Monday, May 19, 2008

Waynesburg, PA sheep festival

Yesterday we drove down to Waynesburg for the festival. I'd been wanting to go for several years but something always seemed to pop up and prevent it. This year I was determined to go. At that point Murphy's Law kicked in and within hours someone signed up for my Saturday spinning class. But this is a 2-day festival so not a big deal to miss Saturday. Sunday dawned rainy and cold, but the forecast was for decreasing showers in the afternoon and off we went!


Next time I'll know better. Although the festival was nice, it was evident that several vendors would not be manning their booths the second day. Which did not deter me in the least. I found a lovely project basket at one booth, a couple of good wines at another, and a third booth with the loveliest Rambouillet lamb fleece. Since I spin for a living, I never use raw fleece anymore because I just don't have the time to process it these days. I'd forgotten how lovely it is to stick your hands into a fresh fleece. I want to sit down and handcard this pound of fleece like I used to do in the 70s (except I had to dispose of those handcards because the lanolin ruined them). It brought back memories of sitting in my friend's barn in Chicora on shearing day, spinning up the fresh warm fleece as it came off the ewe. Maybe I'll just tease the locks apart and spin them? Or flick-card and spin? Or (ugh!) wash the locks and drumcard them? It's just such a nice bit of wool....just look at the crimp on those locks!

2 comments:

DDancer said...

So, did you actually buy this lovely fleece or not?

Feisty said...

Of course I bought it! There were 2 bags of fleece, but the other one seemed to have more neck (shorter staple) wool. This one looks to contain the better parts of the fleece.