MORE Sheep and Wool...and Frisbee Dogs, too

My favorite part about Rhinebeck is wandering around and checking out the sheep and goats and then eating said sheep and goats. Kidding! They do serve plenty of good lamb dishes though. They put some distance between the sheep being petted and the sheep being eaten...the places serving lamb are far away from the sheep barns. It does seem kind of cannibalistic. Apple cider donuts and kettle corn for me then.

This Cheviot was a bit too pretty to eat anyway.













One of the highlights of the day for many are the frisbee catching canines. They used to have sheep dog trials, but I'm not sure what happened...now they just have sheep dog frisbee. They are fascinating to watch.



The dogs are just filled with vibrant energy and concentration.



















So about the shopping...people spend oodles of money here every year. I've spent a kagillion bucks here in previous years. It's great to support the industry and small farmers and indie businesses. However, I was just uninspired to shop and found myself in much more of a contemplative mood. I think I've been doing this festival for so long now that I've already bought everything that I feel the need to buy. Weird, right? Also, it's been much more of a social event for me...getting out of the city and hanging out with good people I don't see often enough becomes a priority. Plus, I have a few big trips coming up and that money that wasn't spent on fiber will soon used to buy the perfect croissant.

As I was walking to the car park at the end of the day, I swung by the Foxhill Farm booth and bought a bag of Cormo roving. I couldn't buy absolutely nothing. It just felt all sorts of wrong. Alice Field breeds and raises the loveliest sheep- she keeps them blanketed, so they are nice and clean. You can just tell when you are spinning it that the sheep it came from was loved and well cared for. The roving isn't over-proceeded at all and I had so much fun spinning what I bought from her last year.



Totally worthwhile purchase. It will keep me busy for countless hours, along with the rather huge stash of fleece from previous Rhinebecks that are still patiently stored in bags under my bed.

Wensleydale Singles

...as in "a single ply of wensleydale yarn", not "bachelors from a small area of Yorkshire".

The weather cooled off a bit after the heat wave so now it is comfortable and breezy, which is perfect weather to get a little spinning in.



(This is actually a Leicester Longwool sheep, but they have similar fleeces to Wensleydale.)

The fiber was 1 oz of Tussah Silk and 2 oz of Wensleydale, dyed with madder and called "Cardinal". It was a club shipment from A Verb For Keeping Warm.



I spun it as a continuous single. It's so hard for me to resist the urge to ply. Plied yarn is so neat and tidy and balanced and everything else just looks odd to me.



It was interesting- both fibers like to be spun worsted and the staple length is incredibly long, but they are so different from each other. The silk is smooth and slick; the sheep is hairy and slippery. It's not unpleasant to spin, but it has almost no memory or crimp to it. Long draw worked well.

Finished, after a nice warm bath to set the twist and a healthy glug of vinegar to stop the dye from bleeding:



488 yards of lace singles. Which I'm trying my best to leave as singles. I love how the reds marled to a pretty valentine pink.



The Wendsleydale has a nice hairy halo. I'm not sure what I have in mind for a project with this yet.

As soon as this was off the bobbin, I started a polar opposite spinning project:



Cashmere and Silk blend! It's lovely. I have 8oz of it, so it should spin up to a decent amount- I'm aiming for sport-weight. I'm finding it really easy to put too much twist in this- it's so fine and slippery, and it likes to fall apart on you. Hence the over-twist. I'm really happy when I'm spinning this, and plying it will take out some of the kinked-up overtwist. The one bad thing about this fiber is that I have to commit to it when I spin it- the cashmere is so light and flyaway, I end up with a nice head-to-toe coating of fuzz the not even the bravest of lint rollers might be able to tackle.