NY Sheep and Wool Festival: Report from Rhinebeck

Amber and I just returned from a long weekend in upstate New York where we went to the New York Sheep and Wool Festival which is commonly referred to in knitting circles as Rhinebeck. It was our first time attending and it was amazing. Rhinebeck is a wool festival similar to our Estes Park Wool Market--only times 1,000. There were so many people and so many booths of amazing things to buy! We were a little overwhelmed at first, but we got the hang of it after a bit and managed to find some things that we couldn't leave without.

HOLY SMOKES!

Nice work, nature.

We stayed with the lovely ladies of Kelbourne Woolens in a house in the Hudson Valley. What a beautiful fall setting for a wool festival! We spent a lot of time knitting at the house when we weren't buying fiber and yarn at Rhinebeck.

There were so many vendors selling local yarns, rovings and fibers. Amber and I had recently spun through our stash of roving so it was a free-for-all for us to buy more! We both picked up a sweater's quantity of longwool roving to spin-up during next year's Spinzilla.

Amber's roving purchase matches her Apple Cider doughnut perfectly

Longwool roving was seen and purchased

Loop had beautiful batts and art yarn

Outlander Adventures' Icelandic yarn Poetry mittens

There were plenty of sheep, alpacas, goats and llamas as well! We love seeing all the different breeds of sheep. Icelandic, Shetlands, Border Leicesters, Cotswold - all the sheep were in attendance!

Merlin the Leicester Longwool

Sheep Parade!

Icelandic Sheep Baby

An adorable Teeswater

Llama parade!

Ysolda Teague had some exciting news at Rhinebeck - the release of a new book "The Rhinebeck Sweater"! She was doing book signings for pre-sales of the book which will officially be released on November 6th. We have it on order and can tell you already that it is an amazing book, everything you'd expect from Ysolda with 12 gorgeous sweater patterns by amazing designers.

The best part about Rhinebeck was seeing and hanging out with so many awesome people! Ysolda, Cal Patch, Jill Draper, Maryjane Mucklestone, Ravelry, Sonya Phillip and more were in attendance and we loved meeting up with peeps for hot cocoa and doughnut breaks.

Sonya Phillip and Allison Page show off their Empire yarn from Jill Draper

Cal Patch and Jill Draper help us display all of our purchases!

Til next year, Rhinebeck - it was awesome!

Learn it Up, Yo! The Fall Class Schedule is Here!

Our new class schedule is out and there are a million new things to learn and make!

We have a huge line-up of crafty classes, including these brand new projects:

Brand New Fall Classes!
1) Free Motion Quilting with Claudia Miller
2) Needlefelted Mice (kids or adults) or Needlefelted Turkeys with Wynne Reynolds
3) The Staple Dress from April Rhodes taught by Krystal Thomas
4) The Heirloom Tunisian Cowl by Cat Stolzenbach
5) Sonya Philip of 100 Acts of Sewing will be coming to town to teach a 2 day Dress-making Workshop!
6) Patchwork Napkins with Amy Gibson
7) Dia de los Muertos Embroidery with Lalania Simone
8) Kids Elephant Stuffie with Christina Patzman
9) Pattern from Existing Garment with Christina Patzman

There are also plenty of our recurring favorites on the schedule, like My Favorite Sweater, Serger 201: Jersey Skirt, Colette Laurel, Crochet 201: Hat, Spinning 101: Drop Spindle--be sure to check out the full craft class line-up on our website!

Happy crafting!