Back from Maryland....

.....Well, I went to Maryland.   I left on Friday in mid-day, and successfully navigated between all of the semis and potholes and construction zones on I-75 and I-80 and I-70 and goddess knows which others.....got to Somerset, PA, for the night, and then to  the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival at West Friendship, Maryland, more or less without incident.  This is one of two of the nation's largest fiber festivals; the other is in Rhinebeck, New York, in the autumn.  (And don't forget about our smaller but wondrous festival in the near future at Allegan, Michigan -- check out the events list at www.KnittersReview.com ) 

In the past, I have driven to both -- but in recent years, I skipped Maryland.  I had thought that the vendors were looking pretty much the same.  So, while there are wonderful artisans in the Maryland event, not to mention HUNDREDS of them, I thought I'd give it a rest for awhile and see if the vendor list shook out in some way.  Rhinebeck has also seemed to me to be a bit edgier, a bit more innovative, though that could have to do with taste.

Now, I'm less sure.  This was a wonderful, varied festival -- and I did notice signs on some vendors that said "New Vendor."  So perhaps the organizers had much the same idea......

The problem is that I had trouble with my camera.  So -- here is what I got before it no longer worked (the lens cover wouldn't uncover -- stuck in some bizarre way).   When you come into the event, you are guided by a fairly large number of cops with lights flashing....in lanes, which can take up to an hour, particularly if you are silly enough to come early on Saturday morning for the first day (and the best pickings).  I learned that lesson, so I showed up a bit later, hung around in Somerset, PA, for a couple of extra hours.   I arrived at maybe 12:30.   And STILL -- acres and acres of cars.  The license plates indicate that the place is a magnet for every state east of the Mississippi, including the deep south -- and I did spot a Wisconsin plate.   I'll bet I could have found more, had I made a study of it.  Here is a sample -- you would need a panoramic camera to capture the whole thing:

.....Along the LOOOOONG path to the gate, some brave souls had yarn-bombed the railings in strips and pieces and both knit and crochet:

....and here is the rather uninspiring area just inside the entrance gate -- a number of small booths in tents -- cheaper than any of the many big buildings, but also less protected (it rains in Maryland!). 

After that, no camera.   If you look hard and long at the end of the path shown here, you will see a large building.  To the left of it is a lower road lined with yet more booths and dozens of food vendors -- and then there is an upper tier composed of very, very large exhibition buildings (this is the Howard County Fairgrounds).   I think there might be eight such buildings.   My good friend from way back, Dalis Davison of Dancing Leaf Farms is in one of the tents in the photo above, with all of her gorgeous handpainted yarns.  I bought a large number of her big, multi-yarn skeins (called "Biggie").  She has a cult following in Maryland, and for good reason.  When I lived in the District of Columbia, I could visit; now, I'm just too far away.  But she's still turning out beautiful stuff. 

In the very farthest (and biggest) building was my wonderful Ellen Minand of Half-Pint Farm in Norwich, Vermont -- and of course I stocked up.  I got some really lush, saturated skeins of Tencel and Wool in sport weight, 1100 yards to the skein -- enough to do up a Vitamin D cardigan or a lacy alternative (we have patterns downloaded from Ravelry).  I got some of her new colorway, Pretty Bird, in Falkland Wool -- very bright, the kind of colorations that can wake you up.  Some other things stuck to my fingers as well as I made my way from building to building -- and, because I am trying to help artisans stay alive, I passed up some things that I will talk to artisans about later.  It's always better if small small small producers can try to sell at full price; I need to secure at least a modest discount to resell (which can be as low as 20 or 25%).  

Anyway:  That's the report.  I drove home, avoiding the same array of potholes and semis and lane closures.  Americans ought to be MORE ashamed of their highways than they seem to be, and MORE willing to step up to the plate to put things right.   I tried to find antique shops in New Market and Mt. Airy (I was assured they were hotbeds of such shops), but the fact of the matter is that both towns looked to be hollowed out -- it was pretty depressing.  So I gave up the hunt for vintage buttons, at least for this trip.  I confess that I also was a bit TOO tired -- you start to feel  your age after long hours at the wheel.  Pulled into the shop late on Sunday and unloaded my treasures to much applause.  Had the idiotic camera performed properly, I could have had some really cool images.  I think it's time for a NEW ONE.     Hugs to everyone.     svb

OFF TO BALMORE, as they say in Baltimore....

