75 and sunny in New York - a beautiful day for a fall fiber festival!  It was another great year at the Fingerlakes Fiber Arts Festival, and as always, they just keep growing and improving.   This is an annual pilgrimage that my mother in law and I take every year, and we always have a great time.  It's been fun to watch the festival develop over the last 7 years into what it is today.

Part of our routine is to always stop at Sauders in Seneca Falls.  It's kind of a general store type of place with lots of bulk foods and fresh produce from the Mennonite farms in the area.  I only took a picture of the outside because I won't take pictures inside the Mennonite or Amish stores out of respect to them.  I love that store though!  I stock up on all my canning supplies, and treats like birch beer and things that I can't get at home at Sauders.  If you are ever out that way, you've got to stop.  It's very simple and basic, but awesome!

When you walk into the festival at the Hemlock Fair Grounds, this is what you now see first: 

All those tents are fiber vendors, plant growers, bee keepers products, alpaca farms, food vendors and more!  The first year that I attended, there was nothing but a single lemonade and pretzel stand in the pasture areas outside of the barns.  Even last year, there were no more than 5 or so of these tents!!  See how they're growing!!  Whoever is in charge of putting this thing together is doing a fabulous job!

After a stop at the ladies room first (it's a long drive) our first stop is into the large barn where you see this as you walk in:

I love looking at the vintage wheels and getting lots of inspiration and ideas from the various vendors and visitors showing off their wares! 

And you can always visit with none other than Jonathan and Sheila Bosworth of the Journey Wheel fame when you stop in.  Both are very friendly and patient as they give mini-lessons on using Jonathan's Journey Wheel, and hand made drop spindles.

From there, we cross the pasture and move on to the smaller barns.  This year even featured live bluegrass!  That was a very nice touch!

There are sheep shearing demonstrations:

You can visit with some of the fiber 'donors' and get to meet the animals who produced the beautiful yarns and rovings that you are purchasing:

View even MORE great fibers and goodies in the outer barns: 

And if you just get too pooped to keep walking, or too loaded down with wool to make it back to the car, you can hitch a ride around the grounds:

I was absolutely exhausted after a long day of walking around, but I wouldn't miss it for anything.  There's so much here that I didn't picture! Demonstrations, flock dog demonstrations, and so much more!  If you have the opportunity, make a weekend of it and go.  Definitely worth every minute and a great get away for the fiber enthusiast!

OH, and before I forget… I spoke of how much the festival has grown and changed over the years, but I forgot to mention my favorite evidence of growth:  The variety of visitors!!  For a long time, it has been a haven for middle aged women, and a few sad husbands who spent their time leaning against the walls waiting for the mrs. to move on.  They looked decidedly bored.  This year, there were more male visitors and vendors working the booths, and a much wider variety of visitors on a larger scale as well!  You still had the middle aged women, and you still had the Amish and Mennonite families attending, but right alongside them you had the bus full of seniors being dropped off, and a pretty good amount of young women and young people with body modifications, full body tattoos, dreadlocks and the like!  I loved seeing people from all ages and all backgrounds and interests gathering together for a common craft.  That was the most exciting part of all for me!

I'm already excited for next year! 

I wouldn't have expected it in the middle of September in Central New York, but we had a scorcher this weekend that totally robbed me of any level of productivity at all!!

We actually had temps in the mid to high 80's, with nearly 100% humidity!!  I couldn't move.  I couldn't breathe.  I just felt sticky and hot and heavy.  It was miserable… and so, I got just about nothing at all done this weekend.

On Saturday, I did manage to get a couple more skeins of the black baby alpaca spun up that I'm working on for that custom job, but Sunday - completely shot.

As I approach the finish line of this pregnancy, I just don't have weekends to lose like that!  There's just too much to do to get ready!  I've got an unbelievable amount of 'stuff' to get done before this baby arrives!

Since I accomplished nothing but laying around and feeling like a beached whale this weekend, I may as well share my 1st & 2nd trimester pictures with you.  I'm a smidge into the 3rd trimester now, but I'll save that for later. 

Oh, and I'm in that phase where I'm just having the greatest dreams now too!  Why, just this last week, Dick Cheney married Mike and I, Meatloaf performed at my daughters school and I shared a photo album with him of when we met in the 90's, and Mel Gibson asked me to be the midwife for the baby he had on the way!  AWESOME!!

Hopefully next weekend will be much nicer….. it's time for the Finger Lakes Fiber Arts Festival again!!

