Maryland Sheep & Wool

Sorry it has taken me a week to get around to telling you about Maryland. It has honestly taken this long for me to get caught up on my life after two straight weekends away from home! Yes, I got yarn, but I’ll dole that out in chunks as Fridays roll around. I promise I’ll even advance-post YPFs for when I’m in Oklahoma at the start of next month!

Tigger mostly hid in my bag trying to stay cool It wasn’t easy! But he did want to prove he came along, so here’s a picture of RT with some sheep

Baaaaa!!

Meanwhile, I did make a few non-yarn purchases and met some excellent people!

I started off the day running into Trillian42 (Pam) and Turtlegirl76 (Cristi) almost immediately and in almost exactly the same spot where I met up with them in the main barn last year. No, it wasn’t planned, but who am I to argue with fate?

After a few hours of walking around with them, I needed to find the one other contingent that I absolutely needed to find before it was time to leave the fairgrounds for the day to get lunch with my mom and aunt.

I still Plurk just about daily, and two of the crazies I enjoy the most came down from the NYC area for the festival!

HolyKnitballs (Sharon), Sairy (Sarah) and me

Sharon and Sairy were quite hilarious to cruise with while walking around the festival. I’m so glad I made sure to meet then and get to know them a little bit IRL when I had the chance. Maybe next year, Zarzuela will be able to come down with them!

As I’m quite certain you’ve heard from just about everyone who attended the festival, it was quite warm the entire weekend. Around 1 p.m., I checked in with my mom and aunt and we decided we’d scram and find a place to eat lunch in air conditioning. And then visit a few quilt shops. So I took my Plurk Peeps and headed off to find my first set of running buddies from the day.

Turtlegirl76 (Cristi) and me

I was not in “NEED PICTURES NAO” mode when I found Pam and Cristi (and their friend whose name I can NOT remember) in the morning. And if you go over to Cristi’s post about MDSW, you’ll notice that a goodly number of her people pictures are from that top-of-the-hill spot near Brooks Farm. I’d guess they were all taken within 10 minutes of the above picture of me with Cristi.

So yes, I hung out with Pam and her awesome hat (I’ll get back to that). I saw RosiG and met Bezzie (YAY!) but it was hotter than Hades and nobody was really in picture-wrangling mode, so I got the above picture and then left to go cool off, knowing that I’d be back the next day.

Yes, I bought some fabric on the trip. Hell, I bought fabric before we left the state of Pennsylvania, since we stopped by Sew Much Fun in McMurray because they were having a sale! After leaving the fairgrounds on Saturday, we trooped over to Mount Airy, Md., to visit a really good quilt store over there and I got a little batik. But fabric pictures are boring, so you’ll just have to trust me.

Aside from the STR that Celtic Queen picked up for me on Saturday, I actually didn’t buy anything at the show the first day. I figured there was nothing I really needed, so I’d just pick stuff up on Sunday. That plan turned out just fine.

I had been a good girl and applied plenty of sunscreen before heading into the fairgrounds on Saturday, so my winter-pasty-white arms and legs emerged unscathed from my hours on (what felt like) the surface of the sun. My face, however, was not so fortunate. I had been with Cristi and Pam when Pam bought her kick-ass hat (third picture down HERE). Since my aunt Suzie is a hat expert, I took her and my mom up to the Australian Shop tent first thing on Sunday morning and took a cue from Pam:


I love my hat and I wore it all day on Sunday to rave reviews. Until I got home and the Hubster asked me where my knife was and called me Crocodile Dundee. Oh well. He’s just jealous!

After years of listening to KnitNat rave about the honey that she purchases at the festival every year, I checked out the booth for The Bee Folks. Holy customer service! They give you a tiny spoon and let you taste every single honey they had in stock while telling you what that particular honey would be best used for, answered every question anyone could think of and made recommendations when asked. I came away with a jar of Wildflower honey (since that was the one I liked the best) and a bag of their lemon-honey candy. YUM!


I took my purchases out to the car and executed my planned meet-up with Makinika (aka “The Knitting Lady”) and KatieBell, who I had actually met on my very first trip to MDSW! A picture was taken, but not on my camera. You’ll just have to take my word for it. We left the fairgrounds around 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, hot and happy, having enjoyed another festival weekend.

Oh, and Derf wants you to know what his normal headwear is at the moment

Let’s Go Pens!