It was a weekend where everything comes together: perfect autumn weather, great energy, beautiful yarn, stellar community, and oh! the knits everywhere. Plus sheep and alpaca and goats.
This year I taught workshops on the weekend mornings: Photo Safari: NY S&W Festival. Love my students who gleefully joined in as we photographed the fair, as our subject and our backdrop.
My assistant Ariana was along to pose in knits, for exercises shooting backgrounds & angles. **. She's wearing a Through The Loops Vestry Street. I know you want to know.
We visited the livestock barns. 
An experiment with the 2013 festival poster as the background for Through the Loops Germinate shawl. I give it a not-quite-thumbs-up.
I stayed at a shared large house- Ariana and I missed the group photo but you can see we were in excellent company- organized by Yarny Old Kim, whose scrappy long socks I covet. *** Wish I'd had more time to hang out there, it was full of good cheer. Some parts of our potluck left me a permanently craving. (hello! Steve's mac and cheese and homemeade kimchi)
Foodwise, at the festival: Waiting in line made much easier by knitspotting/knit ogling.
Very happy to get our Flammkuchen. Butternut squash, beets, fennel, creamy ricotta cheese (or was it goat?), flame cooked. 
Kirsten got bacon on hers, and do you love the sweater she's wearing? Design not yet released. <hint, hint cough>
Jill Draper and her inspiring sweater.
The ever stylin' Ellen Mason,aka Odacier, in her Mary Rebecca sweater and signature cardi/dress combo with plaid scarf, colored tights, and boots. She and my other style muse, Sonya Philip were walking around the festival together. Someday I want to have them style me. Not for a day. Like, my whole wardrobe.
Thrilled to see the patterns I shot for Green Mountain Spinnery and their new ebook on display at their booth. I didn't get there fast enough to buy Weekend Wool , their new worsted weight yarn - by Sunday they only had a few skeins left.****
True only for their wares.
The Sunday morning class had a photo session with a couple of fleecey girls.
Shooting at sheep eye level, in open shade. Aren't they gorgeous, even in a crowd?
Sheep eyes, Love'em.
• • • • • • • • • • Ok, starting next post I'm going to ramp up into gift giving mode, with a bunch of book reviews and book giveaways. I've been saving them for just this time of year. Watch your feed, I'm hoping to git'er'done !
_____________________and now for the footnotes:
*La Shannon Okey herself is going to be sitting down with me on Monday, up close and personal, to get this book from almost-done to press ready. I am looking forward to it like crazy. Shannon's a force to be reckoned with. I love me a force, and a good solid deadline. Like a publisher sitting next to you .
**Ariana will also be assisting me when I teach at Vogue Knitting Live in NYC in January 2014. It helps to have her model, so no student misses shooting for a minute--and also, for those who don't want to pose in the knits but want them shot on a lovely smiling person. Ariana is a talented film maker & editor herself, and a knitter, so she knows what's what.
*** I don't know why but I can't find a link to her blog! Kim is all kinds of awesome. She organized the house, the potluck, is a brilliant knitter and finished weaving in the ends on those socks Friday night as we sat around eating & drinking , following a breathtaking Hudson Valley moonrise. I know the photos you may have seen signal riotous hilarity 24/7 but Kim and the rest of the roomies are so much more than that. Smart, artistic, talented. And good cooks too.
****I never shop much at the festivals-I'm an indecisive shopper even in a quiet limited setting--but I had a mission this time. Too bad I browsed Saturday and by the time I went back to purchase on Sunday, I missed out on the Weekend Wool selection but also a super chunky hand dyed skein I wanted from Briar Rose was history, so were the skeins I was eyeing from Still River Mill...I did finally buy some yarn. But that's another post.
