Wednesday, June 16, 2010

More Estes Park Wool Market

How could I end the posting yesterday without any wooly beasts?   Here ya go:

Teething Alpaca

Cozy coated sheep

Head shots of Jacob Sheep with spots and multiple horns


Judging sheep: the BFL on the right was the big winner

Bottle Baby Yak- for sale!  Only two weeks old

Baby Angora Goat

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Working my way back from the Most Recent

With such a large gap in my blogging, where do I start to catch up??......with the most recent event, of course---The Estes Park Wool Market.

This now annual event for me and Stacy was expanded to two days for us this year, Saturday and Sunday with a stay overnight at a cute riverside motel.

Unfortunately, the weather gods decided we needed rain, lots of rain, so the sun was barely visible all weekend.   Clouds hovered over the nearby rock peaks,

and it even snowed in Rocky Mtn National Park.   The water flowed swiftly in Fall River, by the motel and downtown.  The second picture is the motel manager checking the river depth gauge, since
Estes was under a flood watch all weekend.


Some wild critters (elk) were roadside, saying hello.

I finished my February Lady Sweater finally, by late nights and sewing on the buttons on Saturday morning.   No time to give it a proper blocking, but a steam pressing an hour before Stacy came.   I ended up wearing it all weekend thanks to the temps in the 40's.

The fairgrounds were rainy and muddy, so we stayed mostly in the vendor barn, and shopped til the budget cried "uncle"!   Here is the haul:

From Creatively Dyed Yarns this is 70%wool, 30% seacell fiber in color, Plankton.

From Kai Ranch: this is overdyed black kid mohair:

This is a raw Jacob fleece, which is very clean since it was coated.   The spots are very distinct and the colors of white, black, and gray are even divided throughout the fleece.  

It is a little over two lbs, raw, and it seems to be very soft for a Jacob.   Of course, I have to finish the Shetland fleece I started earlier this spring first...and to help out with that I bought this:

A used Louet drum carder from Fire Ant Ranch.   This was Suzanne's personal carder that she is parting with since she uses an electric carder now.   She took the time to demo it and with the savings, I couldn't resist.  Even though it is about 15 years old, it is solidly built, finished well, and only a few of the pins are bent.  In case I forget how to operate it, there are etched instructions in 5 languages on the front and the back!

  
On Sunday, we spent  most of the day watching the 4 teams at the sheep to shawl competition.   I must have been so mesmerized by it all, since I failed to take one photograph.   Teams of 5 people: one weaver and 4 spinners started with washed fleece and a warped loom and proceeded to spin yarn and weave a shawl in about 5 hours.   There were 4 teams this year and the finished results were vastly different from each other, but each beautiful in its own way.  It might be fun to be on a team in the future...hmmm something to think about.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Life Gets in the Way of Blogging

And laziness.    I apologize for being absent for so long (since the end of April, actually!) but I promise to return to some regularity.  Some of my distractions have been another surgery on Hub's back, work stresses, Mother's Day, work stresses, a quick trip to Santa Barbara (fun and an escape from the everyday stuff), work stresses, knitting, spinning.   Do you notice a trend, here?

This weekend is the Estes Park Wool Market, and Stacy and I are going to spend Saturday night this time.  We are not going to take any classes, but there will be plenty of shopping and animal petting to be experienced.   Of course, the weather report is for temps in the high 40's and rain, with the lows overnight near freezing.    Welcome to Colorado summers!   The bottle of wine I will be bringing along should ease some of the frustrations with the weather!

I will try to catch up with everyone over the next couple of weeks.  Bear with me.....life gets in the way......