to be the best. Like the days you get to stay in your PJ’s all day. Well, this was the mother load of days for us. About a week before our trip we read that Jared Flood of Brooklyn Tweed was coming out with his own yarn line, and that said yarn line would only be sold in 9 different stores around the country. Well, wouldn’t  you happen to know that one of the stores was in New Hampshire. And the New Hampshire store was also in the same town that they produced the yarn.

We had nothing to do on one of the days so I asked the girls if they wanted to go check it out. The first hint that it was going to be a great day was there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Then on the way to Harrisville we passed this little sign on a country road that said The Fiber Studio next right. Well we couldn’t pass that up! It was just the dang cutest shop that had tons of beads and spinning wheels. Then in the little room off the big room there had to have been a dozen women in there just chatting away. I loved it.

Back on the road we sort of got off the beaten track and found ourselves right in front of this.

 

I wish I could accurately tell you how serene this was. If I could bottle the feeling we all got at this moment I’d be a millionaire. As we were trying to find our way back to the main road we stumbled upon this little cemetery. I don’t know about you but I really love old cemeteries and this one was probably one of the best I’ve ever seen. 

It was so exciting seeing all this on the back roads. I didn’t even want to find Harrisville. We kept going and to our surprise Harrisville was just as cute. It’s definitely a one horse town. In fact there really is no town at all. There’s a general store which I’ll cover in a minute and a post office. That’s it.

 

This is the door going into the yarn store there, and here’s their sales bin.

It could not have gotten any better. EXCEPT---as I was making my purchases the woman asked me if I was part of the tour group. I asked what tour group. She explained that the mill where they make the yarn gives tours and some of the people in the store were on one. I asked if we could look at it and she said it’s by reservation only. She asked if we could come back and when I told her I was here with some friends from Germany she said “let me make a call”. She got us our own private tour. I took pictures of every step of the process but it’s a long one so I’ll just show you my favorites.

This is how it starts out. Ugly, yes? This machine feeds it into the carders (and there are many). Then it washes it and cards it again.

This is the fiber being laid out for the spinning, and here is it being spun and plied.

And yes, it is two different colors. Then we happened to pass this and I couldn’t help taking a picture of it.

We had just died and gone to heaven. But there was still some more insane cuteness coming. We were very hungry by this time so we asked were we might get a bite to eat. It turns out the General Store also serves food.

Boy was it delicious.

Now just wait until you see this. It’s the produce dept.

OMG I could so live here. We all agreed that this was the best day of our whole trip.

Boston

I have been to Boston several times so I knew to paaark the caaaar  as soon as we got there and hoof it. Tom and I had a horrible time trying to drive around Boston and we learned our lesson. But that’s a story for another day.

Boston is about 1 1/2 hours from the house in New Hampshire so we started early (well at least for me). The first thing we saw walking out of the parking garage was the Old State House.

 

This is the oldest surviving public building in Boston, , and the seat of the first elected legislature in the New World. If you don’t believe me I copied it from Wikipedia. I just told Dany and Maria it was famous. Aren’t I a good tour guide? I also told them I could make stuff up and they’d never know the difference. I was kind and just told them it’s famous.

This is also were the Boston Massacre was. That part I did know. Really.

Then we walked down the street a little bit and came to  Faneuil Hall. While there we happened to bump into a tour guide telling people about it. So I didn’t have to make anything up. Every president has been there and a lot of candidates announce they will run for office from there. I made no such announcement.

Then we went to Quincy market and did what we do best. SHOPPED. No yarn stores but there was a Christmas store there that Dany had to buy an ice cream ornament so Jimi Hendrix wouldn’t get hungry.  Then off we went to my favorite part of Boston---The North End. It’s an Italian neighborhood that you really feel like you’re in Italy when walking through it. And there’s also this place ---

you have not lived until you have had a cannoli from Mike’s pastry. It was really busy too, so I guess the word is out. If you’re planning a trip to Boston don’t forget to go there.