Whew!!  It has been a very busy, but SUPER awesome week and long weekend to say goodbye to Summer and kick off the Fall!  We started by the annual end of Summer trip to the New York State Fair on Tuesday.  This is always what we do to mark the end of the season, and it's something of a tradition.  At the end of the day, we sit in the same spot and have ice cream from the same vendor and that marks the official end.  We were there ELEVEN hours this year and I was mostly on my feet the whole time, so it was exhausting!  It was a lot of fun though. 

Vinny really loved it.  It's the first year where he could really enjoy it with any cognizance and he thought it was awesome! 

There was something exciting to do everywhere he turned! 

This little baby goat was very cute! 

Now this monstrosity - this is something my entire family just loves, but it just makes me want to vomit every year that I see it.  I mean, it's hundreds and hundreds of pounds of butter!! That's just a vile thought, no matter how you sculpt it. 

By Saturday I had nearly recovered enough to get to the meet up again at Shamballa's and do a little knitting. I didn't accomplish enough to show off anything, but it was a nice time.  The Shamballa Cafe is a very nice little local spot and the owners seem very nice as well.  It's very warm and welcoming and comfortable.  It doesn't have the pretentious air about it that other coffee spots seem to have.  I am sad though that with soccer season kicking off, and a baby on the way, it will probably be a good long while before I'll be able to get back there again.  

With a nice long weekend, I was able to get so much done, and it was wonderful!  It was a little frenzied, so I do suspect it was an early taste of nesting since I have now officially entered the 3rd trimester! There is so much to do before the new baby arrives.

I've been working on some yarn for the store, and some baby alpaca yarn for a custom spin job and I was able to make some really good progress on those items.  The multi-color will be going into the store probably this coming weekend after I get it all measured and weighed.  I think it's a total of 8 ounces, with 2 skeins of the primary standard spun, and a skein of novelty spun for coordinating trim.  The black is for my custom job - 32 ounces! - I have a lot of spinning to do!! 

 With my nesting frenzy, I gave the kids assignments in the kitchen to wash walls, all surfaces, windows, mop floors and get everything spotless.  I even had David wash the ceiling as he was the tallest, and boy did the whole room need it.  Until you do just a giant cleanup like that, you don't even realize how much has been missed in the day to day cleaning! They did a super job and I'm all ready for fall baking now!

Once that was done, I started on a project that I've been meaning to do for some time.  I've got a back splash that goes around my entire kitchen counter and sink area that has long been prepped for tile, and I just haven't had any time to do anything with it.  I've finally gotten around to starting the project, and I'm really excited about it!  I'm doing a mosaic with white tiles, and broken pieces of the same dish pattern that I have.  I can't wait to get it all done, but I think it's going to be a bigger project than I had anticipated.  With helping (supervising!) the kids' cleanup in the kitchen, I wasn't able to get as far as I had hoped, but at least I've gotten started.  It took far too long just to get that far. 

The weekend ended with a nice relaxing picnic at the in-laws house.  Luckily, it was warm and pleasant and the little ones were all able to enjoy the last 'swim' of the season.  Even with all 7 grandkids there, it didn't get chaotic!!  It was really great! 

And so, Summer 2008 is over, and we are now ushering in Fall.  I don't generally look forward to Fall all that much, but I am this year for some reason.  I've got some great things planned!  I'm going to be canning tomato sauce, and apple sauce which I'm really thrilled about!! We'll be going to do our annual apple picking in a few weeks. 

Oh, I haven't talked about the garden lately… it's doing fine, but I've been banned from it.  The hubby says it's too warm out and I'm too pregnant and he doesn't want me doing too much work in the gardens or yard from this point out, so he's handling it.  I keep telling him I can do it, but he's trying to just take good care of me, so I try to just let it go and let him help.  It takes an effort at times, but I probably do need him to temper my fits of work frenzy that I get myself into.  I know I need the balance because I can really overwhelm myself with all the things I try to do.

I'm also really looking forward to the 2008 Fingerlakes Fiber Arts & Craft Festival in a few weeks that I go to every year with my mother-in-law.  I love it, plus we'll be making our usual stop at the Mennonite store for canning supplies and whatever other goodies we may find there.   

After all of that, it won't be too long before it's time to figure out how I'm going to cook the Thanksgiving turkey while in labor with baby #5!!    I think it's going to be a really, really wonderful Fall and I'm so excited to be getting it underway.  So many great things planned, plus a new family member to meet… it's going to be awesome!

Yay for Fall!