It’s almost time for our travel break to come to an end. We will be heading to Grayslake, IL  on Wednesday for the 6th annual Midwest Fiber and Folk Art Fair. We have been attending as vendors every year since its inception in 2007. It has changed locations 3 times as well as moving the date up from the third weekend of July to its present date of the fourth weekend in June.

We will be trying something new in our booth next weekend. We will be offering a yarn winding service. One of the girls will be manning the station. We will not be charging for it, but tips will be gratefully accepted. I think it will be a nice opportunity for customers to see our swifts in action. Hopefully it will work out and if it does we may do it more often. We’ll see how it goes.

Here’s a picture from last year’s Fair. We are in the same location this year too, which is booths 102-103C. We are right next door to The Fold and Handspun by Stephania.

I really like the new venue. It’s a much better fit for the Fair than the Henry Co. college where it was held in 2008 and 2009. I always look forward to going to Chicago. I used to be intimidated by driving through the city pulling my trailer, but I am a pretty seasoned traveler at this point.

We will be packing tomorrow and driving most of Wednesday, so I decided I really needed to fit in a blog post today even though I don’t have a whole lot of news to share on the knitting front. I snapped a shot of my progress on Sticks and Stones. I like how the fabric looks and feels, however I am afraid that it is indeed turning out smaller than 38”. I measured across it today and it is closer to 36”. Maybe the blocking will help. Heh.

Here’s what else has been occupying me this week. Do you recall in my last post that I was waiting for this CD to arrive?

It did arrive, later that day in fact. I got it a day early. I was so excited but I waited until I could have an uninterrupted hour to listen to it the first time. Later that night, when the house was settled, more or less, I finally put it in my CD player. Let me tell you that it was well worth the wait! I have not been able to stop listening to it. I have played it at least one time every day, and sometimes more. It’s kind of like when  you have chocolate in the house and you just can’t resist eating a little every day. What, you mean not everyone does this?

But I digress. If you happen to be a Rush fan, you probably already have it and know what I am talking about. I am willing to bet that most of you aren’t, however, and that’s okay. I hope you don’t mind my occasional gushing over them. Their music just gets to me in a special way. I think I must be weird in my musical tastes since I don’t like the kind of music that is typically “chick” music. I tend to favor stuff that mainly has a male fan-base. I don’t know why, but there it is.

Actually I am a little unique in my taste in books too. I don’t care for romance books at all. The Outlander Series was as close as I ever get to that, and honestly some of that was a bit much for me. I have lately been in a crime novel mood. I read several of those and then on a whim a couple days ago I decided to re-read a Stephen King novel from 1988, The Tommyknockers, which I read when it came out. I had forgotten most of it except for a few major plot details. I am 150 pages in already. Good stuff.