you know, i swear that i’m going to do everything in my power to go to rhinebeck (NY sheep and wool festival) every year. it was the most fun i’ve had in ages! and i was kid free too. good times.

i met a lot of people and put my camera to go use taking photos of 95% of the people that i did meet.

1. amy (stashknitrepeat), 2. jess (yarnmonster), 3. tina (misplacedpom), 4. jess and sarah, 5. anne-marie (annie knits!), 6. casey (ravelry code monkey), 7. casey (ravelry code monkey), 8. M-H and pam, 9. caro (splityarn) and pam (flintknits), 10. ysolda, be nice!!, 11. wannett (aka, nettie, lulu c.), 12. kaitlyn (greatwhitewong), 13. chawne (cauchy09), 14. heather (addknitter), 15. maryse (bagntrash, monsteryarn), 16. photographing bob, 17. danielle (aswiminknits), 18. maritza (sotosofties), 19. karen (choochooknits), 20. mai (saomai, maitai113), 21. kim (yarny old kim), 22. emily (therewillbesnacks), 23. amy (limonene), 24. the split-off, 25. jess and bob, 26. melissa (neoknits), 27. maya (mayarn), steve, and miles, 28. cara (january one) and meli, 29. kay gardiner (mason dixon knitting), 30. elspeth (wry punster) and ann (annMT), 31. adam! (adamknits), 32. gudrun, 33. team rav gives out the prizes, 34. illanna, 35. the ravelry meetup on sunday, 36. 365.291:2009 (#475) – best weekend ever

though the trip up there was fraught with wrong turns and missteps (sorry tina!) we made it in one piece and proceeded to have a weekend full of fun despite the cold and dreary weather. i did buy some yarn though not a lot.

4 skeins of brooks farm four play, 2 skeins of socks that rock lightweight for a shawl, 1 skein of socks that rock mediumweight (i’ve already cast on for a pair of socks for KP!), and 2 small shawl pins from moving mud. i love these things. the glass is much more my style than metal.

did you go to rhinebeck? if so, direct me to your photos! i did meet some people who i had never met before and i’m already blanking on names

###

yep, i was at rhinebeck. i was there almost all of saturday but missed the crucial first 40 minutes of the day when the entire selection of socks that rock sold out at the fold. by the time we got there, their booth was an empty shell and i couldn’t bring myself to buy anything else from them. FORTY MINUTES PEOPLE! that’s just ridiculous. i’m thinking about boycotting the yarn just on principle alone (not really, but since i don’t own any now and may never again, this might be something that i can easily accomplish.)

so, i’ll try to keep this post rather short since you’ve seen a lot of rhinebeck by this point today. i drove up a spidery contingent (veronique, lisa, jessica, and abby) in my trusty ford taurus rental car. the ride up was fairly non-eventful. i managed to navigate both manhattan and new jersey without a problem, and without even planning on it, we met up with the other car of spiders (carrie, jessica, marie, and virginia) at both a rest stop AND the parking lot. good planning. we even managed to bump into more spiders there: amanda, katie, blogless nancy, iraida, sarah scissorina, and julsey.

i have to say that this saturday was CRAZY with people! the place was crowded and swarming with knitbloggers. i was in a total daze so i’m sorry if i walked right past you and didn’t say hi. a few of the bloggers i remember meeting: carrieoke, anne marie, big geek beth, januaryone cara, cari and cassie (though i see them randomly in NYC every now and again) and mama-E. big thanks goes out to all the people that walked up to me and introduced themselves. you rock!

here are some pictures of animals:

fluffy bunny!

puppy!

this sheep had a lot to say

aren’t they precious!? i just love farm animals. and so do the spiders…

smile jess!

having a great time

i wish i had taken more pictures but i was just too tired to break out my camera at every opportunity and there was a point where some animal fluff flew into my eye and gave me an allergic reaction. it made it hard to actually SEE where i was going! the pregnancy made me especially tired this year but i did really well considering that i drove home and didn’t arrive at my apartment until close to midnight! yikes!

for more rhinebeck pictures, check in to the gallery.

now for the yarn haul. i did pretty good this year. i stuck to my “socks and shawls’ yarn only” mantra. click on the thumbnails to get more info on each in the gallery.

some closer shots of these yarns are also in the gallery.

so, that’s it! we had a good time. i’m still recovering and now there’s more yarn than ever to knit with. still to come: some videos i took of the sheep. i have to figure out how to get them on youtube and then i’ll post them!

###

yes, i’m going to rhinebeck with the majority of spiders tomorrow. i will be wearing kyoto so if you see me before i see you, please introduce yourself! be warned that i am HORRIBLE with names but much better with faces

i decided to upgrade and actually use my flickr account. i’m only keeping photos there of completed projects, some yarn p0rn, and my favorite non-craft photos (mainly from around town and on vacation.) i hope that this will encourage you all to make me your contact! flickr is such a fun and amazing site that i can’t not participate. the tagging schemes and flickr pools are enough to warant the pro upgrade, but this is what really got me going. i’ll be buying mine next week, i think!

just so you know, though, all photos on this blog and MORE will always be available in my gallery.

have a great weekend!

