On Rhinebeck: Part the First

Finally!

Work was supremely awful this week. I was at the office for 10+ hours every day--and one day I was there for 14 hours.

And of course, I had to get through the whole thing without any booze for recovery purposes, which was probably the most challenging part.

But, finally, the experts are gone and things are back to normal.

You know, until the hurricane gets here.

But let's pretend that's not happening, and just get into my review of RHINEBECK!

In this post, I'll tell you about the festival itself, and next time, I'll yap about related things, like restaurants and hotel.

First, here's what it looked like on our way up:

Hmmm. Not the greatest weather, but the foliage was still quite beautiful. Rather than drive through Baltimore, Philadelpia, and Newark (ie, the insane traffic route), we opted to drive about 10 minutes out of our way and take a more scenic route through central Pennsylvania. We still had some traffic slow downs because of the rain, but made it in about 6 hours.

Fortunately on festival day, the weather cleared up. In fact, it reached into the 70s, which was far too warm for my taste (but since my Rhinebeck sweater ended up too small--a story for another post--it didn't matter too much).

We arrived at the fairgrounds about 10 minutes after the gates opened.

And the lines were already INSANE. 

I managed to squeeze in to check out Cephalopod Yarns, but the stock was already thoroughly picked over, and the line reached back to New York City. Miss Babs, Jennie the Potter, Socks that Rock . . . they were all the same. And frankly, I refuse to pay for the privilege of standing in line for hours to buy the same yarn I could buy over the Internet (not that the Peruanito lets me stand for long periods of time these days anyway).

So, this ended up being my entire haul:

Yep. One skein of yarn, one braid of fiber.

To be honest, it was a little disappointing. I'm sure the vendors love it, of course, but as a shopper, I was just frustrated. 

So most of my time was spent looking at animals and people watching.

I stopped by the Ravelry meetup and found a few friends to say hi to (and noted a few celebrity sightings: Ysolda, Stephen West, Casey and Jess, Mary Heather), then it was off to lunch. Which was, again, INSANE. While I attempted to take up as much space on a bench as possible so we would have a place to sit, CP stood in line for 30 minutes to bring me the world's grossest burrito, basically a cold flour tortilla wrapped around a can of Old El Paso refried beans. For $8. Yum. 

Then, it was time to dash off again to my spinning class. I was tempted to skip it so I would have time to shop, since I remember last year the crowds thinned out by the afternoon, but I made the mature decision to go, and was glad I did. While most of the other spinners had more experience, I didn't feel totally out of place, and I learned quite a bit. I even feel ready to ply yarn now, and my spinning is coming out at least a bit more even. Plus, Abby Franquemont is a hoot--I love any class that starts out with an explanation of the difference between Latin Time and Gringo Time, something I deal with quite a bit.

When my class ended, I wandered back outside to find that the weather had cooled and the wind had picked up, so it was feeling quite fallish. Also, CP met me with a bag of cider donuts! It was nearly closing time, so it was too late to do any more shopping, but CP had another surprise for me--he didn't feel confident enough to buy yarn, but chatted with some vendors and picked up a lazy kate for me! Isn't he great?

So, another Rhinebeck had come to an end. It wasn't, I must say, as fun and exciting as my first Rhinebeck, but it was definitely an experience.