May 12, 2012 - New Hampshire Sheep and Wool

On a beautiful, bright, sunny Saturday morning, we headed out to Deerfield, New Hampshire for the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival.

The Deerfield Fairgrounds were a new location for us, and I believe for this festival. If the festival didn't have a sign pointing into the driveway going into the fairgrounds, we would have missed it and ended up driving all over Candia and Deerfield. The driveway was loooooong, and the parking lot huge. I thought, "This place is huge. They must be trying to expand it, hopefully adding more vendors and making it more like Rhinebeck." It turns out, I was wrong.

There was the usual array of gorgeous hand knits:

And beautiful yarn:

And fiber:

There wasn't a whole lot of WTFery going on, but Mike did find this glove that looked as though it would fit a Planet of the Ape foot:

As you could probably guess from the fact that Mike is wearing a t-shirt, it was hot. This particular festival, which is always on Mother's Day weekend, often experiences cold and rainy weather, but sometimes it is beautiful. This day, technically, it was beautiful, but one complaint about the festival was the lack of shade. The walk from the parking lot to where the vendors actually start (which was a bit after the festival gates, and we both had to pee wicked bad and the bathrooms closest to the gates were CLOSED -- WTF is up with THAT?) was, as I said, long. It was also completely unshaded. They should really grow a few trees around there.

After many text messages and calls that I didn't get because the fairgrounds seem to be a dead zone for AT&T, I met up with my friend Lena and her friend Janice. We were all starving at that point. We stopped for Apple Crisp -- an annual tradition for us -- to ease our pain:

IT WAS MELTING FAST!!!!! EAT IT QUICK!!!!

I had pretty much purchased all that I was going to buy:

The two on the ends are Nightingale Fibers Ernestine (sock yarn) in Red Head (had to!) and Hadspen Blue. The other two are Mad Colors Fiber Arts Verity (DK weight) in Midnight Oil and Land of Oz (these two are planned to become a Mordor shawl).

Yes, these photos were taken on my lap on the way home from the fairgrounds.

I also purchased two bars of peppermint soap, but did not include them in the photograph. Those should be wonderful at the height of the summer.

There were some cute animals there, too! We all climbed aboard the Monorail Alpaca:

This alpaca reminds me of a Keane painting:

They are such adorable teddy bears before they are shorn (and after, too, but you know what I mean!):

These llamas would not take their eyes off a border collie that was close by:

There were some baby goats:

And one trying to make a jailbreak:

Plenty of sacked-out sheep saying, "I'm hot":

And a curious sheep as well:

Mike thought I was going to leave him behind:

But I was just in a hurry to get back to the bathroom before we left. I found him waiting for me by the fountain that was a source of torture when we had to pass it to get to the bathrooms that were CLOSED.

Then we were on our way home. We did make a pit stop in Andover, MA, for a quick nature walk, which Mike blogged about here. He's a much better blogger than I am. We got home, exhausted but happy.

This weekend is the Massachusetts Sheep and Wool in Cummington (hee, hee), MA!

I'm Weird.

It's never been a secret. I'm Weird, and so is Mike.



Three hours after I last posted to this blog, I had finished the hat. It took me a couple of days, lazy ass that I am, to take some photos of it. It took me over a WEEK to post that I had finished the ferkin' thing.



MySpace-type self-portrait:



It's a little big, but fits well enough. It was a fun adventure in intarsia. I made the chart using KnitPro, a free web application that can turn images into charts.

The hat was to celebrate Mike's forthcoming book, The Weird World of Eerie Publications. It's with the publisher now! The logo is one of the logos used in the comics.

I used Dale of Norway Hauk yarn, and size 3 needles. The yarn feels still when you first knit with it, but once it's washed it softens up nicely. Plus, it's machine washable -- but I told Mike to always hand wash it! I'm afraid of some of the ends that I had to weave it coming loose from the agitation of the washing machine.

I'm glad to have tried this; I'm not always one to take risks (not that there's much to risk -- just time and yarn). It was an idea that came into my head the day before a trip to WEBS, where I purchased the yarn. It took less than two months for me to start the project -- possibly a record for me, since I usually have several ideas bouncing around in my head that never see the light of day (what was that zombie book I was going to write again?).

I'll say it loud: I'm Weird, and I'm Proud.