2011 NY Sheep and Wool Festival

Last Friday, Mo and I headed out on a road trip. We like our electronics. We had a panoply of gadgets and cords to make our trip an enjoyable one.

Our destination?  Rhinebeck, NY for the 2011 New York Sheep and Wool Festival at the Duchess County Fairgrounds. This billboard is at the last turn before getting to the fairgrounds. It is at this point one gets quite excited.

How does one prepare to attend the festival?

This is all I took to the fairgrounds. I also had a nylon shopping bag tucked into a pocket of my bag for some of my purchases.

Once inside, we saw lots of wonderful things: pottery and hand-painted roving and

beautiful displays of yarn.

This felted piece was large and stunning.

This was Green Mountain Spinnery's booth in the Horticultural Building.

This was the Carolina Handspun booth with lots of kits, yarn and fibre.

All Things Llama?

Mo has had an electronic spinner (e-spinner) on order from Hansen since August.

This was her chance to try one out. Kevin Hansen showed her some features of the e-spinner. She decided not to wait but to take one with her that day.

We then went to have a look at the sheep. My favourite are these Babydoll sheep. They're about the size of a medium-sized dog. The twins with the green bandanas were just born in June - very late for lambing. 

Their owner didn't even realize their mom (I think she's the one in the red bandana) was pregnant. 

The Jacob sheep are a very old breed of sheep.

This is an Icelandic with lots of long, curly fleece.

This is a Border Leicester

and this longwool is a Teeswater.

Outside, I spotted this beautiful llama. I didn't realize how long their hair could be. The hair was blowing in the wind

Just before lunch, I went to the author's book-signing area. I got two books I wanted signed by the authors: Clara Parkes' "The Book of Socks" and Gwen Steege's "The Knitter's Life List". There was a HUGE lineup for the YarnHarlot's book then an equally large lineup to pay. I decided to skip the YarnHarlot and just spend the time in line to pay. My books were already signed with my name in them so I couldn't just leave them and come back later.

After getting out of there, I went over to the 4H building for lunch and hoped to meet up with MaryAnne. Unfortunately, her bus was stuck in traffic and she didn't arrive until almost noon. In the meantime, I took some pics of some lovely knitted items. This woman told me her shawl is a Teva Durham pattern with Sanguine Gryphon Bugga yarn.

And I recognized this sweater from an advertisement in a knitting magazine.

This little guy was proudly showing off his goat.

Finally, I made contact with MaryAnne.

After all our shopping, Mo and I decided to go back to our motel in Kingston and put our feet up. Just before we left we saw Michelle from Sweet Sheep with her adorable  'mini-me' daughter. They were sporting matching cardigans.

Back at the motel I laid out my loot: 4 bags of fibre, some peanut butter fudge, three books, a 20g drop spindle, a Kumihimo disk and some beautiful laceweight 80/20 BFL/Silk.

Mo got out her e-spinner and quickly got to work spinning up the fibre that was included with her purchase.

Sunday morning, we went back to see if we had missed anything from Saturday. It was a beautiful, sunny day and it was much less crowded.

I loved the Kokonoelle booth with some very unique ways to display shawl pins and buttons.

This hooked rug was on display in the food building.

This carver had lots of birds for sale. Some were painted and some just had the woodgrain showing.

Mo grabbed a pretzel for lunch. The booth was right across from the band that played the pan flutes. I'll always associate the sound of the pan flute with Rhinbeck from now on.

While she was in line for dessert, I captured a photo of one of her bags containing a precious purchase.

Here, Mo is demonstrating that she can use the e-spinner in the car. It wasn't that comfortable for her but it could be done.

We drove part of the way home that afternoon and the rest of the way home yesterday. And now, it's all just a fond memory.