Well, sometime in the morning I'm driving off to West Friendship, MD, which is maybe 25 miles to the west of Balmore.......yup, that's how it's said.  The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is held annually at the Howard County Fairgrounds in, well, Howard County.....gorgeous rural area, lots and lots and lots of fascinating fiber artisans, thousands of visitors, tons of handcrafted yarn and roving and buttons and so on.   I am dying to see old friends.  I have not been back to the Maryland festival, which is one of the two biggest (the other is NY's festival in the autumn) for three years, and it's time.   Stay tuned.   I get to drive through SPRING again -- here, the leaves are barely showing; as I move toward Maryland, spring will HAPPEN.  There will be baby green, then real leaves and flowers.  I can hardly wait.   I will take picture.    svb

Back from the Carolina FiberFest

Well, I drove to NC -- a feat never to be undertaken by the faint-hearted if the weather people predict thunderstorms.  What a mess.  HUGE rainfall, heavy winds, in waves..........but I got through, all the way to Sanford, North Carolina.  En route, I stopped (of course) at antique centers -- some of them in Amish Country (Ohio).   Here is a fun mall that I found early on: 

and then, of course, the Amish part began:

Presiding over this wonderful shop (Herschberger's) was an Amish woman with a beautiful daughter, the latter possessed of a horse-drawn cart.  I have to say I have NEVER seen an antique mall with such shiny, dust-free floors:

In Sanford, NC, I pulled into a very nice iteration of Holiday Inn Express -- my newfound fave motel chain (I think that my old standby, Hampton Inns, are getting a bit dated and old -- someone needs to get after the now-matted down comforters).  The next day, the Carolina Fiber Fest opened.  Here are some interior shots, with one of the makers from whom I bought some gorgeous handpainted yarn:

 

and here is my wonderful old friend, Jane Schwartz...in the white tunic.  She's from Greensboro.  I had plotted to surprise her, and I guess I did.   She hardly knew what to do when this white-haired lady screamed, "Hey JANNNNNE" across the show floor.   We then went out to dinner -- a real treat.  Jane runs Emerald Isle Designs -- we met years and years ago at a Stitches Camp in upstate New York, when both of us were new widows. 

 

 

I found another delightful antique mall in downtown Sanford (here are some shots) and yet more wonderful antique buttons and buckles (really fine, in fact -- lots of Bakelite and celluloid, plus a set of mint crystal and gold buttons still on the card from "U.S. Occupied Germany") (!).

 

  

After that, on Saturday, I was off to Asheville, NC -- the home of my dear, dear old buddy, Stacey Budge, who makes Urban GypZ yarns and rovings and spinnings.  She also offers on-line classes and occasional, live workshops with the inventive Canadian, Jane Thornley.  I found her on Hendersonville Road in her delightfully messy little basement studio, made un-basement by huge windows.  Here she is!   I was her first wholesale customer, she once told me.  And she still has only three.  Take a look at her Etsy shop.  I bought a BOATLOAD of really interesting fingering-weight wool (single-ply, saturated), some lace weight Merino in hot pink and deep reds, and some idiosyncratic fingering (an experimental dying technique involving immersion dying and spatters) that she called Magical Snow (we made up some names for newly dyed lots while I was there).  We had lunch at a really nice place in the Biltmore district, across the street from where a good yarn shop used to be.  We talked about how tourist-y Asheville has become, how the rents are driving out artists who don't make stuff primarily for tourists (including Stacey and her husband, a therapist, who are looking around for a less pretentious and more authentic art district).  The situation is not helped by the fact that Stacey is also politically progressive in reactionary NC.  I bought the kind of things you see on her desk, in embarrassingly large quantities.  

 

  

..........and then I drove home.  Tennessee countryside still takes my breath away -- and then I stopped (do not laugh) at the Berea, Kentucky, craft center to buy Larry some dry-cured bacon (also in large quantity).  No accounting for what some people want most!  Here is the craft center and its interior:

 

 

 

Home mid-day Sunday -- tired, but greeted by some of our best customers who proceeded to buy lots of Stacey's yarn.

