A weekend of fiber, friends, food and fantastic weather

Sue and Betty at the HodgePodge booth

Tom, Clilff and Shari

Shari and Cindy at the Ewe and I Farm booth

 What a nice sheep sweater

The weather turned out to be beautiful for the Sheep and Wool Festival.  Rain had been predicted for Friday into Saturday morning, but it did not arrive and the sun shone brightly on the fairgrounds.  I arrived around 10:30 on Saturday and the field was pretty well full with cars.  Walking thru the gate (vendors entrance) I was greeted by 4 beautiful border collie pups romping around.  I get so excited anticipating all the brightly colored fiber that I will see, along with the variety of natural fleeces just waiting to be spun.  I also enjoy the beautiful sweaters that people wear to the festival!  It’s a wonderful Mothers Day treat for any woman who loves to be lost in fiber space ( I stole that, but it’s good isn’t it?).

Shari reported that there were 2,700 visitors thru the gate (not including children, who are free) on Saturday and 1,800 on Sunday.  I wonder how many of them enjoyed the warm apple crisp topped with vanilla ice cream.  It was yummy! 

Sue sold 3 wheels on Saturday morning alone.  Other sales were of fiber, yarn and socks.  Business was very brisk.  Sunday was slower but that allowed for some visiting and roaming around the grounds and other vendors booths.  Did you see the Yak fiber?  Very nice stuff from a farm in Colorado.  

Next stop is the Massachusetts Sheep and Wool Festival in Cummington on May 24th and 25th.  It’s a very pretty location - come and see us there! 

      

Doodles

 

While we were gathered for our spinning Tuesday at the shop, Tom called Sue to tell her that Doodles had passed away.  He was fine earlier in the morning.  When Tom went back to feed them later little Doodles was curled up and appeared to be sleeping but the poor little guy had passed on.  Both Sue and Tom are very sad - he was such a friendly, loving little lamb.  He had taken to following Tom around and pawing Sue’s leg to be picked up.  Perhaps his Mom knew something we didn’t when she refused to nurse him.  He was a sweet boy and will be remembered with a smile.

 

 

 

NH Sheep and Wool Festival

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 32nd annual New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival will be held May 10 & 11, 2008. 

This is a Mother’s Day tradition - come and visit us in the Roby Bldg.  We’ll have homespun handknit wearables, fleeces - raw and processed, roving and yarns.  We look forward to see you! 

The New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival is held at the Hopkinton State Fairgrounds Directions - The Hopkinton State Fair is located west of Concord, New Hampshire in Contoocook.. We are about 15-20 minutes drive time from Concord, 40-45 minutes from Manchester or Laconia and about 90 minutes from Boston. Take I-93 to I-89. Drive up I-89 and get off at Exit 7. This is the easiest and quickest route to the fairgrounds. Follow the signs to the fairgrounds.

 

May Flowers

 

As I enjoy the blooming of the forsythia, daffodils and other spring beauties, I long for my perrenial garden to be in full bloom with all its different colors and hues.  Until then I roam the aisles at Hodgepodge and take in all the colors of the rainbow plus so much more.  There are so many different kinds of yarn, from local homespun to Noro from Japan.  There are yarns that produce striped socks, yarns for making heavy sweaters, some for making lace-like shawls. There is wool, alpaca, linen, mohair and more!  The selection is huge.  If you don’t know what you want to make, browse the books and patterns.  Sue and Linda are there to help if you have a question on a pattern or a type of yarn.  

 

 

Monday Night Knitting

From 7:00 to 9:00 pm on Mondays come join us for Knitting Night.  Learn to knit, get help with a project,  discuss knitting techniques you’d like to try, or work on your current project.  There is a $3 fee and the coffee is brewed.  What could be better than good conversation, good friends - some old, some new, and a knitting project in your hands.

 

 

 

 

   

Tuesdays at the Shop

On Tuesdays at Hodgepodge several of us gather to either spin and/or knit and chat the day away.  Sue’s customers seem to enjoy seeing us working on projects and enjoying each others company.  You can never tell what the topic of conversation will be or who will be joining us.  Last week Sue had a 48 hour old, baby lamb at the shop.  His name is Doodle and he’s a 6 lb. Cooplandic (Dad a Coopworth, Mom an Islandic) - his twin brother weighed in at 10 lbs and Mom was more interested in him than Doodles, so as a result Sue has a bottle baby.

