Today was the big day. The weather, the fiber, the sheep-y smell, it was glorious. We spent the first few minutes wandering through the barns.
This is the best sheep photo I could get. Apparently they are camera-shy.
Then came the shopping.
Ok, where to start. The white stuff on the left is some heavenly soft cormo. The big bag in the middle is one and a half pounds of shetland. I have grand ideas of spinning this for a sweater. That is, if I can get it all to spin up the same weight. Ha. Moving on…the small bag in the middle is some amazing baby alpaca. The brown stuff next to that is not-as-nice adult alpaca, and the multicolored stuff is merino. When I found it I thought I had some unique locally produced fiber. Then I found this same stuff all over the freakin’ place. But I got the best price for mine, so there. (This reminds me of the time I found some amazingly soft and inexpensive alpaca yarn at a small festival and thought it was something special. Then my bubble bursts when I discover–thanks to Ravelry–that it’s distributed pretty much all over the place. Oh well). Then there’s the niddy noddy, and a couple stickers from Jess and Casey. Note that there is no yarn in this picture. That’s because I really don’t need any more. I need to make more. There’s a difference.
Most of the fiber there was in fleece or lock form. Otherwise I might have come away with much more than my five and a half pounds. But sadly, my little condo is not equipped for fiber processing. Plus, my sister probably wouldn’t appreciate the smell of sheep poo.
Of course there is much more to the festival than just shopping. We checked out the skein and garment competition, and caught the judging of the sheep to shawl competition. My camera was somehow absent during these, sorry!
Here’s Jessica, Liz, and Mai at the Ravelry meetup. At this point we had been at the festival for four and a half hours. We didn’t much feel like socializing to say the least. But we couldn’t pass up a photo op with a couple celebrities:
All in all it was a good day. There was sheep petting, yarn fondling, lamb gyros and my brush with fame. A good time was had by all. Now please excuse me while I go pass out. If anyone has any creative ways of storing a fiber stash, do let me know.
