Radio Silence Broken

Well hello, and welcome back to the Knitting for Sanity blog. I can't believe that this is the first post of 2008. I mean, it is May already! Where did the time go? It seems that radio silence has struck many knit bloggers; I don't know if we have all been wrapped up in Ravelry, or just busy with every day living or maybe even actually knitting. I, for one, know that the tv writer's strike put a huge damper on my knitting time. I took up reading for a few months instead.

There is lots to catch up on now that I know better how to operate my camera and get the pictures off of the card. I'll start with the most recent and maybe work my way back, in my spare time.

The first weekend in May is always the annual Maryland sheep and wool festival. I was fortunate enough to be able to go again this year, sans kids, and spent a lovely whirlwind weekend at the show visiting with Mom and good friends Sheila and Michael. They had a booth across from the souvenir sales again ... it looked fabulous!



I really enjoyed spending the weekend with Mom, it was truely a girlfriends' kind of weekend! Here's Mom just warming up at the Brooks Farm booth

And here she is getting high on wool fumes at Tess's Designer Yarns:


It was a real treat not only to see Mom, Sheila and Michael, but also to visit with my best friend and her adorable little niece:


I also had a few minutes to hug and chat with Caroline and her adorable daughter:

Caroline, Sheila and I all met on an on-line chat group called FiberTraditions. We see each other a couple of times a year at best, but email helps us stay in close contact. Caroline entered several items in the competition, her bee fields shawl won a blue ribbon! Hooray for Caroline!


There were many amazing things to see at the show, I took a picture of this felted dinosaur head to show my kids:


This is the most amazing shawl, spindle spun to a cobweb weight:
I wish I had asked the woman if she has a blog so I could link to her, the shawl was stunning.

In the evenings we got to relax, veg, and knit in a local hotel room. Sheila had left her knitting in the van back in Oregon, so Mom set her up with an emergency knitting kit. One of my secret pals some years back sent me a bag with a red cross and emergency sock knitting supplies inside. I gifted it with new supplies to Mom when she was moving and now it was her turn to pay it forward. Sheila is a magic loop kind of girl, so here she is trying hard to work with dpns. I call this shot, "Sheila on double points". Original, 'eh?


I have lots of photos to share of Mom's new house, but will save those for another post. This one has already taken me all day to write. Here's one final shot of my stash from MSW.