mary~land

i can safely say that is has become a tradition to travel to the maryland sheep and wool festival each may. it is truly my favorite trip of the year. my travel companions remain consistent, and we work very well together. we are a group of pretty interesting personalities, and everyone rolls along...laughing at ourselves. in fact we had one incident, where we were laughing so hard, we finally told the instigator that we were laughing at them, not with them. so, the festival.

we traveled down on friday, staying in our usual hotel a marriott residence in. having two bedrooms and baths is perfect for a group, and the shared living room is comfortable for chatting, knitting and spinning. this year the hotel was full of fiber friends, so we wandered down to the lobby that evening, letting the excitement build. the weather was perfect, warm and sunny. everyone heads there own way, sometimes together depending on what we must see. i had two things on my list to purchase and found the first right away. a lovely hand of merino/silk for a hitch hiker scarf. my sister had requested a knitted item to give as a gift, in very specific colors, so i was thrilled to find that right off. of course, several items fell into by bag as the weekend wore on. the best was a hand-turned nostepine (for balling yarn). i watched this being made and i'm thrilled that it was put into my hands!

i had never seen the parade of sheep before, so this was an unexpected delight. it was awesome to see so many different breeds next to each other. the best was the border Leicester  siblings in matching wool scarves...

i brought home three skeins of yarn, three hanks of roving, a fleece and a basket. a pretty good haul.