Knitting and Travel

I've been busy lately, working, knitting and traveling. Monday through Friday I work and knit and Saturday and Sunday DH and I travel around NY state and the surrounding area. We've been seeing a lot of this part of the country, places we only knew existed on maps and in books!
As I said I've been doing a lot of knitting, just no blocking! This is my finished, almost finished 5th Ave Infinity Scarf in Sandrasingh.com 3 Ply Merino Worsted. I love this color, I had named it Electric Blue, but easily could have called it Berries. And if I get it blocked in time I may wear it to Rhinebeck Sheep & Wool.

This knit in the round super long scarf was relatively easy and a very forgiving pattern, if you see it up close its far from perfect and this is just fine.

Unlike my Leaf Lace Stole that I knit in my Sandrasingh.com Superwash Fingering, its not pictured here for good reason even though it too is finished short of blocking. The LLS pattern was very unforgiving, one teeny tiny error and the whole thing was a mess. It turned out quite lovely, but without being blocked, not so lovely.

Besides the knitting I've been doing a little knitting related travel. Last Saturday DH & I journeyed to Ridgewood, NJ to attend the North Jersey Fiber Arts Fest and I'm really glad we took the time to visit this tiny show. I met some wonderful people and ran into others I had met before. And through these connections I hope to bring you a few new products you've never seen before!

This is Susan Mayo, a weaver, tatter, author and instructor. She was demonstrating and giving weaving lessons in conjunction with the Palisades Guild of Spinner & Weavers.

This is the owner of Leilani Arts, he specializes in yarns created from old saris, very beautiful and they would be perfect for weaving. He was very interesting, he's from Hawaii and lived on the Big Island, where I had lived, before winding up in NY he lived in Liberty, TX just north of Austin, I live just west of Austin and he currently resides in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, I'm in Midtown East. Coincidence? I think so!

And this fiber artist is Mikae Toma a Co Director at the Fiber Craft Studio in Chestnut Ridge, NY. She was demonstrating felting little bowls with lids from their Felting Sampler Kit.

The Fiber Craft Studio is dedicated to teaching individuals about handicrafts especially fiber related crafts such as spinning, felting and dying yarns in plant dyes. I'm taking a drive out there tomorrow to meet with another director to tour their grounds & learn more about their programs, I'll blog more about that later.

On Sunday DH and I took a drive to the lower Hudson Valley to the town of Sleepy Hollow, yes the home of the Headless Horseman and author Washington Irving. We visited their two famous cemeteries, Sleepy Hollow and the Old Dutch Church, between these two cemeteries there are a lot famous people buried in this relatively small town. The latter was very interesting, it had graves of soldiers from the Revolutionary War. And of course we saw Mr. Irving's family plot.

We had wanted to go on the Torch Light Cemetery Tour but that had long since sold out! The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery provides a very useful map and we were able to find all the major sites ourselves. We wound up having a very nice lunch in Tarrytown (home of IBM) along the river and over looking the Tappan Zee Bridge.

And this of course is Toffee! About two weekends ago we took a drive along the Palisades Parkway to go hiking in Bear Mountain. It was the perfect early Fall weekend and the leaves just barely had a tinge of yellow.

We had a nice hike late in the day. This coming weekend we may head to Greenwich, CT and I hope to get some blocking done.