What I did on my summer vacation

Howdy all, Chris here. Got a lot of ground to make up, and with it, I gots a lots of pikatures :)

First off, three weeks ago, we found ourselves in Harpswell, Maine, looking at the spot that we most likely will be getting married.

That's looking off the deck, across the "road", and out into the bay. About 1/5th of a mile out and to the right, there's a "public" beach that would also serve as a great wedding place. Its funny, with Ericka's Navy background, we have tried to go out of our way to not get all Nautical, and here we are thinking about getting married either within view of the ocean, or on a beach.

The following week, we found ourselves in Lisbon, Maine, to visit Amy King of Spunky Eclectic. We didn't get any pictures of Big Boo and Baby Boogey. We did, however, catch Melissa with a drop spindle.

I guess it looked like so much fun that Lora had to join in.

Lisbon is just over two hours from Manchester, so Ericka wrapped up not one but TWO socks.

Number one is a pair of socks for her. Number two is a birthday present, and has been a secret up until now. Here's some another hint.

We also bought a bunch of stuff from Spunky.

I love the way that Amy braids her large roving. Ericka got some roving, and I got some sock yarn, and it turns out that we got the same color way (Mahogany) in both yarn and roving form.

This weekend, we had TWO fiber events. Saturday was World-Wide Knit In Public Day. We were slated to knit in Victory Park in Manchester. At noon, it looked like this:

Due to rain, we moved over to Derryfield Park, also in Manchester, because it has a gazebo. It looked a lot better, almost like this:

In the back is Jackie's girl, and in the front is Lora's littlest boy. They were more emotional support than knitting participants. Melissa's baby, Rusty, was also in attendance for moral support.

We also had a table full of goodies.

And knitters were knitting, crocheters were crocheting.

One-ply spun fiber became three-ply yarn (Clowin Around from Sereknity Yarns).

And kids played around in the rain.

And feetsies were socked with mis-matched finished socks from those in attendance.

At the end of day, most of the knitters went home, but some intrepid folks braved the...well, I guess it had stopped raining, so there wasn't much to brave, but we wound up at Olive Garden for nummys and knitting.

Today was the Maine Fiber Frolic, held at the Windsor Fair Grounds in Windsor, Maine. We met up with a bunch of people we've run into before, including Sheep Shed and Spunky Eclectic. Before Ericka was able to fill my hands with bags of fiber, I was able to work a little bit on my sock. I also met admirers of the toe-up sock.

I swear, there were more at one point. Don't really have many more pictures of the festival itself, but we did catch some Lupins on the way to Indigo Moon Fibers.

Why did we forsake the ENTIRE Fiber Frolic for just ONE fiber farm? Well, Marylynn of Indigo Moon wants to move from the Augusta area down to the Portland area, and part of the move has been getting rid of as much as possible, including her fiber. All her fiber animals have already found new homes, aside from a single alpaca that will be staying on as a guard alpaca for the new owners. From Marylynn, we walked away with some respectable selections, some blending merino, baby camel, angora, and...wait for it...qiviut.

There it is, off to the left there. All these bags are from Indigo, while the rest is mostly from Spunky and Sheep Shed. Wait, here's some better close up:

At the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool, we got some Merino/Tencel from Sheep Shed. Ericka's spun it up for me, and we got some solid Charcoal to go with it.

Ericka got a sparkly batt from Spunky, which looked like this:

Now it looks like this:

Well, this was 2oz, so its now a half-full bobbin. The only time I have ever seen vendor-to-full-bobbin spinning from Ericka has been with Spunky's yarns.

Ericka's first attempt at Navejo plying is off the bobbin, and ready for a final setting.

If you have stayed on this long, you might have noticed that we've been up to Maine every weekend for the last three weeks. Here's the bomb, we were up in Maine the week before this post started, for a Wedding. Check the last post. But the upside to all these Maine trips is that we've been able to catch up on Brenda Dayne's Cast On podcast. We're up to Episode 43 so far, which puts us at last autumn. We usually get three or four episodes in per trip, since we run out of WFNX just north of Portland proper.

Well, I think this is both the longest post, and the most picture filled. My mission is to finish my latest pair of socks by Wednesday (and it counts if I cast-off at Famous Dave's).

Comments

[marion]

What great pictures of all your yarn loot and our fun, rainy Knit in Public outing.

[Lora]

What a fun day! The "kids" look like they were having fun playing! Thanks for the break Chris. :)

[Cheryl]

Oh good, you found Indigo Moon! Isn't that a beautiful farm? So sad she's moving.

[Arleta]

Ooh, I'm so jealous! What fun!