Shepherd's Harvest Fiber Festival

Today and tomorrow is the Shepherd's Harvest Fiber Festival in Lake Elmo, MN at the Washington County Fairgrounds.  This morning, I took a spinning class  that was a class to try a number of different fibers.  I spun with drum carded Shetland wool, Shetland wool in the locks (which I loved), a bit of white Jacob, llama (Mack Dawg the llama, specifically), alpaca (Tony the alpaca), and finally, some French Angora rabbit (which was divine).  These were the fibers other than the angora.  I should have taken a picture of my shirt to show you the angora - it sticks to everything:

This one is all different colors of Shetland wool with the locks at the top.

This one is (from left to right) Jacob sheep's wool, Tony the Alpaca, and Mack Dawg the Llama.










 Then I had the opportunity to wander around shopping from all kinds of vendors.  I ran out of money before I got to the end (it's always a good idea for your budget to bring cash to these sorts of events - at least for me).  The only bad thing about that is most of the vendors did not give me receipts (so I don't know their names if I want to get more fiber from them).  I have to go back tomorrow to work at the MN Knitter's Guild booth, so I will have to wander around to find the vendor names.

First, I visited some Angora bunnies:

Next, I picked up the yarn I ordered last week from Briar Rose Fibers.  This is Sea Pearl, a 50% merino, 50% Tencel blend, fingering weight yarn, 2400 yards of it, custom dyed for me:

Then I purchased a number of different fibers to spin.  I don't know how long it will keep me busy with my wheel, but I was hoping for maybe a year.  That might be optimistic.

This is an 80% Coopworth, 20% Silk blend, about half a pound of roving from Hidden Valley Woolen Mill in the Northern Lights colorway.

I think this is 2 oz of 100% angora fiber from Angora Gardens.  The person working at the checkout counter was clueless.  They were also selling 60% Corriedale, 40% Angora roving, but this doesn't really look like the pictures of the roving on their web site. 

This one is about 8 oz of an Icelandic Wool, Angora rabbit blend.  It's fluffy and soft and heavenly.  I'm probably most excited about this one to be honest.  It's from Celestial Designs Fiber Art.

This one is about 8 oz of Border Leicester wool, dyed in the locks.  I plan to also spin it from the locks to maintain the color variation.  It's from also from Celestial Designs Fiber Art as the Icelandic/Angora.






After attending the festival, I visited Darn Knit {Anyway} yarn shop in Stillwater, MN (about 10 min from the festival.  I hadn't visited the shop before.  I got some Baltimore Ravens Purple Cascade Heritage Sock yarn to knit socks for my dad and brother for Christmas (they have season tickets):

I also got one skein of Three Irish Girls Cashmerino Worsted.  This is a new base for them.  I was so excited about the color that I didn't even notice it was a worsted weight yarn, so I'm not sure what to do with it yet.  There's just under 200 yards on the skein.  Maybe a hat (though it won't really match my primary winter coat).

Unrelated to the knitting, Linus has been doing so well with his chemotherapy.  He seems to be doing well and isn't getting quite as stressed about going to the vet.  The vet was really happy yesterday when I was there.  He said he has 3 cats in the clinic with nasal lymphoma.  It's the first time he's ever had more than one at a time.  At least one of those families have also chosen chemotherapy as their treatment option (there are other choices).  Wait that doesn't sound right - he wasn't happy about the 3 cats with nasal lymphoma.  He was happy because someone brought a VERY sick dog in Tuesday night, who was clearly much better on Wednesday morning and Linus hasn't lost any weight (a common side effect of chemo) and all of his obvious cancer symptoms are gone.  So he was happy that even the animals in very dire circumstances he's treated lately are doing well.

If you happen to live in the Minneapolis area, The Kenwood Pet Clinic is about the best vet ever.  They've healed my poisoned dog, healed the same dog from 2 bouts of skin cancer and now have discovered the cancer in my cat.  They've also solved many other smaller problems.  I've been trying to buy him a new Mercedes with my vet bills lately though.

To wrap up, I watched The King's Speech sometime in the blur of the weekend.  It was seriously great, a 7 on the Jenn scale of movie ratings (I probably would have paid full price to see it twice at the theater if I had been less than oblivious).