Sheepy Goodness

I think my visit to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is best summed up thusly:

That would be my haul, including four skeins of A Touch of Twist Alpaca in Andean Trails (2000 yards of it!), a beautiful purple-and-green Merino/Tencel sock weight skein from Ellen’s Half Pint Farms, some brown-silver-grey Brooks Farm Acero (on sale, even!), and some beautiful eggplant colored cotton/silk/flax, which was going for 500 yards for nine bucks. I got two. I wish I could remember the vendor’s name!

And yes, that is a bag of Koigu mill ends under all that. Would you like a close up? Of course you would, it’s Koigu.

Isn’t that pretty? I had an awful lot of fun fighting my way into a booth that made the 6 train at rush hour look abandoned, picking out a three hundred dollar bag of ends, and then whittling it down to something more reasonable. I think it’ll become a shawl, or maybe I’ll just keep it and pet it an awful lot.

I really enjoyed the festival, although it was very crowded. Compared to Rhinebeck, the grounds were much smaller, making for more densely populated tents and barns. Getting anywhere to see or feel yarn was a struggle, and the lines for food and bathrooms were prohibitively long. I was in attendance with my good friends Missy, Eman and Kel, and all four of us were twitchy from the crowds by 1 pm — but we’d also walked through every barn and shed, seen a bunch of baaaaby animals, and pretty much gotten everything on our lists, plus some. So we decamped to the Ellicott Mills Brewing Company in Ellicott City, for a three plus hour lunch before heading off our separate ways.

Lots of good yarn, cute critters, tasty food and beer and good company — and I didn’t get sunburned! And my “Learned to Knit in Prison” bag (from The Panopticon) got quite a few laughs. (Also just the right size for controlling the stash enhancement — I decided when the bag was full I was done shopping. Worked out quite well.)

In the interim I have pumped out a few FOs, which I will write up in more detail, but here’s a look anyhow:

Click to embiggen