Today was a great day, despite being cold and rainy as are most Mother’s Day weekends in Minnesota. Today I left the girls home with Joe, picked up my friend Elizabeth, and drove out to the Washington County Fairgrounds to visit the Shepherd’s Harvest Sheep and Wool Festival. I know it’s no comparison to the famous Maryland event, but it’s still a lot of fun for a fiber addict, and a great way to spend a free morning away from the kids.
Before we left Elizabeth’s house, I dragged her up to her sewing room and got her to let me dig through her stash of pouches and bags. She’s been making these awesome creations out of old silk kimonos and other amazing fabrics, and selling them at craft shows and online. My knitting-tools pouch died a few months ago when the zipper finally gave up the ghost, and I’ve been searching for an acceptable replacement. I left the house with this:
It’s about 9″ long and 5.5″ high, just the right size to fit my knitting tools in, and it has a little loop handle on the end for easy grabbing out of the bottom of my bag or basket. You really should go visit her at www.adzuki.etsy.com if you’re into cute little bags. She even has cases for cell phones and i-pods!
So we headed off to the festival in my crappy old Honda and I was proud of myself for finding the place without getting lost, then negotiating the muddy, unpaved parking area without getting stuck. First priority were the vendors buildings, of course. I managed to buy only one skein of yarn today, and it is a beauty. I saw so many things that I loved, but I had promised myself not to buy yarn unless I could envision a specific project for it – I have a problem with buying a skein or two of a beautiful handpaint just because I love it, then I get it home and realize that I barely have enough for a scarf. So I found a single skein of handpaint sock yarn from Sandy’s Palette. It was a great buy for only $12 and although it is only a single ply, which worries me for wear on sock yarn, it is 20% nylon and seems to be highly twisted. I just couldn’t escape from the beautiful colors.
I also bought a beautiful bowl from an artist by the name of Jennie Landers. She doesn’t seem to have a presence on the Web as far as I can tell, but her things are gorgeous, and tend to have knitting and fiber themes. She was at Yarnover and I admired her work then, but had already blown my budget when I got to her booth. I kept thinking of her over the last couple of weeks, so today I went ahead and picked up this 7.5″ diameter bowl. It’s going to look great on a table or shelf, maybe with some yarn in it or maybe just empty.
There were so many other things in the vendor barns that I saw, touched and smelled – the fresh sheep cheese, handmade soaps, hand felted things, baskets, and all kinds of spinning materials and paraphranalia. We finally made it out of there and walked over to the animal barns to visit with some furry pets. I got to pet a giant angora bunny:
The bunny itself is really not that huge – the super-long hair accounts for at least half of the volume. They were getting ready to use it for a spinning demonstration where they pull the fur directly off the bunny and onto the spinning wheel. It was so tame, it just sat on a lazy susan platform on top of a pedestal letting random people like me pet it. This big fella belongs to Alicia Nguyen and Deb Butorac of 7 Pines Rabbitry, and they were kind enough to chat with us and give me permission to post his? her? photo on the blog.
We proceeded further through the barns, and got to meet a bunch of llamas and alpacas. They are such cute, sweet animals! Elizabeth really wanted to bring one home as a pet. I told her she could just tell her neighbors it was a new breed of dog – afghani-doodles. I really had to restrain myself from breaking out in the Llama Llama Duck song, at least out loud. We talked to one kind owner by the name of Charlene Bautch of Woodridge Llamas, who let me get in the pen with her two critters and get this picture for the blog:
Further down the aisle, we saw one final sight that made me chuckle, and I quickly took a picture without asking permission and hoping that nobody noticed me doing it.
I mean, what kind of nutcase takes a picture of llama poop and puts it on the internet? What makes llama manure so valuable that you’d pack it up special and bring it to a festival to sell to an audience of mostly other people who have a lot of llama poop on their hands already? It must be some pretty magic stuff.
Anyway, we made the mandatory stop at the kettle corn booth, grabbed a couple of lamb brats, then headed back to the cities. Joe seems to have done a fine job of surviving a rainy morning stuck in the house with the girls, and he even mentioned having wrapped a Mothers’ Day gift with Julie while Sophie slept. I have something wonderful to look forward to in the morning – wahoo! I feel like I already got a better gift than I could have asked for in my morning away and the chance to see my girls fresh again after missing them just a bit.
Llama poop really is magic, it is one of the few fertalizers that can go from animal to garden without “burning” the vegatation. Any gardener who has used it will swear by it. It’s even good for roses.
I’m sure you know this by now, but Jennie’s pottery can be found on the web:
http://www.jenniethepotter.com/store.asp