Today, a Sunday, (no surprise, a blog day), I drove up northward to attend the Mass Sheep and Wool Festival, and had a short but great time. I drove the back roads there, as the crow flies, and it was almost 30 miles longer than the less direct but bigger roads home! Egad!
But there were sheep, lambs, goats, and sheep dog trials. This was one happy little group:
I had hoped to see some dyers from Ravelry and did see Amy, aka Boogie, from Spunky Eclectic: and here she is at her booth:
We spoke for all of 30 seconds; probably she didn’t expect a fiber-club Junky fan to be quite so old and socially inept! But I did buy two superwash merino hanks of fiber, and hope to actually spin sock-worthy yarn.
They are Soylent and Purple Haze; can you guess which is which?
Vendors (I didn’t get the name) from Northampton MA had a booth of wonderfully dyed fiber– here are the rovings dyed with natural dyes, a wonderful display of color in the sunshine:
I watched the end of this competition; it had to do with sheep, people, and what the people were wearing. The gentleman, black sheep, and child (grandchild?) won the category for adults and children, Too cute!
Again, a vendor’s name I didn’t get:
She dyes the yarns for these vests; I am a vest lover, and wish I’d gone back to get her name or to see if she sold the patterns.
I wasn’t going to but I did– buy more roving. This 8 oz. was from Gurdy Run Woolen Mill in Halifax PA; it’s a wool, ?, and silk roving.
I thought this gray fiber, and the next, from Biltmore Wool Barn from Brewster, MA. a mystery roving with sprinkles of color, would both work with yarns I am spinning for a vest. In fact, they may get plied together.
I had most definitely decided not to buy any unprocessed fleece; but a recent Ravelry thread about the spinning of Cotswold encouraged me to buy some Cotswold lamb fleece, from Heidi (the lamb) via her shepherdess, Lisa, of River Valley Farm, not far from me, in Lenox MA. I may wash some of it tonight:
I had a fine time; what spinner/knitter doesn’t enjoy a fiber fest! On the way home I shot photos out the window; some of them may turn into paintings, and if they do, I’ll blog about it here!