knitting shawl fiber festivals

I am enjoying a few days of well earned rest this week after quite a busy month. After returning from Ohio I had two days to dye a large order for the mill and then I left home for northwest Virginia for two shows, Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival and the Fall Fiber Festival of Virginia

The SVFF was awesome as usual and the weather was great! It’s looking a bit wet for FFF but the tents went up on Tuesday before the rain started and the festival committee is on top of making sure all things are the best they can be this year. It is currently raining here in Winchester so I am hanging out in the room and doing some knitting today.

I had four days lay over here in Winchester, VA. On Monday I went to the mall and visited the music store and then went to see a movie (Snowden, which was very interesting). On Tuesday, since it was the last day forecast to be sunny and nice, I decided to take a little trip down to Front Royal and then to the Shenandoah River State Park. I just walked about the city square in Front Royal seeing a few historical sites (no pictures of that unfortunately). Then I went to check out the State Park and find a spot to eat my lunch. I had been to the National Park a few times before and since I didn’t plan on staying long enough to get my $20 admission worth, I opted for the less expensive SP.

This view was worth the $4 admission.

Here is where I had my lunch break. I would have done a bit of hiking possibly except that I stupidly wore my sandals. I thought about going on down to Luray Caverns but didn’t in the end. I opted to head back towards the hotel and do some grocery shopping for supplies for the coming weekend.

Yesterday was wet like today so I just hung out at the hotel, mostly knitting, reading, and watching 11.22.63 (also pretty good), which I bought on Monday at the music store.

So, I finished the pair of socks I started, in what, June? Then I cast on for a new shawl in my new color Paprika using my Classic Merino Superwash Sock yarn. This is the second of Dee O’Keefe’s recent crescent shawls, Talise. This is probably what I will be working on today but tomorrow it’s back to work. I will leave for Orange, VA in the morning and set up the booth at Montpelier. See you again soon!

It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks and it’s not slowing down for a couple more. I have gotten some progress made on Jimi, this is the sum total of my knitting though. I have 14 rows of each color now and the pattern calls for 22. I don’t think it will be big enough at that point though. I am loving these two colors together. I need to knit faster because I want to get to the lace part. :-)

There was a great turnout as usual at A Wool Gathering this past weekend. The weather was less than great on Saturday with rain and windy conditions for the first half of the day but the sun came out for the second half and then Sunday was really nice, cool and sunny.