How can someone get so excited for a sheep and wool festival? Last year was my first time going and I was excited but I was also more just curious. Now that I know where I'm headed, I'm just totally psyched (everyone at work is laughing at me, as is the man, because I've texted him "sheep and wool!!!!" more than once).
In short, its heaven for fiber lovers. You're surrounded by thousands of other fiber lovers - but even a rather devout people hater like myself can manage it without problems - and they're all wearing beautiful things that they made and they're sitting and using drop spindles and knitting and crocheting and basically loving life.
And the animals! So many darling sheep and goats (I love goats!), alpacas, bunnies...so basically its adorable fiber animals, oodles of yarn and fiber apparati, and tons of like-minded people. Its awesome. Its so awesome that even my husband is looking forward to going back. Wouldn't characterize him as excited, exactly, since that is how I am describing myself, but he really enjoyed himself and also didn't try to talk me out of yarn purchases. I actually bought very little last year but I sense more purchases this year. It can be overwhelming, though, and you may end up buying nothing in the end. Or at least, very little.
Last year, I was at this one woman's booth and she was selling Ashford rigid heddle looms when this woman and her two young sons, maybe like 10 and 12 years old, comes up and says to the woman, "Well, he says he'd rather have this than a playstation for his birthday, so we'll take one". How darling is that?
Okay, so heres some photos from last year. The man took over 400 photographs - we were testing out our new memory card before our big trip to Japan, but also he liked taking pictures. Witness:
That is my arm petting these two sheep. They were the first live animals (not that we saw dead ones...) that we saw when we entered the festival so I was super excited. The poor girl leading them couldn't get anywhere for all the people stopping her to pet the sheep!
This is me with this cute little girl. I was looking at the sheep and she said, "do you want to feed them?" and she gave me a handful of sheep chow. It was so nice.
If you were wondering, what I'm wearing is a simple cardigan/jacket made out of Colinette Point 5, the colorway is cardinal. I love that yarn but I hate knitting with bulky yarns. I wish we could get Point 3 in this country (is anyone who can do something about that listening? And if so, is my opinion worth anything?). I'm also wearing my wedding shawl as a scarf. This year, it is going to be quite warm out, so I'll be wearing rossnyev with a brand new, hot off the sewing machine matching skirt. Wish I had time to knit a matching cloche.
Here are some more great photos of fiber animals taken by the man:
I think that guy was some kind of goat.
And heres a question for you - why didn't I buy this yarn? I'm looking at it like I love it, I'm loving it now, reviewing the photo, but I didn't buy it! Was it expensive? Don't do this to yourself, if you go to Rhinebeck. Buy what you love, and buy it when you see it because someone WILL buy it (it happened to me! Not with this skein, but another):
This nice lady taught me to use a drop spindle and taught me a lot about spinning. We got instructions to make a CD drop spindle but haven't done it yet:
I'll have a report on this years festival next week. For now, only two more days!!!!!
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