Script for

Episode 134:

Reporting From Rhinebeck 2010

Hello there, beloved Sheepspotter. I am taking a little break from creating new episodes right now, but today I'm sharing a segment from my very first podcast, Spin Doctor, for your listening pleasure. In this episode from 2010, I tell you all about the insane buying spree that was my one and only trip to Rhinebeck. Yes, I've never made it back since. But I hope that you enjoy this little glimpse at my pre-sheep spot self. Have fun.

Good morning, spin sibs. I am parked in a great big field at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds, and it's a beautiful, beautiful day. Blue sky, lots of puffy clouds, but it's supposed to kind of clear up later in the day. I got a fantastic parking place. It's only 8.25. And, you know, sometimes the early bird catches the parking space. So normally I would have started on this a little earlier when I first got in the car, but I had some stuff I needed to pay attention to. And I'm going to tell you all about that later. But now I'm going to go buy tickets and get myself to the fleece sale. And I will check in again later. Well, hello, spin sibs. I am sitting in my car in the exact same field I was in the last time I talked to you. Only now it's about five hours later or so. And I'm, I have experienced Rhinebeck and I found it pretty exhausting. It's really packed in there. But it's a gorgeous, gorgeous day. People are in generally good spirits and.

Yeah, it was nice. It was nice. I'm looking forward to doing it again tomorrow, maybe in a slightly less frenzied way and in a way that involves spending no money. So let me tell you, about the Rhinebeck fleece sale, because this is truly a situation in which the early bird gets the worm, and the late bird doesn't get any worms. I got here at about quarter after eight, 20 after eight. The gates opened at nine o'clock, and they did not let a single person in before nine. So I stood online with some very nice people from either Maryland or Virginia, some suburb of Washington, D.C. And then I hot-footed it over to the building with the fleece sale, where there was another line, a much shorter line, but a line nonetheless. The fleeces were being photographed, apparently. That's why we couldn't just go in and pick them up. And let me tell you, the competition was fierce.

I was maybe the 30th person in line. And by the time, so I'm in line, right? I'm in line. And I'm wondering why we're standing around. But the fleeces had to be photographed and the volunteers had to be trained. So I'm the 30th person in line, and I'm standing there, and I spot this pale silver gray fine wool fleece that looks really promising in terms of its color because, as you know, I was looking for a gray fleece and a black fleece.

And by the time I got to by the time I got into the sale right that fleece gone totally gone, maybe three people looked at it and the fourth one just scooped it up folks were just picking up bags barely looking at them I mean it was really one of those situations where you grab first and ask questions later ask questions about the soundness of the locks later but nonetheless I think I did actually really well at the fleece sale. I did find a gray fleece, beautiful, beautiful kind of gunmetal gray Romney, nice staple length, a lamb's fleece, very soft. And I'm really, it's beautiful. I'm really looking forward to working with it. And I was able to find a black fleece, a very fine Corydale cross, about five pounds, and very well priced. So I think I did well there.

And what else did I do? Oh, yes. And I bought this beautiful, I bought this beautiful, I'm just waving to the people I was standing in line behind, this beautiful, beautiful Rambouillet fleece, seven pounds. Now, do I need seven pounds of Rambouillet? No, but Rambouillet actually isn't that easy to find in processed form. And I love spinning Rambouillet. It's one of my favorite, favorite things to spin. So I just bought it and the hell with it. And then, oh, and then, and then the real trouble began because, as you know, I enable myself. That's what I do. I enable myself. So I told you I was going to go to the Boswell booth, and I did go to the Boswell booth, and it was madness. It was just insane. People were stacked up in there, and it was really hard to get to see the spindles, And so, I was just swept up in the frenzy of the Bosworth booth, and I seem to have bought not one, no, not two, but three Bosworth spindles.

Yep, that's trouble. The spindles, me and the spindles, it's dangerous. us. Now, if that had been it, you know, if I had just bought the three fleeces and three spindles, that, you know, that wouldn't have been a disaster. But then I discovered the booth of The Wheel Thing in Connecticut, a spinning store in Connecticut, owned by a woman named Janet, who is a total laugh riot and whom I really liked. And she carries Edward Tabachik spindles. And Edward Tabachik is a spindle maker in Manitoba. And I really have been wanting to buy one of his spindles for the Canadians. episodes. So I did. And she also had Jenkins Turkish spindles. And I'd just been listening to Jasmine and Gigi on the Knitmore Girls talking about them and how great they were. And so I bought a tiny little one of those. And also the most beautiful Nostepinny you have ever seen in your entire life. I think possibly the most beautiful Nostepinny ever. And also one more little one ounce glass spindle because it was so beautiful and it wasn't that expensive.

So I went a little spindle mad. I also bought not that much fiber. I did pretty well on the fiber front because, well, I mean, except for the three fleeces. Because as you know, I didn't need to have any more fiber. And I just bought three fleeces. So I bought some dyed Romney, I think, in a variety of colors, so that I could make bats with it. And so I did that. And I also bought some, oh, there's an unbelievably great llama walking by. There are actually two llamas walking by. Oh, no, maybe they're Suri alpacas. I think they're Suri alpacas. And they look even more like Dr. Seuss characters than regular alpacas. Oh, cute as buttons and really, really weird looking. Anyway, where was I? Oh, fiber. Well, I also bought some into the world fiber.

Because Chris, whom I've never had any interactions with, has been such a good supporter of the podcast. She's in the podcast group and she follows me on Twitter. And also because when I got to where her fiber was and saw it, I gasped out loud at how beautiful it was. So I just bought a couple of bumps of that. Just.

Okay, well, you know, as Stephanie Pearl McPhee would say, well, she would say, we're knitters and we need yarn to be knitters. And what I would say is, we're spinners and we need fiber to be spinners. And nobody would be surprised if a carpenter had a lot of wood around. So I'm just trying to stay with that. But anyway, I'm going to head out and try to find some food now, and I'll check in after I've had a bit of a sleep.