Boston has very good things.

Good conversation, good food, really good hummus.

A lovely skyline. Perfect weather! (At least while I was there - I have no interest in Boston winters, I know I am a wuss and could not deal. Big ups to those who can.) Hotel rooms with beautiful views over a quiet, sunny harbor.

Yummy, flowing tapas and damn good drinks. Insanely delicious garlic shrimp.

Friends with interesting facts.  That monument in the background? That's the monument of the Battle of Bunker Hill, which was actually fought on Breed's Hill.  The monument was built on the actual location of the battle of Bunker Hill (meaning, it was built on Breed's Hill). 

I will never, ever forget this fact because Jess, Casey, Kyle aka Frecklebrother, and Erica (Kyle's lovely fiancee) were all kind enough to share it with me several times... each. Now, every time I look at a picture I took with the Bunker Hill monument in the background, I smile.

Bob - a very good dog. He's a very friendly, snuggly little guy.

Paul Revere's house! There's not a straight line in the place. Creaky, crooked, and wooden, with lovely lilacs in bloom outside. I got busted trying to take a picture of an embroidered sampler.  I wasn't using a flash, but I stupidly have my camera set to make amusing animal noises when turning on and focusing... and evidently such nonsense will get you busted in museums and historical houses where there are no pictures allowed.

Good luck statues! I had to rub John Harvard's foot when I found out that it is considered good luck to do so.  Since it is a statue, and I have statue posing issues, I got a little funky with my pose and totally cramped up my hamstring.  Nine years of ballet and now just striking a goofy pose with a statue means a cramped hamstring... I am not as spry as I used to be!

On the afternoon of my last day in Boston, Jess, Casey, and I met up with Kyle and Erica, and they gave me a fantastic tour - Kyle even printed out a map with aerial views of colonial Boston side-by-side with and Boston today, and the five of us rode around the city in a convertable. That day was perfectly sunny, crisp, beautiful. It was so great! I got to see everything from the site of the Boston Massacre (Kyle's commentary was particularly vivid here) to the Boston Commons, to these beautiful gardens where Kyle and Erica took their engagement photos, to the outside of the Cheers bar. I just sat back and soaked it all in and listened to all the facts and anecdotes. It was a perfect ending to my trip, and my experience in Boston - I loved it! At the end of my last day, we sat in one of Boston's many breweries (my kinda town) featuring a very nice beer menu (my kinda place). A perfect ending.

I felt very welcomed, I learned a lot about the city, and I had a blast. It was exciting to get some work done with Jess and Casey all together, too - focused around a coffee table, scribbling notes and brainstorming, making plans.

I'm grateful for so much right now, every day. Life and home and work and fun - very grateful.

Have you ever read about an event for years, and imagined it in every detail - how much fun it must be, how many people are there, ooh the lovely yarn. Sheep to pet! Just how smooshy is cormo, anyway? So many questions.  And then maybe you get the chance to go, for work, because you work for the best company in all the land, and it was way better than you even thought it could possibly be? Like, to the point where you can't even believe what an amazing weekend you had - busy, fun, and overwhelming? And maybe you meet tons of people, and take tons of pictures and keep thinking, "great! I will totally have the best blog entry in all the land!"  And then three whole weeks pass and you don't even log in to your blog to look at the stats, much less try and write anything...  does that ring a bell?

 Um. Yeah.  Welcome to my belated 2008 Maryland Sheep and Wool recap.

 First, for all the official Ravelry MDSW Funtimes, please check out the Ravelry blog entry... that was written as a team, so - I have sort of blogged MDSW already. ;) But reading the Ravelry blog post gives an idea of the "holy cow this is just amazing oh my gosh I'm overwhelmed and happy" feeling that stayed with me the whole weekend.  I've helped out at two past events/tradeshows in which Ravelry has participated: TNNA Long Beach and Stitches West - but as a volunteer.  This was my first official Ravelry event, and it was delicious madness.  The Ravelry blog gives the details about the meetups (fun! crazy! crowded!) and the party (it seriously was a great party)... but of course, there were so many great moments! 

Some personal highlights, in no particular order:

People!!  Oh my gosh.  Such nice people.  People who accept me and my arms-length-picture-taking ways (seriously - I clearly have a problem). 

 

I got to meet so many bloggers I've read and emailed for years (Lolly! Carrioke! I have been emailing them forever!), Ravelry Helpers I've spend bajillions of hours chatting with in Help chat, nice Ravelers I know from the forums, and there were awesome knitters and spinners everywhere, high on wool fumes (well, most of the actual fumes were from the lamb-b-ques, but let's pretend).  Nothing like meeting My People, seriously.

The service at the Bob Evans in Columbia.  I'm not kidding.  They were super nice!

Naturally, sneaking in some family time with my aunt and uncle and two cousins - I stayed with them because they live in Howard County (same county as MDSW).  It would have been great to go out a little earlier and see my Viriginia relatives (I really wish I'd gotten to see them!) but it was great to travel for work and get in some quality family time, too.

