Maryland Sheep & Wool Recap

When non-knitting friends and family ask me about Maryland Sheep & Wool or MDSW as most fibery people call it, the only way I can describe it is that it is like Black Friday held at a fair for fiber enthusiasts.  There are every type of sheep that you can imagine, yarn of every color in the rainbow and fiber type, fantastic lamb cooked in a countless number of ways, and more fiber and yarn enthusiasts than I have ever seen in one place together.   Since pictures tell a much better story than I can, this post will mainly be pictures of what we saw and enjoyed.

The Central Maryland Knitting Guild yarn bombed the fence at the entrance.  What a happy thing to see first thing when we arrived!

 

 This is a baby mohair goat having his breakfast.  It's a good thing our yard is too small for farm animals or this guy would have been coming home with us!

 After we went through the line to get a t-shirt our first stop was the Miss Babs booth.  This was the booth to be at the festival.  There were a few others that were busy, but Miss Babs booth was packed for the entire weekend and the line to pay went out the back door of the building she was in and curved around.  When we saw the line Andy immediately told me to go pick out what I wanted and he would wait in line.  I wish I had taken a picture of the line - it really was like Black Friday only with out the pushing and rudeness.  Everyone was as nice as could be!  I made it in and out of the booth with some goodies and met Andy who continued to wait in line while I walked through a few other booths.  Have I mentioned that he is the best husband ever?!  I was really excited to see my Mother of Dragons shawl hanging up in the booth along with the pattern.  It's one of my proudest moments :)

 

I picked up a few goodies in her booth and a couple of skeins from other dyers that I like. Can you tell that I was in a bit of a purple mood?

From left to right: Miss Babs Polydactl Set in Edge of Reality (I think this is going to be a new shawl design!), Miss Babs Yummy 2-Ply in Shaken Not Stirred, Miss Babs Yummy 2-Ply in Bat Sh**** Crazy, Miss Babs Yummy 2-Ply in Perfectly Wreckless, Miss Babs Yowza in Zombi Prom, Maple Creek Farm Yuma in Twilight, Ellen Coopers Yarn Sonnets Tinkerbell's Gold in Diva - those flecks you see are sparkles, and Maple Creek Farm Portland in Spice's.  

I also picked up a few other goodies.

Andy found the bag with the dragon on it.  I absolutely love it and totally missed it when we were walking by the booth that had them.  It's a backpack and holds a huge amount of yarn.  What else would you put in a backpack, right?  A purple MDSW t shirt, added to my Signature Needle collection and picked up a Shark Week kit from the Tsarina of Tsocks that I pre-ordered before the show.

On Sunday we got to hang out with our friends Julia and Daniel.  Julia was so sweet and brought some of her Babydoll Southdown roving!  I'm pretty sure it's from her own sheep and it's so soft that you just want to cuddle up with it!  She brought sampler of different colors which you can find in her Etsy shop and a larger ball in a beautiful creamy white color.  I think it's going to be time to break out my wheel soon and spin this lusciousness up!

One of the other booths that I had way too much fun in was Going Gnome.  They had so many cute felted things and were so nice and let me take a million pictures of everything!  There was a felted chess set with Vikings and gnomes, a couple of tree creatures that had incredible detail, and one of my favorites was a giant purple dragon.  I think she was about 4' long!  If you look closely at the picture of her you can see that she accidentally stepped on one of the gnomes!  I picked up some felting supplies while I was there and took a few extra pictures of the Viking so that I can make one.

My Aunt Linda, Uncle Gary and Cousin Lindsay live within driving distance of the festival and we got to visit with them Saturday evening and stay the night.  Lindsay has her own place and came over so we could all hang out and have a mini slumber party.  Andy and I tried to stay up with everyone, but couldn't stay up as long as we liked.  We had so much fun visiting and they have a beautiful house on the water.  We were able to sit outside in the evening and have wine and appetizers.  Gary has built boats as a hobby ever since I can remember.  We were talking about when he lived in Franklin Square, NY with my Grandparents. Every summer I would get to go spend some time with them and it was always a huge highlight.  One year Gary was building a boat while I was there and he took a picture of me and my brother in front of it and one of us took one of him leaning on it.  It's been at least 35 years and he still has the boat.  He pulled out the album from when he was building it and we decided to try to recreate the picture!  I think we did a pretty good job.

Andy took a picture of us.  It's been so long since we were all together, but it didn't seem like it.

I was able to work on the shawl in Coquette while we were driving to and from the festival. It's making really good progress and I am really enjoying the pattern and yarn.  I haven't named the design yet and have just been calling it Coquette after the name of the yarn.  Since that name has been used for patterns about a million times on Ravelry, I think I need to pick something else.  Any ideas?

Sheep Plague

You would think that now that the kitchen is so close to being completed that I would have more time to do fun things like post on the blog.  While I have been having a bit more fun, I seem to have caught the sheep plague.  Ok, so that may (or may not) be the correct name for it.  But when you go to a fiber festival, hang out with some sheep, one of which just sticks her cute nose out there and you kiss it and a couple of days later you start sounding like a cross dressing frog, it really should be called the sheep plague.  I actually had to miss knit group this week because of it.  So seriously, no matter how cute they are, don't kiss a sheep!

I have had a bit of extra time to spin this week.  This is super wash merino from Shalimar Yarns in Zombies Treat.  Ive been bugging Kristi to do some zombie and Walking Dead colorways and I love what she dyed! 

This roving was so easy to spin, I swear it practically spun itself!  It came out at 350 yards, 4.10 oz.  I love it! 

Check out all the other pretty colors that Kristi dyed.  I had a really hard time choosing just one.  Im wearing Zombie's Treat to keep warm.  It was freezing in the barn at Shenandoah!

 

Montpelier!

Hay, what did you do this weekend?

Andy and I went to the Montpelier Fall Fiber Festival in Montpelier Station, VA.  It's a lovely drive through rolling hills and countryside that we enjoy.  The leaves are just starting to turn here so there was a bit of color here and there.

Montpelier is by far our favorite festival.  It's really low key and everyone is laid back and happy.  You can find fibers and yarns that are hard to come by and lot's of unique ones as well. 

I entered my Holden Shawl in the Handspun Hand Knits Wearable division and it received second place.  This was really exciting and quite an honor.  One of the ladies working at the fiber arts display said that there were twice as many entries as there had been in past years. 

This is Judith modeling her hand dyed shawl.  Can you guess what she used for dye?  I never would have figured it out.  She went to a workshop where she learned how to dye with mushrooms.  Every color in this stunning shawl came from a mushroom.  I have to tell you that this was a hot topic in the car on the way home!

What would a fiber festival be without sheep?  This little gal is one of Heidi Passino's Shetland Sheep.  If we had land for animals we would have several sheep from Heidi.

This is a needle felted wall hanging that was entered in the fiber art's competition.  I love how the artist incorporated locks on the body of the sheep.

A wrap with hand spun angora yarn and emu feathers

The picture of this rug hooking doesn't do it justice, it was just fantastic in person!

This is a 6' tall hand felted wall hanging.  It was outside of one of the vendors tents.

Andy spotted this lovely arrangement in the fiber arts tent.  We have a little wheel like this and I think it would be great to use for a floral arrangement.