Scarborough Fair (well, really NH Sheep & Wool)

Since I never got around to blogging this last weekend, here goes. NH Sheep & Wool Festival is Mother's Day Weekend every year, and every year I meet up with my friend Katie K and sometimes Candy W who was able to come this year. We get a chance to visit and to look at the great hand spun and hand dyed yarns and beautiful fleeces, batts and rovings. And invariably, whichever day I choose to go, it rains. Which is did this year. It rained like hell. Luckily I had a couple of purple umbrellas I had bought at Ocean State Job lots a couple weeks before, or I would have been soaked through. Note to self: You've been telling yourself to buy a windbreaker or rain coat since last October. Do it already.

Anyway, this year, Heather S, of Sereknity, who is one of the Manchvegas group, had a booth for her gorgeous hand dyed yarns and rovings. I love her stuff.

I don't know it was the rain or that some of the festivals were very close together this year, but some of the vendors I look for every year weren't there. And some of the vendors that I look for every year had very little in the way of fibers to sell. The rain was just a killer this year. Some of the vendors who were in tents on the fairground rather than in the buildings were having to dig little canals to channel the water around them. We mostly stuck to the buildings this year. It was really cold too.

I was fairly good, meaning I really didn't buy much, because it was too wet, I was too busy visiting with Katie K and Candy W, and I knew I was going to Webs the following weekend for the tent sale.

Here's Candy W looking resplendent in her beret and red coat. Candy is quite possibly one of the nicest women that it's ever been my luck to meet.

Here's Katie K talking to Robin Russo, of the Spinning Studio in Bradford, Vermont, who was giving a demo on how to reel silk from the cocoons of silk worms.

I also got to see Marci and Hal of the Elegant Ewe. Marci, if you enlarge the picture and look where the purple arrow is pointing is attempting to hide. Hal didn't hide but just threatened me with legal action for taking his picture afterwards.

This picture shows the yarns from Ellen's Half Pint Farm, which I lust after every year. Some day I'll be able to justfy a purchase to myself.

The 4 oz bit of batt shown is my sole purchase of the day. It was from a booth called Spin-A-Bit, and I liked the shiny fiber in the batt.

Around noontime we decided to call it good and go to lunch, which was great. It was really too bad that the weather was not more cooperative.

On Mother's Day, we decided to get up early and go grocery shopping before we needed to go to Shawn's parents. It's a good thing we left so early. Reading the labels for the whole milk thing took two and half hours. I expect it will get easier, just as reading the labels for Shawn's diabetes did, but geez. I can barely make myself grocery shop normally and this is not going to encourage me. I was able to find a pancake mix and a brownie mix without milk or milk derivatives in it, so that was good. Did you know that most bouillion has whey in it? Which means I can't use it. I was not a happy camper, but I did finally find something I can use. You wouldn't believe how much stuff we had to get rid of.

The visit with Shawn's parents went well and I think she really enjoyed her gift which was good. It was nice to see some of Shawn's family that we hadn't seen in a while too.

Stay tuned for news on the Webs trip.

Dog & Butterfly

Okay, there are really no dogs in this post, but its the only song that I could find that I could stomach with the word butterfly in it in the 5 minutes I bothered looking on Itunes. Why I need a song with the word butterfly for the title of this blog will become apparent shortly.

Since I hadn't seen my mother in a while, she decided to come down last weekend. When she comes, we have a bad habit of doing dumb things like going out to eat a restaurants that we've already been to because Mom has trouble getting really good Chinese in Maine. We also then end up going to Target, Walmart or Bestbuy and dubbing around, because going anywhere like that is a production where she is in Maine. It would take me 5 minutes to walk to the Walmart by my apartment and 10 to walk to Target. It's about 10 to 15 minutes by car to the mall that has the Bestbuy in it. However, this time I wanted to make sure that we did something different and interesting, as I'm trying to re-implement my plan to not be vegetative on weekends and see near by attractions that I've never bothered to go to, despite the fact that I have lived in NH since 1997.

Kat D. suggested that we go to The Butterfly Place in Westford, MA. I ran a couple of suggestions by Mom, including this one, and she picked this place. It's just outside of Tyngsborough, so it was only about 30 minutes from Manchvegas. There is an enclosure where there's a garden, a koi pond, little birds and all kinds of butterflies flying about. It was fairly early in the season, so it looked like the garden was not as lush as it will be later in the season, but it was still beautiful to see all the butterflies. I'll post a few pictures here, but if you're one of my friends on Facebook, the whole set is there.

Believe it or not but the blue butterly and the brown butterfly that looks like an owl, are the same butterfly species, but open and closed they look completely different.

Mom bought some praying mantis egg cases for Wren and Noah to hatch. They apparenly hatch out 200 or so baby praying mantises but only 2-3 make it to adulthood. I was so jealous. If I didn't live in an apartment and had a good place to put them once they hatched, I would have loved to get some. How cool would that be to watch?? They also had butterfly hatching kits as well.

We ended up going to Taipei Tokyo for dinner as usual, and then we hit Ocean State Job Lots which just opened in Hooksett. I got a bunch of random stuff, including $4 pajama bottoms, a $5 purple umbrella and $10 plastic mats for office chairs on the carpet that I'm going to use under Kiwi's play palace in the living room. They had a lot of really cheap gardening stuff too, which is good because I'm going to attempt another balcony garden this year. Tomato Topsy Turvey, here I come!

On Sunday we hit Walgreens to attempt to get last minute Easter stuff for the boys that Mom could deliver on her way home. I got trapped in the "as seen on TV" aisle. Those of you who know me are aware that I have a problem with this stuff. I don't expect it to work, but I just want to see if it does. I am the proud new owner of a Titan Peeler, and the 8 foot tomato trees. I haven't tested the peeler out, but I will let you know. I'm planning to start the tomatoes today. In a related topic, I saw a new commercial for a robo stir, which is a battery operated thing to automatically stir your food. I'm convinced that this is a portent of doom for the end of Western civilization.

Still working on the fatigue thing. Mindy C. came up with an idea that it may be a food allergy or intolerance, and researching about it, the symptoms seem to fit. I'm going to stay away from a few things and see if it helps, and then if I notice a difference, I'm going to contact my doctor about a food elimination diet. One of the articles noted that as you head toward midlife (read menopause) women can experience new allergies, food intolerances and exacerbations of current allergies. We'll see how it goes, at least it would be something I could fix.

Still working on secret projects. We're nearing the deadline for the group project, and I've got quite a few back from the participants. On the Secret Project for Sally, I'm nearing completion of the first thing. Have to say though, I'm disappointed in the yarn company authoring the pattern for severely overestimating how much yarn it took to do the project. I'm going to have several full skeins left over. This does not help with my stash issues.

I still haven't written anything more on the novel. I'm considering whether I skip this month for writing group, or I need to produce something ASAP to have it posted on our group's website. Shawn and I are planning to try visiting the Seacoast Science Center on Odiorne Point, but I'm not sure if we'll get there today.

Stay tuned for breaking news...