Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival 2016

Last weekend I went to Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival. The last time I blogged about SVFF was in 2011, the last year that I helped with the juried fleece sale. The two friends I did that with both moved out of the area (one to the Virginia’s tidal region for a job as a history professor and the other to Texas to be with the love of her life) and I’m not brave enough to get involved on my own. I could help with the festival itself; I’m friends with one of the organizers and I know they need and welcome help, I just haven’t been able to commit to that. Maybe next year.

Anyway, my friend Becky and I decided on Friday that we would go Sunday morning. I picked up Starbucks, then Becky, and over the mountain we went to Berryville, which is always a lovely drive. Last week I was trying a ketogenic diet for the first time, which is a very low carbohydrate diet akin to Atkins. Sunday was the 6th day I was on the diet and I was determined to stick with it, so I brought my own snack (2 cheese sticks and a hard boiled egg) with me so I wouldn’t be tempted by festival goodies. More on that in a bit.

I hadn’t planned to get anything, but first I saw a cloth knitting basket and knew I’d keep thinking about it if I didn’t get it. We walked around more and I found the ultimate fuzzy slippers, but they were expensive ($99) and I didn’t want to spend that much. I got a mug – the perfect shape and color for me – but I couldn’t stop thinking about those slippers so I went back and got them.

As we were walking around looking at the vendors in tents or the open air, I stumbled across a vendor from the town neighboring the one my mother lives in in rural New Hampshire. Of course we stopped to talk and I got all sorts of information from her, including info about their open studio night, which is much like a knitting group but welcomes all the fiber arts. I was thrilled and passed all the info on to Mom, who will hopefully make it out to one of the open studio nights.

By the time we made our way to most of the booths, it was almost lunch time. I could smell the festival foods cooking. And I couldn’t stop thinking about eating apple cobbler. I envisioned some gourmet apple cobbler and I couldn’t get it out of my mind, so after Becky tried to be strong for me so I wouldn’t break my diet, we got in line and I got my cobbler. We grabbed a picnic table to eat it at and ran into our friend Alise who had twin boys late last winter. I put off eating the cobbler so I could hold one them, who was fussy while Alise was feeding the other. I love babies and miss snuggling with my 3 baby boys – if I could time travel back to an afternoon with each of them as a baby, I would. Holding Sam and smelling his head is as close as I’m going to get, though.

Once Sam calmed down some, I popped him back in the stroller and got busy with my apple cobbler. Though it had been sitting out for a good 10 minutes, the ice cream block held its shape, which bodes ill for ice cream; it only does that if there’s a lot of air and stabilizers in it. And the cobbler part of the apple cobbler was not the delicate pastry I envisioned, nor were the apples. The Boy Scouts were selling it, so I don’t know why I thought it would be more gourmet than it was: canned apple pie filling with cake mix crumble and a brick of cheap ice cream. But it was glorious to eat sugar after 6 days of keeping my carbs below 20g each day.

On our way out, we realized that we missed an entire barn and went in to check it out. Our friends The Fiberists had their booth in that barn and it was so nice to see Reggie & Spencer and catch up with them a little bit. They used to come to the Sunday knitting group when it was still active, so it was really nice to see them both, like old times. I had to get something, but the problem was choosing what to get because they have so many great yarns on really nice yarn bases. I ended up with Audubon Unum Fingering, which is a single ply yarn, in Azurite and Pigeon’s Blood Ruby. I’m not sure what they will become, but I love the colors, especially together. Perhaps something stripey?

There you have it, SVFF 2016. 🙂