Henry, the shop dog is used to seeing lambs but a regular, invited Tuesday guest - Mia, had never met a bottle baby and was very curious about Doodle.  She didn’t know what the little guy was and nipped at him coming away with a taste of his fleece in her mouth.  After some correction and praise, her inner border collie emerged and she stuck to him like glue.  After his bottle, Sue placed him on the floor to wait on a customer and we watched as Mia herded Dootle into his crate and she stayed until he layed down and got settled for a nap.  It was so sweet to watch.

So if you have time on a Tuesday and want to drop by, we’ll be there. 

  

Shawls, beautiful shawls

About a year ago, while at the New Hampshire Spinners and Dyers Association meeting, Linda came up with the idea that we all make the same shawl, and wear it this year to their Fashion Show in the Spring.  Sue and Linda came up with a pattern and distributed it to those interested. Turned out that six of the spinners from Sugar River Spinners accepted the challenge: each one made the shawl from their own homespun yarn, some from fleece from their own sheep.  Then they knitted it.  The variations in the shawls are most interesting, just derived from different spinning techniques and thicknesses, different fibers, and different needle sizes.

And as these things go, other things came up and they didn’t get to the fashion show after all, so it’s a good thing they modelled them at the meeting at Candy’s house in March.

Spring is coming!

One of the tasks of late winter is finishing up projects.  That means finding all those bags with yarn, needles, half finished garments and often patterns as well…some are under the bed.  Some are at the store, under counters and tables.  In any case, all of us have several of these projects just waiting to be finished, in preparation for the Spring season of shows, where we need stuff to sell, and just to clear space in our homes, and maybe even have something new to wear, come April when the snow starts to melt.

AND, there’s all that new yarn that comes into the store in those luscious spring colors, that we have to resist buying until we make room in our homes for it, by finishing up a lot of those projects that are underway.

Last week, Sue went through some of her projects and started bringing them into the store to work on between customers. Betty’s been working on sweaters started and not finished: two sweaters and one poncho down, two sweaters and 3 shawls to go, not to mention socks, socks, socks.  Cindy’s bagged up her projects and vowed to finish one a month. In between she will make new stuff.  The list goes on…

This is as close to Spring Cleaning as many of us ever get!

As promised…

Here is a photo of the yarn of the month, which is called Atacama, is made by Arauconia, is 100% alpaca, comes in 50 gram balls, 110 yds, recommended size 7 needed, in 11 color ways. 20% off of usual price of $8, means it’s on sale for $6.40 a skein. In the photo there is a small hat made from one of the colorways. Sue will mail this to you, if you are prepared to pay for postage.

The Adventure continues…

Yesterday, I got to Hodge Podge early, and a few minutes later Rooterman showed up. (The local rotorooter).  It seems the tree in front of the store every couple of years, blocks the sewer pipe by sending roots into it, and these guys are supposed to fix the thing once and for all, through inserting a “bladder” into the pipe and that will seal it from tree roots. (Why do I doubt this?)  Anyway, they showed up on a Tuesday morning.  Sue was not happy.  “They can’t turn the water off today!  Not when there’s a group expected!”  Brian came in (who happens to be Shari’s grandson), and said, “Wait, wait, we’re not turning the water off today; we have Tracey and Paul with us and we need to take them down there to snake out the sewer pipe. (Tracey and Paul are DJ’s on the local country station, and are running a “take this job and LOVE it” campaign.  They are going to local jobs, on request, and trying them. The object is to get them to say they don’t want to do the job, and then you win prizes.  So, in the cellar of the store, we could hear laughter and “ew’s!” It seems they were trying out a plumber type job.  I went down and caught this photo of Tracey snaking out the sewer pipe.  “Ew, it’s wet..”says she.  Duh!  It’s a sewer pipe. To make it more amusing, Brian phoned up from the basement and had us flush the toilet, resulting in a flood of water coming out the pipe.  There’s always SOMETHING interesting going on at the store!

Here’s a photo of Tracey and her “snake”:

Apparently, they are coming back (rooterman, not Tracey and Paul) late this afternoon to do the real work.  So, if you are going to the store after 3, there will be no running water, i.e., no bathroom.  Forewarned is forearmed!

By the way, on my way in I noticed that Sue has started her new program of “yarn of the month”. There was a rack full of some kind of lovely variegated, handpainted, sort of, yarn, I think it was an araucania product, and don’t know if it was llama or alpaca: looked like alpaca, but since I’m allergic to alpaca and llama, I didn’t spend much time at it.  It was 20% off. Since I’m going back to the store this morning for an hour or two, I’ll check on this and let you know.  That’s a nice discount.  Check for updates later today or tomorrow a.m.