This post is 3 days of editing in the making! Links! Photos! Yay, Maryland!
Friday- Ma, Cat and Allison pulled up to pick me up for our long-ass drive down to Maryland.
We’re all giddy with excitement and and laugh and talk the whole way down. We get to our hotel (Comfort Inn/Catonsville) and relax for a while. We eventually dragged our butts off the super comfy beds and went exploring the Baltimore National Pike looking for the WalMart to buy some sandals since it was way warmer than we expected. We shopped a little, grabbed some food, and bought a bunch of junk to go with the booze Ma and Cat packed:
Naturally I stuck to the junk food.
We all hit the sack around 10pm, but thanks to the morons next door (a whole high school basketball team from Baltimore…awesome) I didn’t get much sleep. I’d say I got maybe 3 hours to add to the 4 I got the night before thanks to over-excitement and panic that I’d oversleep.
Saturday: I was up at 5:30am after I finally gave up on sleeping. I was the first one in the shower and felt pretty good considering my lack of rest. By 7am we were all dressed, packed and donning our “Hello My Name Is” Ravelry pins we snagged last year at Rhinebeck. We got to the fairgrounds around 7:30am and I hadn’t taken more than three steps out of the car before the first on many cries of “LICK MY STIIIICKS!” came flying from Ravelers Nikki and JenniChrys and in the parking lot. I vastly underestimated how many people read about my “yell at me” hopes here and on Ravelry, so that was a good preparation for what was to come!
Once we were inside, we went STRAIGHT to The Fold where we, and about 15 other early birds got first-picks on Socks That Rock! On the way we picked up LanieRed who came all the way from Mississippi by herself!
I tried to give her free earrings for spotting me while we waited in line but she wanted to buy them and save a freebie for someone else (incredibly sweet of her). This then caught the attention of other line people who wanted to buy earrings, including some Ravelers, including katiebell,Yarnyoldkim and rescueapet. I can officially say I was picked clean before The Fold even opened! Thanks so much to everyone who bought them!! I didn’t think anyone would be interested in buying them so I foolishly didn’t make the big batch I planned on making- silly me…I could have had a considerably bigger yarn budget!
Anyway, they opened up the Fold just after 8am and we all rushed in. I bought four beautiful skeins, and Ma, Cat, and Allison and I hurried into line with armfuls of yarn.
I must have met 10 more Ravelers before I left Barn 3 including SailorCarol, which was so cool. I got to the end of Barn 3 and met one more person that totally blew my mind. Pam Helm! (My name is Pam Helme). I got such a kick out of it I forced her to take a picture with me.
I’m pretty sure she thought I was batshit crazy, but I’m more or less used to that.
We went from there to a couple more barns (and I hit the bathroom 800 times in this short timespan…once running into KnitNat, who won some earrings!) where I burned through my budget in no time. I got a wonderful expandable market bag kit and awesome Lavendar cooling spray from The Spinnery, some bees wax at the next booth over, and some delicious Bamboo from Maple Creek Farm.
Somewhere in between these barns I was swarmed by trueepicture, greydog, smartash, lillypad, georgiepurl, whimsyfist and trinity all at once which was almost like my fantasy rock star dreams consisted of except all these beautiful women would be be beautiful men. Uh…WHO ALL LOOK LIKE Gerard Butler MY HUSBAND. (Love you, hunny…) It was pretty awesome and naturally being my smooth self I just stood there like an idiot not knowing what to say. (This happened basically all weekend. I’m far more charming on the internetz or after a 12-pack)
I took lots of pictures of the pacas. So.fucking.cute!!
We decided to check the other barns later, grabbed some corn dogs and headed to the Main Exhibition Hall. I went straight to the Cloverhill booth and was immediately overwhelmed by all the gorgeous yarn. Ravelraiser creator and general bad ass JulieFrick found me and threatened to tickle me. She has literally the CUTEST little boy I have ever laid eyes on. I was already low on cash and pretty bummed about that, but I decided to splurge on some HandMaiden Sea Silk anyway. The stuff is soooo beautiful, my craptastic camera does it zero justice.
I looked for Jacey from Insubordiknit but unfortunately she wasn’t there yet (I never did find her!). I was bummed, I was looking forward to meeting her. I did get to oogle her awesome eyeball yarn though! I started making my way to the next booth and started feeling light-headed. At this point I’d been on my feet for about 3 hours and they were SCREAMING. It was warm and there were some rude-ass people making the Main barn a total mobscene. I got really claustrophobic and dizzy and starting jogging for the door…which took 10 minutes because no one would get out of my way. It sucked.