The Ravelry Party - we recapped the party already on the Ravelry blog - but I just gotta say, again: it was a blast!!  Lots of work, and worth every second.  It was so much fun!  Ravelers, fantastic sponsors, lots of drinks flowing, yummy snacks to munch on. I completely had a teary, emotional moment (in other words, I cried in front of well over 400 people!! Ack, I'm a sap) when Jess and Casey and I were standing up on the chairs, looking around the room, and thanking everyone.  It's quite something to have smiles and positive energy from hundreds of people beaming up at you.

Getting to hang out with Jess and Casey - it's fun, we talk to each other so much, but from opposite ends of the country.  Always nice that we get along so well in person, too. 

Fair food!  Cheese fries, corndogs, lemonade.  The stuff of dreams. 

An amazing weekend, a blur, a whirlwind. So many moments I want to hang on to!  Naturally I bought yarn and fiber (to be blogged in a separate entry, because I am milking it), and of course, I can't wait to spin and knit it up.  But thinking back over the weekend, what sticks out most are just the little moments, meeting people, laughing.  I barely slept, I walked until my feet hurt, and I had a great time.

Next up: I go to Boston with Jess and Casey, and learn that the Battle of Bunker Hill was actually fought on Breed's Hill!  Stay tuned! 

Swatching the finished yarn; it knits up at 30 stitches/4" on a size 1 needle.  I am getting, I think, about 19 WPI with the yarn.  (Not exactly convinced that I'm measuring WPI right... I feel like I get a different result each time, which is why I was eager to swatch - I'm more confident getting information from needles and swatches, I guess.)  The fabric is nice - elastic, soft, and with a slight pretty halo.  While plying, I was a little sad that similar colors were meeting up so often (I thought I wanted a more barberpole look), but I really love the way that it stripes in the sample swatch.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to get all 4 oz. of fiber to turn out like that when plied, but if I happen to luck out, I might jump for joy!  Now to start the spinning in earnest.  I have a little more yarn from my sample skein in case I get a vibe about a stitch pattern and want to try it.

I do want to say a huge hello, and a heartfelt thanks to everyone who has welcomed me so warmly on Ravelry, commented here, sent me emails or Ravelry messages - it's just so nice I don't have the words... and that's rare for me.  I'm smiling a lot, I'm learning a lot, and I'm having a wonderful time diving in to work, and loving Ravelry more every day.  Thank you!!

Casey and Jess made the announcement today on the Ravelry blog - so the word is officially out: I'm working for Ravelry!  I just cannot put into words how excited I am to have joined Jess and Casey (and Bob!) as a Ravelry employee.  I love Ravelry - I've been a member since last May (May 7, to be exact) and, from the very first time I logged on, I was hooked.  I really believe in the community that Jess and Casey have built, and I have loved helping with the website as a member/volunteer/helper, and getting to know the Ravelry workings has been so much fun.  Casey and Jess are great people - I'm happy to call them my friends, and I'm thrilled to get started on my dream job.

 Yay!

Snaps from STITCHES West, 2008:

Working at the Ravelry booth, I got to meet so many new people. The weekend is an amazing blur... I'm so happy to have met... so many people!  The Ravelry users who came by the booth were so friendly, and the crowds of people who had not yet heard of Ravelry were so kind and interested in the site - it was a blast to sign people up; I kept telling new users, "I hope you don't like to spend a lot of time outdoors."  I think they thought I was joking, too. 

I looked up midway through... one of the days - Saturday?  And the name badge in front of me read: Catherine Lowe.  I sort of gaped for a second, just long enough that I'm sure she thought I was choking perhaps, or something else was wrong with me, and then I managed to gush some praise in her general direction - it was an interview with Catherine Lowe, in a back issue of Interweave Knits that I picked up at Yarn Expressions on my cotillion trip to Huntsville, Alabama back in  2005, that made me think much more critically about the finishing work and specific details I put into my design work.  It was an inspiring interview in many ways, and she was very kind about my incoherent fan-ish ramblings when I attempted to tell her as much.  I got to see - and try on - and inspect the flawlessly bound seams of - her knitting at her booth later at the event - and I was amazed.  It is impeccable work, in a way that I want to work toward.  A lovely experience, meeting her.

 I came home with just a few new fibery items - I hadn't planned on buying anything, really (no, really! I was there to work!) but the beautiful yarns above fell into my hands. First, there was a limited number of malabrigo sock yarn (the minty hank in the top right) for "beta testing" straight from the malabrigo booth, for Ravelers from the malabrigo junkies group.  It is stunning and so incredibly soft - and I happen to have empty sock needles right now.  The chocolate fiber, and the steely brown, gleaming yarn in the middle picture - buffalo gold!  The fiber is 1 oz of pure buffalo. I am itching to spin it - I need to ply some yarn off my spindle, first.  The yarn is 75% bamboo and 25% bison down, and it has the most elegant sheen - I have a million ideas running through my mind to swatch. I'm really grateful for all these fiber gifts!  They do make great souvenirs* - I know that when I knit and work with the fiber, I will remember the whirlwind of a weekend fondly.

*Adding in laughter, as an afterthought before publishing: spell-check just shocked the heck out of me with the correct spelling of this word.  I'm generally a good speller - but I was way off.  Honestly I'm looking at the word right now and it looks completely wrong to me!  But evidently... I'm nuts.