{"id":30,"date":"2007-05-07T21:43:49","date_gmt":"2007-05-08T02:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/2007\/05\/07\/maryland-sheep-wool-2007\/"},"modified":"2007-05-07T21:43:49","modified_gmt":"2007-05-08T02:43:49","slug":"maryland-sheep-wool-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/2007\/05\/07\/maryland-sheep-wool-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Maryland Sheep & Wool 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"

I guess there were sheep. There was definitely wool \ud83d\ude42  And some
\nother interesting fibres, too.<\/p>\n

If you want to understand more about what the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival<\/a>
\nis like, have a look at these pictures<\/a>
\nto get a sense of what happens when an estimated 70,000 people (and
\nsome number of sheep, alpaca, angora rabbits…) descend on the Howard
\nCounty Fairgrounds for each of 2 days of the annual festival.<\/p>\n

For myself, I thoroughly enjoyed a 2-day pre-festival workshop on Aran
\nSweater Design, lead by Janet Szabo<\/a>.   There’s something to
\nbe said for spending 2 days with fibre-fiends of a similar level and
\ninterest, focusing on fibre and design.  On day 1, sensing that we
\nwere all a little twitchy after 3 hours of data about cables and ropes,
\nJanet lead us through the ultimate infinite cable — the circle:<\/p>\n

\"O!\"<\/a>\n<\/div>\n

It’s magic!  (It’s in Janet’s
\nbook<\/a>, and also in Barbara Walker’s Charted book).  On Day
\n2,  there was a certain amount of swatching, and a dive into a
\nsample project sweater:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"swatch\"<\/a>\n <\/td>\n\"Sample\"<\/a>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

We arrived at the fairgrounds around 11am on Saturday — a little late,
\nby most standards.  But, there was still room in the fields for a
\nfew more cars, so we got to enjoy a few hours of wandering through the
\nthrongs of fibre and sheep enthusiasts.  Truly, it was
\noverwhelming.  In the end, I focused (if “focus” was possible!) on
\nstuff from small-scale outfits that I’m just not likely to encounter in
\nthe fibre anywhere else.  And, yes, a touch is worth a thousand
\nwords when it comes to yarn!<\/p>\n

\"loot\"<\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\nIn there, there’s a crochet (!) kit from Shelridge Farm<\/a>, some wool\/bamboo
\nsock yarn and some silk\/merino from Ellen’s 1\/2 Pint Farm<\/a>,
\nas well as some laceweight silk and some silk\/wool blend from Spirit Trail<\/a>.  Oooh, and
\nsome Koigu KPPPM leapt into my hands, as well.<\/p>\n

Oh, and there might have been T-Shirts, books, and a few other
\noddments, too \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

So, apart from enough yarn for 2 sweaters, a top, 3 pairs of socks and
\na shawl, what did I get out of the experience?
\nCompletely overwhelmed.  And I realized that yes, possibly, there
\nis a point at which one does not want any more yarn (this may be a
\npassing condition \ud83d\ude09 ).   One of the things that really
\nstruck me was the quantity of yarns in a multitude of colourways. 
\nThat is, unlike a typical LYS setup, each booth at the fair was pretty
\nfocused, and it stocked several skeins of any given
\ncolourway.    This is a *major* win, as far as I’m
\nconcerned.  <\/p>\n

It was pretty neat to be wandering around that many people with similar
\n(and yet, clearly, wildly divergent) interests.  I managed to
\nresist the lure of all the spinning paraphernalia, though I am told I
\nwould be a better knitter if I did spinning as well.  With 2
\nknitting machines craving attention in the basement, I really can’t say
\nI have time for spinning.  No, not even with a drop spindle! 
\nThough, this resistance, too, might be a passing condition.<\/p>\n

To round out the weekend, I just about finished up a sweater project
\nI’ve been working on for some time.  (Pictures, soon!).   I
\nhave a few more things to clear off the decks and then I’ll let myself
\ndive into some of these new finds…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I guess there were sheep. There was definitely wool \ud83d\ude42  And some other interesting fibres, too. If you want to understand more about what the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is like, have a look at these pictures to get … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-knitting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7dQdt-u","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}