October Travels

Every year October seems to be crazy busy for me. Usually it’s because of Rhinebeck. This year wasn;t much different but I wasn’t teaching at Rhinebeck. I went as a festival goer and did a book signing on both afternoons.

This year’s trip was longer than ever. I was away from home for two full weeks. Some of it was work and some of it was fun. I picked up my mom on the way to New York and she and I did a little sight seeing before the festival.

When I first got to my parents’ house I realized there was a hole in my Jacob sweater. I had no yarn that was the right color to fix it so I used my newly polished embroidery skills.

Hyde Park and Poughkeepsie are great places to visit. I love history and so I love touring historic homes. We saw the Vanderbilt Mansion, the Roosevelt houses and Franklin Roosevelt’s presidential library.

Did you know that Eleanor had a lot of small businesses that helped put Hyde Park people to work? This was before Franklin implemented all of those programs to get the country back to work. It was sort of like a little experiment. There was even a textile branch where cloth was hand woven and made into suits!

Also, in Poughkeepsie is the longest pedestrian walkway in the world. It is 1.28 miles long and is built on an old train trestle over the Hudson River. It’s pretty awesome.

Saturday we were off to the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival. My mom fell and banged up her face. I won’t post photos. I didn’t buy very much but I checked out the sheep. It’s my favorite part! I also learned that there are a few people upgrading to Herdwick! I love those sheep but I had no idea we would have some here. I was so excited i forgot to take a picture. But I did scritch them a lot. the shepherd I was talking to is on the right track. The head shape and color were right on.

Here’s what I did remember to take photos of.

After the festival I went back to Penssylvania and I worked on my rigid heddle skirt. If you haven’t been following this particular skirt, you can see it here.

And then I was off to Greenbank Mill in Wilmington, Delaware to teach the Fiberguild everything I know about raw fleece and how to work with it. It was 2 days of fleeces and in the end we managed to make lots of samples from 8 different breeds. It was a ton of fun and of course i never took even one photo of the class. It seems that I’m a very focused teacher but not a great blogger.

But Gerry, my host, took me to a fantastic seafood restaurant for dinner on Saturday in Maryland.
Of course I had to have crab! Crabby Fries are french fries with a white cheese sauce and a pile of crab on top. Delicious!

On Sunday we toured the old mill that they are working on restoring there and I also got to see the sheep they have (Leicester Longwool)