May 23

The second day of the Kentucky Sheep & Fiber Festival was different in some ways and the same in others.  The crowd was different for one – more people who had never been to a fiber fair showed up after church let out.  On Saturday, most of our sales were spinning fibers and Fiber Binder Club subscriptions.  On Sunday, it was mostly the tie-dye.

One cool thing that happened on Saturday, though, was one gentleman came into our booth and he and I discussed fiber and spinning for quite a while.  His wife knits and he got into spinning because of her.  Later in the day, he came back and asked me if I would sell him the entire bag of the light gray Corriedale I had (from Ulf the sheep) and I said yes.  A price was swiftly calculated in my head and he accepted the offer.

This is that man.

And this is him spinning Ulf.  I wonder if he is planning to dye it or if his wife will knit it up as is.  There is enough there for a couple of sweaters.

This lady was weaving a lovely rug sample on her custom-built rug loom.  This is the first thing she has ever woven.  I was stunned because it was so even and straight.  She naturally dyes her yarns and since black is rather difficult to get with natural dyes, she bought some of our black Fresian roving to spin up for her rugs.

Next door to us was Mary Ann with A Good Yarn from Greenwood, Indiana, who was demonstrating an Erlbacher Gearhart circular sock-knitting machine.  This machine is new and is made in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Sandy wanted to give it a go, so she sat down and began cranking.

I think she liked it!

Like I said, Sunday was the day for tie-dye and we had some pretty cute customers.

This little cutie needed a hat to shade her face and isn’t she adorable in it?

These three youngsters were the sons of a friend of my BIL & SIL who live near Lexington.  The boys wanted their shirts put on immediately and then they struck a pose for the camera.  The younger one is supposed to be Ironman, the middle one is another Avenger (Hulk?  Captain America?) and the older one was too old to pose like his brothers, so he just looked cool.

This young lady really impressed Sandy and I.  She wanted a bag.  She said that she didn’t like pink all that much, but when she found out that we are donating 10% of the proceeds of the sales of all the pink dyed items for breast cancer research, she wanted this bag.  Her reason is that her friend’s mother is a breast cancer survivor and she wanted to help support the research to find a cure.  Now that is a young lady to be proud of!

Of course, there were animals, but I was too busy looking at fleeces to snap any pictures of them.  I really regret this because they were so pretty.

The only animal shot I got besides the cria with Sandy on Saturday was this killdeer defending her nest.  She had her nest in one of the stone dividers between two fields and the parks department had put up folding chair & rope barriers so people wouldn’t accidentally invade her territory.  I had to really zoom the camera in to get this shot, but you can see how “fluffed up” she was in agitation and she was chittering like mad at all of us.  By Sunday, she had calmed down a bit, but she would not leave her nest unattended.  I’ll bet she was so happy to see the bunch of us leave.  I’m sure the dogs most of all.

Sandy and I are already planning next year.  We are going to get a booth twice the size we had this year and we are going to rent a van to get us and everything we want to take with us down there.  And we will probably load it to the point of exploding, too.

Oh, yes!  How to load a PT Cruiser for a fiber show.  Check these out.

And now you see why we need a van next time.