###

why is it that in the spring, all of the crazies in this city come out of the woodwork? this morning, there was a man on my train who continually announced that “this is the last stop on this train” when it in fact wasn’t. then he would announce the station as we approached it, “14th street, last stop on this train!” then would meow like a cat the rest of the time. i kid you not. “meow, meow.. last stop on this train… meow.” what is it with new york? i think that only 40% of the population here does not talk to themselves.

anyway, it was one heck of a weekend! yesterday, i had to get to a dentist appointment early and then to my last japanese class after work so i didn’t have the energy to update. sorry! i’m a bit overwhelmed by my schedule both at home and at work. i wish that the end was in sight.. but it’s not. i don’t expect things to calm down till mid may and by then i’m sure to be as whacky as the rest of the new yorkers i see around here. that, and my ganglion cysts are back at the base of my right index finger. this time they hurt! i have to take care on how much time i spend typing or using the trackpad on my PB at home. i took some time last night from knitting to ice them but they still hurt this morning. i don’t know what to do. should i even bother going to the doctor? anyone else out there have them?

ok, i know that you want pictures. let’s start things off with last friday at chez osoh.

the eatin’s good

(more…)

###

“so much has happened today! just think that four hours ago, amanda was stuck in the bathroom.” poor amanda. everyone is going to write about this on their blog and you will get absolutely no reprieve from it. if only i had stopped dyeing my yarn sooner and come to your rescue before letting you sit in the bathroom for over 30 minutes. i was just glad that i got there when i did.

yep, the spiders had another party and this one was a doozy. i don’t think that any of us ever believed that we would be at marie’s house for 9 hours but the majority of us were and damn did we have a good time (but everyone please remind me next time that i’m allergic to cats and it will cause me a great deal of stress to be around them.) in the end, i was able to test out two of my three signature colorways for the bokufish hot studs™ collection. say hello to jack and apollo.

from the bokufish hot studs™ collection

(more…)

###

because they hadn’t updated their feeds in a long time and i was missing all of these entries for DAYS!!! it was really annoying. so i downloaded sage (thanks hammy!!) which is a firefox lightweight add-on for RSS feeds and figured, to hell with bloglines and all these online RSS services that can’t be trusted, i’ll do it on my own. and sage is pretty cool but having to manually synch up all of my reading between home and work is a bit of a pain as is checking RSS feeds from a computer that i don’t own.. so sage is nice but, alas, not bloglines. then i received word from bloglines:

We are currently moving our machines to a new network facility that will enable us to update feeds as soon as the publisher tells us there is something new. For feeds that don’t tell us when to check for new articles, we’ll update every hour or less.

this is good news as now i no longer have to write about how bloglines sucks. i can save that rant for the future should they ever suck again (and i wouldn’t put it past them.)

(more…)

###

i present to you evidence of a weekend of fun.

sorry for the poor image quality as this picture was taken at 2AM after having the spiders over for cocktails and a yarn swap before KP and i leave for tokyo on thursday. the aim for the evening was to get everyone together to drink, knit, and exchange yarn that you no longer want and, by golly, we did just that. unfortunately, i was too busy playing host to take too many pictures so i’ll give you the abbreviated tour of the evening.

i set up a winding station at the back of the couch for those spiders who wanted to spend some quality time with the swift. in a spare moment, i jumped back there and wound up my skein of socks that rock in the jewel of the nile colorway (ain’t it pretty!?) i’m not entirely sure which sock pattern i’m going to make yet. i really want to try the grumperina sock pattern, jaywalker, but it’s a whopping 75 stitches to cast-on and that’s really just too damn big. my mom’s cabled sock were 72 stitches and i thought they were big!

speaking of cabled socks, let me throw this in before continuing on with the party pics.

pattern: brainylady’s basic cabled sock pattern

needles: two US1 addi turbos

yarn: paton’s kroy sock yarn in pink power

these were an easy knit but i don’t recommend them if you’ve never knit socks before. the pattern is quite barren when it comes to the actual foot of the sock. you’re supposed to use whatever heel turn you like and whatever toe decreases you like but if you’ve never knit socks before then you don’t know what you like! so try something else first before you conquer these. the ribbing started to get really boring near the end so i think that the next pair that i make will have to be more challenging.

ok, back to the party. after downing a huge bottle of red wine and making a few pomegranate martinis we dumped out all our yarn and swapped according to birthdays.

i asked katie to lay down in the yarn but she declined. i wish i had a picture of everyone there but, like i said, i was too busy making cocktails and doling out the food! all in all, we had a quick appearance by abby, and marie, sarah, lisa, katie, and veronique all stayed for a late evening of fun. thanks for coming girls!

yarn and cocktails a-go-go gallery

###