I made it out the door and headed for a bench, met and chatted with a couple more Ravelers (lar being one of them) while I waited for my head to stop spinning. The rest of my party came out after a while and we headed for the Ravelry meet up. At this point I had run into a shit-ton of Ravelers and I am kicking myself for not writing down everyone’s screen names and blogs because I’d love to know! I was so tired and hurting the morning is now a total blur. If I ran into you and didn’t mention you, say hello!!
Anyway, The Ravelry meet-up was great. I met lots of awesome Ravelers like dulcedosa, cicadaqueen & silkworm (LSG, bitches!) carrieoke, turtlegirl, trillian42 (also of Knitty Board fame), fleecyknits, knitty34, yarnkarma, vismajor, an explicit podcaster who was passing out giant flowers and is pictured below with her notepad and message she wrote just for the photo…someone help, who is she??? I forgot and I want to worship her listen to her podcast. There were so many more people but I am too tired to keep digging around Ravelry to find them! If you were one of them, let me know!!
All in all, it was a blast and I got some quality sitting time and felt much better. Perhaps best of all I finally got to meet the awesome Mary-Heather (rainydaygoods) who is really, really not an LSG narc. She swears.
Apparently some people decided to be MDK’s and get pissed off because they ran out of the FREE Ravelry buttons or couldn’t find their FREE avatar stickers and cussed out some of the Ravelry VOLUNTEERS. Since I can’t say it on the public Maryland forum, I will say it here: GET OVER YOURSELF YOU FUCKING CRYBABIES. Are you serious? It’s a button, STFU.
Ahem…moving on, Nation.
So from here we dropped off our purchases and hit some more booths. Brooks Farm was a hot spot and the yarn was gorgeous. I met a few more Ravelers here…I’m missing some names again, but I have mdknitr and felinemagnet, nice to meet you both!
We pretty much left right after this and went out to eat at Applebee’s. We went back to the hotel and spent a couple hours playing with our hauls, casting on new projects and napping.
I woke up from my nap at 10 to 7 and lept up. We had 10 minutes until the Ravelry Sheraton Party! Oops. We gussied up real quick and took off.
A few minutes after we arrived and grabbed our raffle and drink tickets, it started to rain and the crowd poured inside. Myself, Ma, Allison, Cat and the ever-awesome Silkworm plunked down at the table closest to the bar, where we remained all night.
Jess, Casey and Mary-Heather thanked everyone for the last year of Ravelry, the Ravelraiser, and for coming. Then they started drawing door prizes. I told all those other bitches at my table not to bother looking at their tickets because I was OBVIOUSLY going to win. By now, ChezAristote had joined us at the table and she told ME to put MY ticket away. We gave each other the stinkeye.
About halfway through the drawings (there was a LOT of schwag), they actually called my number! I won a cone of gorgeous Alpaca Silk lace weight and a vest pattern from WEBS. I was pumped, I never win anything. No sooner had I gotten back to the table from running to the ladies room, ChezAristote won one of those brand new Namaste clutches that go with the bag I just got! If her clutch had matched my bag I might have had to mud wrestle her for it, but it was the saddle color so I decided to instead be really happy for her!
(Bitch.)
(j/k)
We laughed all night, foul language flew from our “LSG table”, and we had a really great time. Jess and Mary-Heather stopped by, both a little glowy from boozey happiness. We even talked them (and a reluctant, possibly afraid Casey) into taking a “prove you love LSG and we’re not the equivalent of your bastard child you pretend not to have” picture, which might be my favorite souvenir from the weekend. (Don’t tell frecklemom, Jess didn’t want her to see her daughter giving a camera the finger)
And yes, I am currently the size of a house.
We eventually staggered out after deciding to abandon our plan to throw Casey in the pool (because it’s really not a party unless someone goes in the pool unwillingly). We got mildly lost coming back, and passed out happily in our marshmallow beds.
Sunday: We took a quick pass back through the fest, nothing much to report here. I purchased some tilli thomas yarn and some lace from Tess’ Designer yarn. The drive home was unbearably long and shitty and I was so happy to finally get home and smother husband and my dog.
SEE YOU AT RHINEBECK!!
