New York Sheep and Wool 2015

Like many of the most stratospherically famous, New York Sheep and Wool is mostly known on a first name basis as Rhinebeck. And really, the rep is well earned. This past weekend I flew up to Rhinebeck and had an utterly awesome time immersing myself in all things fiber related. I stayed in a rented house with a pile of absolutely wonderful knitters and we had a rollicking good time.

I wasn’t particularly good at taking pictures, mostly because I was trying to keep my hands warm, but I wanted to share what few I took!

First off, proof that it was way too cold for this Southern girl. See that on the left edge of my wrist? That is a snowflake! A SNOWFLAKE! There were small flurries, but they took me totally by surprise.

Realizing my utter lack of photographic evidence that I was at Rhinebeck I decided to take a picture of some cute sheep. They were chumming it up with one of the ladies I was walking with so I moseyed over to get their super cute faces. As soon as I lifted my Iphone to get a shot?

Sheep butt

Yeah, totally not their best side. You will have to trust me that they were cute. Later on as I was standing in yet another line I noticed this incredibly weird seed pod type thingie growing on a wall and I just had to take a shot of it.

No Clue, but cool

If anyone knows what kind of flower this once was I would love to know. All in all it was exactly the trip I was hoping for and I have much more to share about what I did, but for now I am barely coherent in putting words together to form sentences.  If you attended Rhinebeck I would love to hear about what you did in the comments. I know I never get to everything and I want to know what I missed. If you blogged about it, please leave a link and I will totally read.

Time for a photo break

This post isn’t about knitting. So if you are purist you can stop reading right now if you like and get back to your knitting.

I figured since it is the weekend I could take a wee break and put up something a bit different. And by different I mean you already know that I love photography, but this is not about knitting.

When we first purchased our house there was an old, abandoned farmhouse across the street. And by old I mean quite possibly one of the oldest houses on the street ie: the original farm house for when our area was farmland. Talking to the neighbors I learned that it had been abandoned for at least 20 – 25 years, the time since the two old ladies who lived there passed.

These were in the rafters of the “barn”.

After we had been in the house a couple of years the property was finally bought by a developer. The house sat on around 3 acres so they decided to plow it under, parcel it up and put in a few McMansions (as an aside they planned on 6 but could only get zoned for 3 so the end result was 3 big houses with big yards as opposed to 6 big houses on teeny yards). The imminent doom of the house prompted me to go over there with my camera and take some photographs.

Sitting on the stove in the kitchen.

Obviously there was no electricity and the windows hadn’t been cleaned in forever, so most of the light was heavily filtered or came in through the holes in the roof. But I managed to get a few interesting shots and now I am sharing them here for the first time.

The detritus on the floor in the front room.

Now I know that these aren’t the pretty, pretty pictures that you have seen from me, but I thought I would share them anyway. For me photography is a complex subject that can challenge as well as entrance. And I find it interesting to see how distinct my two “styles” of photography are. If you have made it this far thank you for indulging me, if you have any thoughts I would love to hear them.