Continuing on The Freedom Trail we next hit The Old North Church.

 

This is famous for the lantern that they hung during Paul Revere’s ride to warn people. “One if by land, Two if by Sea”. They hung the lantern to warn patriots that the British were coming.

This is the actual window that they recently found during a renovation. I’m not making that up. Outside the church there is a garden with a dog tag for every soldier killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. We spent a moment there and I grumbled a lot.

We then walked across the big bridge and saw “Old Ironside”

This is the oldest commissioned Naval ship. It’s made of wood but they nicknamed it Old Ironside because it took a beating without falling apart. She was commissioned during John Adams presidency.

By this time we were worn out. I think the shopping did us in. So we took a cab back to the parking garage. We were just standing outside the garage “exercising” before we went back to the car. We had our bags on the ground and all the sudden someone came running out of the parking garage carrying a bunch of stuff.  Then he ran into some guy on the phone walking up. He stole something from the guy and then someone came out of the garage building asking about him. Apparently he stole a bunch a  $400 cashmere sweaters from a Joseph A Banks inside. We had our hearts a pumping. And very thankful that Jimi Hendrix got his Ice Cream Cone.

Going to Woodstock

When we were planning this trip I suggested we go to Woodstock VT. One of their friends got excited because she thought there was only one Woodstock were the music festival was held in the 60’s. She asked Dany to bring her back a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt. For those of us who live in the states we know that there is a Woodstock in every state.

Our best bet was here.

It’s the oldest General store in Vermont. It had lots of great little trinkets in it but no Jimi Hendrix t-shirt.  There was no way we’d find one here.

So we took to the back roads trying to trying to find Yasgur’s farm.

This wasn’t it but I’m sure it’s a lot prettier then Yasgur’s farm was during the festival. On the way back we found a Christmas store that looked like it had some nice stuff in it. Dany found a Christopher Radko Nutcracker ornament that she had to justify buying (because it was really cute).

This isn’t the exact same ornament but I searched and searched (for at least 5 min) for the same one and couldn’t find it. Anyways, we named the nutcracker Jimi Hendrix. So if you know a TSA agent who tells a story of a crazy woman from Germany not letting him open her package because it’s Jimi Hendrix—well you know where it came from.

We also stopped in Quechee VT to one of my favorite places-Simon Pearce. It’s a place where they blow glass and make pottery. They have the most beautiful things but they do tend to be pricey. So whenever I go I just get one thing.

Just do it!

Let me just start this post out by saying, if you ever get the chance to vacation with girlfriends and you’re worried about missing your family, by all means DO IT! Especially if the above said friends share your interests, like for instance say KNITTING.

We had planned this trip for a year and let me tell you it did not disappoint.  I’m just regaining my strength to tell you all about it. Over the next several days I will be posting our pictures, because I know I’ll loose your attention if I post them all at once.

Our first day consisted of traveling to New York City to meet up. They came all the way from Germany and I from Chicago. I was so nervous we wouldn’t find each other but things went without a hitch. Even the rental car agency was nice enough to give us a bigger car when all our luggage wouldn’t fit in the trunk. (side note to you, when traveling with woman always order a bigger car then you think so you can fit everyone’s luggage)

By the time we checked into our hotel, Claudia and Dany had been up for 27 hrs and were pooped. But luckily our hotel was right on Times Square so we popped over there for a little stroll.

 

 

These pictures were taken at 11:00pm. We couldn’t believe how crowded it was. You could barely walk without running into people.

We stopped in the Hershey’s store so we could buy our first of many souvenirs. Then we proceeded to the hotel to crash.

The next morning we were supposed to meet our friend Karen, who lives in the city for a tour. Unfortunately Karen was sick, but it worked out well because we had a long drive to New Hampshire and we barely made it without falling asleep at the wheel.

I’ll will continue to show you our trip in the next couple of days so stay tuned.