Maryland Sheep and Wool 2007
I had a fabulous time in Maryland with Rox and Eric! We found fossilised shark teeth on the beach, ate fish, and visited the Sheep and Wool Festival. There were sheep and rabbits and llamas and alpaca and goats There was more roving than I have ever seen in my life, full fleeces in bags, and sacks of fluff. There were even a couple of these, my all time favourite sheep, Jacobs.
Saw a Majacraft Rose, a Louet Victoria, and a Merlin Tree Hitch Hiker, all of which I have been curious about. Picked out a beautiful Kundert spindle and admired the Golding Ring spindles. Got enough roving to keep me busy for a while, and some fantastic yarn. Hung out with my best friends whom I haven't seen since September, and had a great time! I missed Hubby terribly, he stayed home to go to Code Camp.
Apparently I was more struck by the undyed fibre:
4oz Jacob roving from Tannery Spring
4oz Cormo pin-drafted roving from This and That Farm
1oz fawn French Angora from Thistledown Alpacas (picked out from a big tub by hand, probably from Buttercup).
1oz baby camel fluff from The Fold
Kundert spindle, 1.1 oz cherry and walnut. I like the grooved notch in the side, and how the whorl and shaft were attached before turning, the curves are uninterrupted by the change of wood. It spins well too. The pointy thing on the camel roving is a sharks tooth Rox gave me.
In a blue/green mood:
2 skeins of Shelridge Farm Soft Touch fingering weight.
2 skeins of DZined wool/hemp sportweight
2 skeins of DZined 100% hemp hand dyed fingering weight
I've used DZined yarn before and it's great stuff. The 100% hemp is scratchy like linen, but it's supposed to soften up with some abuse wear, and I've got 600yds of it. The Cormo and Jacob are very soft and while the Cormo did not originally smell of sheep, after a stint in the suitcase with the Jacob, it does now. The angora came from an English lady who has been in the US more years than me. Saturday was exactly nine years since we moved to the US, so she sang happy birthday for me! People were polite, when you got bumped by a bag they said sorry. And the bags were full of soft fibre. They were helpful too, advice on how to spin stuff, where various buildings were, opinions on what fibre to get and what colour yarn, it was refreshing. I would go again in a heartbeat.
Got some odd money on the fairground, a Where's George dollar bill that came from Kingsport TN, a half dollar coin (which I thought was fake), a bicentennial quarter, and a 1956 wheat head penny.
The animal barns smelled of farm and some sheep were quite happy to be petted. There were sheep yelling at each other, some lying down and panting, other sheep getting sheared and clipped. There were two Jacobs there, one had two horns, the other had four, and there were 4oz balls of roving for sale, soft chocolate and vanilla balls of farm smelling fuzz. Saw my first merino sheep:
The angora bunnies were huge puffs of fluff with ears and noses, and I now know the size difference between llamas and alpacas. We did not find sheep's milk cheese, but after four hours wandering around, we were done. A good time was had that day.