bounty

It's hard to sum up the riches of the Michigan Fiber Festival. Some of its best highlights were the intangibles... Meeting up with lots of friends, old and new...Pictured here are:Vicki M of cascading leaves shawl fame, Another Vicki who is knitdesign famous: Heartland Knits and her lovely mother, lovely Elizabeth and her mother-in-law, Liz, the Chocolate Princess and well, lots of other amazing folks. Sorry I don't know everyone's name! What struck me most? The warmth and support of this community of spinners and knitters was evident. It was like a communal hug. Thanks for letting me join you for a few moments!

Music floated through the air at the festival, courtesy of harmony and grits, a wonderful roots music duo. Again, something else it's hard to snap a photo of, but it certainly made the fiber festival experience especially rich.

There aren't lots of fiber festival shots here--the professor/aka book photographer caught most of those, and I haven't had my old fashioned film developed yet. Briefly, this was a big festival, with 100 vendors, and lots to see! Instead of festival talk, I'll mention more "intangibles." Kentucky has no fruit harvest to speak of this year; an early thaw, late frost, and then months of drought took care of all of that. I didn't realize how starved I was for local beautiful fruit until I got to northern Indiana and Michigan. What bounty! Obviously, you can't bring home someone else's verdant greenery, 50-70 degree weather, and heavy rainstorms. (our first real heavy rain experience in months.) It's alarming how wearing it is to go without these things in our age of internationally flown in produce..but I try to support locally grown, sustainable produce, so I don't buy much that is trucked or flown in. Well, since I was physically in Michigan, we brought this home.

On Sunday afternoon, the professor and I went to a U-pick orchard. Our first official date was apple picking, back in 1994. We try to do some apple picking together every year. We got peaches and apples off the trees ourselves...

Then, we snapped up some raspberries and 5 lbs of blueberries! Now I have a lot of canning and freezing ahead of me, but I'm fortified by the peach crumble I ate for breakfast. Mmmm. Good.

The bounty continued when many of the above fibery folk gathered at Elizabeth's house for an amazing evening of Persian food and family hospitality. We had such fun together, and enjoyed the gift of meeting Elizabeth's rich extended family. Vicki M. gifted me with a shawl pattern (thank you!) and this bag. I am literally a bag collector; I will never have enough bags! This one is really special. Look, first it's a normal sized shopping tote:

Then, when you buy a fleece, 5 sweaters' worth of yarn, and other goodies? It expands. Wow.

We're now back to the high 90's and dry brown fields in Kentucky, but my heart has expanded to include all this richness. I hope I can keep the cool green lush joy of this weekend in mind for a long while!

EDIT: I've fixed the Heartland Knits weblink, and I realize now that I forgot to mention Jessica, to whom I talked for a long time on Sunday night! I'm sorry, Jessica! Do leave me a comment and tell me your blog address, would you?! I'm having a hard time keeping up with all this...