New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival

We know, we know…it’s been a while, and you’ve all but given up hope ever to see another posting on our site. Sorry! Sue and Tom have 56 live lambs, and another 40 sheep. It’s been a busy spring to be sure. Aside from feeding the few bottle babies, attending births, feeding animals, improving fencing after that fox got in, (didn’t get anything, but still…), we have been revving up for the New Hampshire Festival. That means Betty’s been weighing fleeces and labelling them, Sue’s been washing and dyeing fleece and rovings, and Betty I’s been up to her old tricks of watching tv at night while creating (as the spirit moves her) the most remarkable Irish fisherman’s knit sorts of sweaters out of her own sport weight romney/border leicester fleeces.

We set up Friday night, and were ready to go at nine a.m. Saturday morning, when the crowds arrived. It was not a raw fleece festival…usually we almost sell out of raw fleece. It was a rovings festival. We sold a LOT of rovings. And a few other things. It was great to catch up with Marianne and Josie and lots of other folks we see generally only at festivals. We all brought fleeces to send to Zeilingers (the big romney/border leicester/corrie type fleeces) and we brought some jacobs to Pogo at Friend’s Folly Farm in Maine. (She was at the festival: we didn’t drive to Maine!) Pogo and friends have recently been to Scotland and told us about the great time they had. We bring jacob fleeces to her because somehow she manages to streak the black and white fibers so that they aren’t all homogenized into grey. She also does a great job on the icelandics and shetlands, AND makes small batches of yarn, something a lot of the other mills won’t do.

Okay, today, we unpack all the ’stuff’ and put it in all in the places it goes until Memorial Day weekend, when we pack up Betty’s truck and Sue’s van, and head down to Cummington, Mass. for the Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair. There, we’ll see other friends and fellow vendors we don’t see between shows. That’s part of the fun of these shows: the relationships forged over the years, the sense of cameraderie, the laughs…Betty remembers, years ago, a woman who doesn’t “vend” at Cummington anymore, had animal crackers and her little dog with her. She ate all the animals crackers except the cats, which she walked along the edge of the table, saying, “Meow, meow, meow” and then threw the cat-cracker to her dog, who heard the signal and stood at attention, waiting for the treat. A bizarre memory, perhaps, but now Betty buys animal crackers and does the same thing for Margaret: she gets all the cat crackers in the bag…saves a few calories, anyway, huh?

That photo above, by the way, is our booth at the festival. Do you see that sign for Hodge Podge? It is a sweater made for the boyfriend of one of our Sugar River Spinners’ daughters. It was made and felted, but obviously, was made way too big! So, Sue and Deb M. made it into a sign, by needle felting the “Hodge Podge” on it, and adding felted slippers and a sheep. It was quite an attention getter. We are thinking that after the show season, we might have to send it to Harry Potter for Hagrid!

One of the neat things at the festival was a group of three felted hats, one worn by the vendor, and two others. Out looking around, Sue convinced Betty (doesn’t take much) to buy one of them. Deb C. saw it and bought the other. They are quite unique: we can’t decide if they look like they are minions of Genghis Khan(would be more effective if we had swords and horses), Tibetan sherpas, or teletubbies…or maybe a Dr. Seuss character…no doubt, the pair of them are both characters! Who else would wear a hat like  this?

Okay, time to get to the store, open it up for business, and put away the truck and van full of fiber, fleeces, tables, knitted goods, and yarn, so that when you come in to visit the store, there’s stuff on the shelves!