[misc] NH Sheep and Wool

This past Sunday my sister and I went down to Contoocook, NH for the 2010 New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival. We stopped by the gas station by my house before heading down and my sister chatted with the clerk a bit. So this morning I'm in there again and the clerk asks how our trip was.

"It was good," I automatically replied. Then I thought about it for a second and said, "Wait- no it wasn't. It was awful. It was so cold and we weren't dressed for the weather."

Yeah, it was ridiculously cold. But probably not as bad as I'm guessing Saturday was- when it was raining.

All the vendors were super nice and there was a lot of cool stuff to check out. Like all these lovely hand-crafted Golding spindles:



Almost makes me want to learn how to spin with a spindle. Almost. But going from wheel to spindle would feel like going from 100 miles and hour to 15 miles an hour.

We got lunch at the Buffalo vendor (who's kiosk looked like a covered wagon!):



I also got some bison jerky here to bring home to Dollar (he liked it). We ate at a picnic table, shivering. At one point I could see my sister's breath after she said something.

You know who else was cold? The newly shorn sheep and alpacas who were shivering in their stalls, poor things. The lucky ones either still had their fur or jackets on:



We caught some of a small sheep herding demonstration:



I guess it wasn't so bad (now that I've got feeling back in my everywhere). The vendors were nice and happy to chat. I saw some knitting friends. I didn't spend as crazy as I thought I would- I picked up a couple bits of fiber to spin, a couple small skeins of yarn and a ball... holder... dispenser... thingie. It's really cool and matches my Kromski spinning wheel and accessories. It's like a peg that spins and you can put your yarn ball on it (the cakes that you wind with a ball winder) and as you take the yarn from the outside, it smoothly rotates. It's hard to describe. I would offer to take a picture but it's pretty phallic in appearance.