Sheepish Grins

This is coming to you live and direct from Estes Park, Colorado. My sister and I visited the Estes Park Wool Market today and paid our respect to its wooly denizens. This mild young sheep didn't seem to mind posing for our cameras.

Everybody was taking pictures of this next guy. He has such magnificent horns and such a kind, noble face that all of us yarny types found him irresistable.

I once conducted a Polish scholar around our region for a while, and while we were on the road I pointed out a flock of sheep that had several Jacob rams in it. "Those sheep can have four horns," I observed, and my companion accused me of trying to make fun of her. I ended up having to find websites devoted to Jacob sheep to prove to her that I wasn't kidding. For any other doubting Thomases or Thomasinas, here's a four-horned Jacob ram that attracted a lot of attention.

Jacobs are dramatic looking sheep, aren't they?

Alls the stuff you read in the blogosphere about the kindness of yarn people at these markets is true, and I can see how one could be hooked on them. I'd never been in a such a critical mass of fiber-ly people before -- the vendors' barn was cheek to cheek full of people with bags of wool, cooing over fibers and colors. Strangers started up conversations with each other over patterns, colors, textures and "hey, did you feel this?" Sis talked two women into taking spinning lessons from their local shop, and somebody else into buying a great fleece she actually wanted for herself. I was overwhelmed with the colors and the vast choices of fibers available, and thank goodness I had budgeted for this trip. When I found something I really wanted, I could get it and without pangs of guilt.

I am coming home with a hickory wood Maggie spindle -- I promised myself that I'd use the money I made teaching that spindle class in April for a nice spindle and for once I kept my promise. It's smooth and well-balanced, and I'm having a blast sampling some milk-protein fiber we picked up. I also got two nice bumps of a silk-Corriedale roving dyed with indigo and madder, which will be a featured spin coming up soon.

All of this happened in the pouring rain. It's pouring out there now. But spirits were surely not dampened at all!!

Yep, wool markets are something I'd do again... when I've been working for a while again.

Speaking of working again, I'm teaching two summer classes online, and boy are my eyes tired! I spent more than three weeks pounding on the keyboard and getting one class created from scratch, then massaging another class into shape that I'd inherited from somebody else. Then, I spent all of last week in a class on creating and managing online classes, while handling my own teaching assignment on the side. Shoot, what am I doing blogging now? Guess I'm just so excited about everything that I just had to share. Now, I'm going to turn this thing off and go to bed.