Monday, July 04, 2011

Black Sheep Gathering Recap

We had a fine time at Black Sheep Gathering this year - We have several things that are "traditional" with us - first is to get together with our friends Kathy and Mike - Kathy used to live in Bellingham, but moved to Eugene many years ago for work - every year we try to get together with her (and now her new husband) to catch up on each others lives.

Friday night we have Chinese food inviting any other Shetland (or not) breeders who might be at the gathering to join us - this time we had dinner with our very good friend Nancy - she and two spinner friends were camping on the fairgrounds. Vicki & MaryAnn had never been to BSG before and they were having a WONDERFUL time - by Friday night, they had already bought 5 fleeces!


This is one of my favorite booths - all the little packets hanging on the right side of the picture are (washed!) dyed mohair locks - I got some from another vendor and when I started carding them last night discovered that they were quite full of chaff - -

I buy something here every year - generally wool blended with mohair - the bags on the far wall were full of loose roving - 8-9 ounces a sack - and yes, I got some in my favorite blues purples & greens



I didn't take many pictures this year - and with the light coming in from the windows above, they are a little dark.








Yes, that "light" coming in from the windows was SUNLIGHT! All three days were just beautiful, sunny and warm.

Friday I took an all day class from Paula Shull on "Spinning Camelid Fibers" - Lovely lady - turned out that she was not going to be teaching this class any more, so, she didn't need her incredibly HUGE stash of camel, llama, alpaca & guanaco - which she liberally shared with us (I'll show you what I'm doing with mine in a later post) -


I didn't buy anything from her, but this booth was just so colorful, I had to take a picture.

After taking the camelid class, I decided to get some baby camel/tussah silk to make a scarf for my sister Merrill who doesn't like wool. The baby camel is so incredibly soft, I'm hoping that she will like it.

Hope everyone is having a great 4th of July weekend - I'm off to finish a Taco Saladto take to a potluck.

1 comment:

Tammy said...

Thanks for the visual tour, Tina! It sounds like you have some lovely, enjoyable traditions for the event. I'm very excited about kitties too and hope that maybe there will be two in your future! Everything is better in pairs.. ;-)
Tammy