Whirlwind weekend

It was somewhat of a whirlwind weekend as I took a road trip through the upper Midwest. Trying to be two places at once involves lots of driving but was so worth it because I was able to take in the Shepherd's Harvest festival in Lake Elmo, MN. And, even better than that, I got to see my friend Kerry and have her teach me how to pick out a fleece.

Let me tell you, Shepherd's Harvest is quite a fleece event. It seemed more than half of the vendors had a couple of fleeces for sale. It's about the same size as the WI S&W but didn't seem to have as many people attending; nothing like the crowds at MS&W or Michigan Fiber Fest. But, I loved how virtually all of the booths were small farms; no big booths of transplanted knit shops. It truly seemed a spinners event. An added plus of attending with Kerry was that she seemed to know everyone in the place. I got to meet several knit-bloggers and see their newly finished shawls as well as see several of the spinners I met last summer at her monthly spin-group. What fun!

But, what you really want to see are my purchases. Yes? Okay, at a fleece event in my Year of the Fleece, I had to buy a couple of them.

This is a BFL/BL/Romney from Lamb Lane in Iowa. My jaw dropped when I saw it's aura. And, it passed the "Kerry" test, in fact, she dubbed it Frizzle because it had such crimpy-ness.

The second fleece I was lucky enough to find is an Icelandic/BFL cross from River Winds farm. It's actually a much deeper charcoal color than this picture shows.
River Winds also has gorgeous Cormo. They had little 1 lb bags of raw fleece that were very tempting but I resisted. The other items I bought were:
A basket from Tall Tale Basket Shop of Tufte, MN (no website), the pink cotton candy looking stuff is called Spinner's Web and made up of Icelandic wool, mohair, Suri alpaca, silk noil and Mylar. I guess it's called a cloud preparation and I'm thinking of spindling it. The blue fiber in the basket is some super soft mohair from Morning Sun Fiber Barn that I'm going to use to try to replicate a KidSilk Haze kind of yarn. To the right of the basket is a crayon box bag of Corriedale from Mielke's as I've been wanting to explore color blending but didn't want to dye all the colors myself. A bag of Cormo top from River Winds Farm and 2 bumps of Coopworth/silk from Hidden Valley Woolen Mill round out the purchases. The color on the left is called Moody Blues and the one on the right is Just Before Dawn--one of these may be heading off to a friend but Hidden Valley vend at all the local shows so I'm bound to see them again this summer and will undoubtedly add to my collection of colors.

Joyful spinning is still occuring. Here's my latest bobbin with some fiber I bought when I visited Roberta's spinning guild last February. I think it's Corriedale and was dyed by the shepherd who was a part of the guild. It wasn't rinsed very well because it was very sticky and the color got all over my hands when I drafted it. A little soak in the sink pretty much solved that problem and I love how it's spinning up. I'm thinking, perhaps, socks for this yarn.

And, last but not least, the other place I had to be this weekend was at my niece's graduation from Loras College. It completely amazes me that little baby Katie is all grown up now.
Some elementary school class is going to be very lucky to have her as their teacher.