 

Why do I do this?   First, and the storms notwithstanding, I love to drive -- though I have to say it's much less fun with the number of highways under construction (what a mess in America!) and multiplications of huge semis.  Second, and more important, Artisan Knitworks continues to support small producers, the largely female artisans who sell their wares mostly at fiber festivals.   So.  Next up will be either Greencastle, Indiana, or the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.   Stay tuned.  

Off to North Carolina

I feel the need to get out of Dodge, as we used to say, and so I'm going to drive to a new festival (at least new to me) in Sanford, NC, this coming weekend.  That's roughly southeast of Greenville, and (if it's not raining) a reasonable distance to the oceanfront, if I decide to keep going.  I do not recognize very many of the vendors at the festival --though one of them is my dear old friend, Jane Schwartz, who runs a small design company.  I'll surprise her.   I'm a little bit worried about the weather; long-term predictions are for rain and maybe some thunderstorms.  But who knows.   If the weather is bad, I'll hang around and save my gas money for the festival later in the month in Greencastle, Indiana, and of course for the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival on May 2-3.  I will take lots and lots of pictures, especially if I go to Carolina.    I say with a red face, by the way, that I did take pictures beyond the ones I posted previously at Bowling Green, but I can't figure out how to get them from phone camera to computer (!).   Nor can Larry.  The cord doesn't fit.  I'll be sure to use a real camera the next time.   I'm also working on some embellished modular squares that I will organize into a jacket; I'll post pictures of that one when it's done.   svb   

Bowling Green Festival.....pictures added!

Close at hand is Bowling Green, Ohio, the home of Bowling Green State University and one of the best independent coffee shops I've ever seen, no matter where in the world -- it's called Ground for Thought, and it's in the historic downtown area.   If you are anywhere near Bowling Greene (which will happen if you travel north and south through Ohio on I-75), pull into town, go all the way through the fast-food strip to the real downtown, and turn left on Main Street.  I also had a fabulous lunch at Panera's, which people continually underestimate.  They make amazing black-bean soup, and I had an equally amazing Thai Chicken salad, with fresh, fresh greens and soy beans in it.

This annual event, sponsored by guilds, is a small but fruitful event -- one building on the Wood County Fairgrounds.  It doesn't look like much of anything.  But, as I told Carol Larsen of River's Edge Fiber, which is at Grand Ledge, Michigan, it's also one of the best in quality terms.  I always find great things to buy for Artisan Knitworks.  Here are two of the finds -- one a pile of drop-dead-gorgeous tweed alpaca blend (natural alpaca with coloring spun in from an amount of fine-quality Merino wool) and a small pile of alpaca with a copper binder (all from a farm in Ohio), and then some of Carol's stunning new gradient yarns -- LOOOOOOOOONG color runs of the kind usually associated with Freia Yarns or the equally beautiful versions done up at Twisted Fibers in Mason, Michigan.  Like the others, Carol has used the best quality Merino.   I think Carol's productions are really gorgeous, and, if you know the other companies' products, the prices are lower than you'd expect.  Come have a look if you're near the shop.   One of the cakes (actually two cakes packed as one to make socks) sold within an hour of my arrival.  If they go like hotcakes, I'll get in touch with Carol and have her ship some more.     svb

For Artisan Knitworks' Newsletter Readers

Note that Larry will be sending out another edition of the last newsletter.   Sarah Peasley's workshops are three hours long, not two hours; there will be lunch with the tuition; and the captions with the workshop descriptions were reversed.  Also, the 'dollar-off' promotion of Merino 8 goes on for another week; it does not end on March 24th (which was, um, some days ago).      Stay tuned.     svb

The Season is Upon Us!

Time to hit the road!   This weekend, I am going to inaugurate the fiber-festival season with a short jaunt to Bowling Green, Ohio -- to a small, delightful festival sponsored by the Black Sheep Guild (not the same guild as our own Black Sheet Guild in the Royal Oak area).   I love some of the people who sell stuff there -- such as the woman who calls herself Bad Amy.   I still carry a little gadget bag that she made -- covered in brassieres!   I thought it was odd that nobody on the east side of Detroit wanted it -- !!!!  It's a hoot.  So I adopted it.   Anyway:  Next up will be the fabulous and huge Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival on May 2-3, just after the great, medium-sized fiber event in Greencastle, Indiana, just to the south of Indie.  I hope to find some more one-of-a-kind hand-painted and hand-dyed yarns at all of these places.  Stay tuned!  I will take pictures.    svb