Sweater Project

Wow. My second Rhinebeck has come and gone, leaving me to sit in my hotel room with a swirl of memories rushing about like Autumn leaves in the wind. And if the cheesiness of that sentence doesn’t tell you how completely blissed-out I am right now, nothing will.

I can’t even remember the order of everything at this point, so please bear with me. There will be dates misremembered and names forgotten or mis-applied. I take no responsibility for anything involving my mental abilities at this point.

I flew in on Tuesday and had an already-blogged horrible dinner. I woke up on Wednesday and started to make up for it by having brunch at the CIA in Hyde Park. I cannot stress this enough – if you ever have the opportunity, GO THERE. The food at the cafe is great and the restaurants are nothing to sneeze at, and you get to see and talk to budding chefs as they go through their days. It’s fantastic.

Wednesday evening I drove out to my brother’s place in Connecticut for my nephew’s birthday party, which involved a present of Legos, the Transformers DVD, several squealing children and lots of pizza. It’s the first time I’ve seen my brother’s place and it was really nice, from the front door all the way down to the garage where his Triumph rests. You’re livin’ large, bro.

I got back late that night and worked some more on my sock, mused about the upcoming events, and watched some CSI back episodes on my laptop.

A very big chunk of Thursday was spent driving a scenic road out to the Tobacco Valley Stitch ‘n Bitch, which was waay out in Connecticut. The drive was mostly along route 55 and was bordered by horse farms and small towns and it was just – aah. Gorgeous. I wish someone else had been driving so I could have taken more of it in and taken pictures.

The Stitch ‘n Bitchers were very friendly and were working on a fascinating assortment of projects. The whole experience was a little less than I’d hoped for though, because one of the things I was hoping to do during it was catch up with Lilith, my ex, but due to circumstances beyond my control we didn’t have much decent chat time.

Another long drive home in the dark – this time along the highway instead of the scenic route – and I was back in bed and ready for Friday’s events.

I met up with Anne and her entourage at the CIA’s French restaurant and we had a blast. Anne was extremely generous in allowing me to invite myself to their luncheon a couple of weeks ago via e-mail, and I tried to return the favor by buying a really nice bottle of Bouchard Pere & Fils Bourgongne Pinot Noir to go with lunch. Mmmmm, duck and pinot noir. It was very close to my idea of heaven – good food and great company. We stopped by Morehouse Merino for a bit and fondled the yarn, and then I did a little bit more gratuitous driving to stay at my brother’s place for an evening.

Finally, Saturday arrived. And from there on out it’s just kind of a blur . . . until I have time to get to my notes, I’m just going to give you a link to my Flickr set from the weekend and say that I met several old friends, made a huge number of new ones, and flirted shamelessly with the entire weekend’s female population of Rhinebeck. I also got a heap o’ yarn which is hopefully preceding me to San Antonio as we speak.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 9:37 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.