Greencastle Fleece Fair 2006

Wow. wow. WoW. wOw. woW. WOW!
My first fiber fair experience was AMAZING! Fabulous! Overwhelming! (in a good way)

We went up Friday night (driving through horrible storms, but not the worst storms to go through the state, thank Goodness) and made it to the fairgrounds about 15 minutes before closing. It was just enough time to glance around a bit and kind of scope out where we might want to go in the morning. We were awestruck already, and as it turns out, we didn’t even glance at half of the show. The most exciting things we saw that evening were angora bunnies. More on that later.

Then we headed up to our motel, checked in, went out and grabbed a bite to eat at Applebee’s, then went back to the motel room to relax and rest up for the next day. We did knit a bit before retiring, and as usual, I was the last one awake. I made a bit of progress on one of Jill’s shrug sleeves:

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In the morning, we did manage to arrive there very shortly after it opened, even though they are an hour ahead up there and I had my usual insomniac experience the night before, and we are all still very out of whack from this years Daylight Savings Time change for some odd reason.

I picked up some odds and ends during the day – like a small “weaving loom”:http://www.harrisville.com/html/pegloom.html for the girls, and size 0 “Addi Turbos”:http://www.knittersreview.com/article_tool.asp?article=/review/product/010419_f.asp for socks.
But the majority of my haul? Not yarn- not a skein or ball was purchased by me – but ROVING!!!!

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Clockwise startng at the top left: some two-colored natural Romney wool roving, tan wool roving from Pat the gal that runs the “Fleece Fair”:http://www.fleecefair.com , then on tip top is the wool roving that came free with the next item I’ll talk about, in the middle is some Bluefaced Leister combed top, on the top right is some more of the Romney wool roving, in a nice brown color, below that is some angora fleece, going left is some tan and black alpaca roving, next is a package of green and white wool/tussah silk blend combed top, and last but not least on the bottom left is some more of the wool roving from Pat, this time in a pretty soft sage green color.

Now, what to do with all of this roving? Well there’s my hand spindle. And I sure learned a lot from the spinner’s all over Fleece Fair, especially Kate from our local knit group, and a lady at a Guild booth. But no, I think I’ll most likely do the majority of it on this:

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It’s a “Babe’s Easy Wheel”:http://www.babesfibergarden.com/easywheel.html that we picked up – I think a demo model, but I’m not sure if it was used – all of the parts were there and the free starter wool was unopened. But did we get a DEAL!! It was less than half of the retail price from the web site! I’ve played with it a bit, using the wool that came with it, and so far I’m doing pretty much like I was on the hand spindle, even though I know my drafting is improving with what I learned:

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And guess what else we got – if this wasn’t all WONDERFUL enough-

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Yes, English Angora bunnies!!!

The little girls were surprised and thrilled:

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They just loved on them so much:

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This is our fawn colored doe:

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And our white colored doe:

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And here is the black buck that rode home with us but doesn’t live with us, and is promised to visit in the fall when they are all old enough to “date”:

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They’ll be ready to have their first shearing/pulling next month, so hopefully I’ll get this spinning thing down and be spinning our own animal’s yarn soon!

I tried running out to Border’s today to catch the local 2nd Sunday spinning group, but no one was there. But, as luck would have it (gosh it’s nice to say that and mean it in a positive way for once) when I took the older girls to check out an “SCA”:http://sca.org/ meeting, there was a gal hand spindling there! AND she had been at Fleece Fair yesterday! AND she had gone to Border’s looking for other spinner’s and found none, too! AND she had a spinning wheel in her car, same make different model as ours! AND she was an amazing and helpful person! So, we grabbed our wheels out of our vehicles and proceeded to spin, her giving me tips all the way, while the girls watched the other SCA members participate in sword play. It was great. The weather was gorgeous, and we were all outside. Spring may really be here after all.

I’m tired. In a good way mostly. So I’m going to go spin a bit, maybe knit a few rows, listen to a podcast or two, and get a good night’s sleep, as life returns tomorrow.

p=. I hope that you had as wonderfully exhausting of a weekend as I did!

p{font-size:x-small;font-style:italic}. p.s. I just happened to notice another coincidence. My first fiber fair experience was a year to the day after “my first completed knitting project.”:http://starzabove.com/?month=2005-04-08