sheep and wool

Yesterday, we attended the Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY. It was a gorgeous day. This was my second year going and I absolutely love this festival. There are so many vendors and animals, activities and demonstrations. It can be quite overwhelming so I went with a list. Of course, I couldn't find some of the items I was looking for like hand painted, handspun yarn going from thick to thin in a bulky weight but, I did find and buy some really interesting wools, mostly merinos and alpaca/wool blends. Some of these are really nice natural dyed yarns. I still have to use the 2 skeins of alpaca yarn I bought last year (they are so nice that it has been difficult for me to decide on a worthy enough project) so I wasn't going to blow the bank on more. I also still have the plant dyed wool roving and other roving from last year so I didn't buy any more. The wools from the Icelandic sheep were also really lovely especially in gray but, I decided to wait on it.

I would have liked to have seen some demonstrations and talked to someone about adopting a sheep/alpaca to get the wool directly and see what kind of cost was involved in that but, that will have to wait for now. Some day I'd also like to try out some natural dyeing techniques.

It is a 2 day festival and one could easily go both days and still not see everything. It was also fun to see all the animals especially the alpacas, sheep & goats. I meant to photograph some alpacas because I love them so but, didn't take out the camera to the end of the day and missed my shot.

Here is a shot of the goodies I brought home.