Connecticut's Not So Bad After All

I had a great time traveling home to Maine at the beginning of the month. I devised a business trip of sorts around an indoor ultimate frisbee tourney in Orono, Maine. I've been playing ultimate for the past five years and I'm on a co-ed team based out of Portland, Maine called Mogwai. Living in Maryland hasn't really gotten in the way of this yet as our season doesn't really start til, well around now. (I actually joined a winter league in DC. Our team came in 3rd out of 6.) So! It was REALLY nice to be home in Maine and playing with people that I am familiar with. Things seem to click a lot better than when playing with complete strangers! And...my team won the tourney! Here's a pick of all of us.

So the business part of my trip was to stop at yarn shops along the way in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. I was fortunate enough to stay with some families I met while working at the Medomak Family Camp as a lifeguard and counselor. Staying with these people helped me realize and reflect on how blessed I really am. I'm lucky to know and be welcomed by such kind, generous people.

I wasn't able to make it to all of the shops that I wanted to get to; however the ones I did visit were quite lovely. It is rare (although it does happen) to walk into a yarn shop and have a bad experience. A couple of my favorite shops in Connecticut included Yarn LLC in New Haven, which was kind of like a small co-op for fiber artists, and Madison Wool in Madison. The owner there was actually familiar with the little town of Washington, Maine--the town where Medomak is located! She has family there. Weird. It's a small world after all. "It's a world of laughter, a world of tears..." I also really loved The Yarn & Fiber Company in Derry, NH. They've got quite a large shop with some really great yarns and locally dyed fiber. Between my trip north, and my trip back south, I visited 16 shops, made it to a knitting meetup in Boston, and visited the Nature Conservancy in Rhode Island (to chat with a woman about an ecology retreat that Medomak hosts). I'd say it was a success.

And I learned that Connecticut isn't such a bad state to drive through when you're stopping at fibery shops along the way. I also managed to get a quick stop in at the beach in Madison, CT and took some pictures of the sweater I'm working on...

And here's another...

The only hitch in my trip was catching a flu-like thing from an adorable child named Natalie. Unfortunately I was ill while staying with my last family in New York City. So very sad. Ha. I made it back to Maryland though! And have recovered nicely.