Bus Trip and Wool and Fun! Oh My!

Get on the bus! That’s my charge to you. What bus, you ask? The bus that will take you to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival on Saturday, May 3.

Now I have never been to this festival (it’s held the first weekend in May every year -- this year May 3-4); but I certainly have met knitters who have. It’s located west of Baltimore on a fairgrounds and features a variety of events and vendors all related to sheep and wool.

Not that I’ve ever been one for dealing with yarn while still on the hoof. I mean I like sheep because I know that’s where a lot of my yarn comes from. But I don’t have to be up close and personal with them.

However, this event also features vendors who have taken the next few steps and have processed the fleece into gorgeous yarns, many of them hand-dyed.

So when members of my knitting guild, many of them veterans of the festival, asked if the guild was sponsoring a bus, I figured why not. And being president of the Liberty Bell Knitters Guild, it was up to me to make the bus rental arrangements.

And so, I have a bus. I am looking forward to visiting the vendors, but if past experiences are any indication, I’m also looking forward to the bus trip.

I’ve taken a couple of bus trips with my fellow knitters. In the past a few of us have taken regular bus tours and turned them into knitting trips. We find an interesting-sounding tour -- like three days in the Hudson River Valley -- and bring enough yarn and patterns to occupy our bus time and hotel time. We have been known to take over a hotel lobby, rearrange furniture into cozy knitting groups and spend hours knitting and yakking.

But the ride to and from the event or venue is fun in itself. Lots of talking, laughing, knitting with people doing the same thing. On the way back more comparing purchases and laughing in that boy-am-I-tired-but-did-I-have-fun sort of way.
This year the Tangled Web is co-sponsoring the bus so we’ve added a couple of raffles to liven up the bus trip. And owner Mary is offering discount coupons good in the store on Friday May 2 for festival goers who buy bus tickets.

They’re on sale now at the shop $40 each. We’ll be making two pickups before heading for Maryland -- one at 6:45 a.m. at the Acme parking lot at Germantown and Sedgwick in Mount Airy; and another at 7:45 a.m. at the Welsh Road Library, Welsh Road and Roosevelt Blvd. in the Northeast. We’ll have several hours of shopping time before returning to Philadelphia around 7 p.m.

Seating is limited -- there are only 54 seats on the bus. Come in soon for your ticket. Make checks payable to the Liberty Bell Knitters Guild.

And get on the bus.

Lucia Herndon