Skip to main content

Shepherd's Harvest at Twenty Years Old

On Saturday I ventured to Stillwater's Washington County Fairgrounds to take in Shepherd's Harvest, a sheep and wool festival being held for its 20th year.  Last year Mom, Susan and I investigated this event on a windy and thus really chilly mid-May day.  This year I was alone with Mom celebrating a graduation and Susan in Paris.

Photo credit to Shepherd's Harvest FB page
The weather on Saturday was warm, like 80 F/23 C degrees warm.  The venue is about a 30 minute drive east from my condo downtown Minneapolis making it located very close to Wisconsin; thus the vendors come from both Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The variety of vendors include those who spin and dye yarn, those who hand paint or hand dye roving, basket and yarn bowl makers, those selling spinning and weaving tools, many of local yarn shops and all the other types of accessories needed to do yarn crafting.  The vendors fill three large fairground buildings.

Last year the weather kept us from spending any time with the llamas and alpacas or taking in the shearing demonstrations.  Llama and alpaca are both South American Camelids.  Both produce a fiber that is used to make yarn, but there a several differences.  Llama have the longer curved ears and grow to be much bigger than alpaca.  Llama tend to be used as guard or pack animals.  Alpaca are much more social animal and create a more refined fiber. Alpacas have more rounded ears and face when compared to a llama. If you want to read more about their differences check out this grower's website.

I found both species in the barn friendly and curious.  Here's a bunch of photos I took.

Here a llama is being sheared

This llama posed for me

My Holstein coloured llama 

Added this llama to show the variety of their colour
Oh, sure yarn was purchased, despite my efforts at restraint.  A single skein of Nako lace weight, 550 m/600 yards of yarn from Turkey found its way home with me. The colourway is #412 and includes dark blue, dark teal, cooper and rust, a beautiful combination of colours that look good on me.  It contains 10% alpaca and 10% wool, with the remainder in acrylic; it is so very soft I will forgive it for its lack of a pedigree and celebrate its affordability.

Photo credit - Webs
It came with an easy Feather and Fan shawl pattern and I am knitting it on rather large 10.5/6.5 mm sized needles.  Since this shawl has only just been started, I will hold off photos until more of the loveliness of the yarn is visible.

As for the day, it was a satisfying adventure visiting Shepherd's Harvest again this year. Perhaps next year I will see if I can find someone to join me; it is much more fun to enjoy these types of events with others.












Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anatomy of a Sock

I've been knitting socks for a relatively short time.  One of the disconcerting things for me as I started following patterns for socks is the pattern designer assumes the knitter (in this case that would be me) knows all the parts of a sock.  So I thought I'd devote a post to improve my own knowledge about the anatomy of a sock and maybe some of you will learn something about the humble yet necessary sock as well. Here's the names of the parts of the foot as I know them. #49 ankle, #50 heel, #51, instep, #52 ball, #53 big toe, #54 toe, #55 little toe, #56 toenail. There are some parts more important for this discussion; first the heel of a foot is generally used to refer to the entire C-shape from the ankle to the instep.  Speaking of the instep, it refers to that curve near the bottom of the foot.  And what seems to be missing in the design above is the sole which generally refers to the bottom of the foot in total or plantar aspect in more technical terms...
10 comments
Read more

Gosling's Meme and Knitting

What is a meme, you may first ask? Well Dr. Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, came up with the idea in the late 1970's and stated something like: a meme is to a society what a gene is to a human. Both are an element or unit that can be replicated or passed from one individual to another. During the Internet age memes can be easily shared, replicated or otherwise passed on to another. Recent examples can be found on Gawker . Memes can include piano playing cats, a honey badger, the Call Me Maybe phenomenon and so on. The political campaign in the U.S. helped fuel memes using some of the most unusual statements like, "binders of women" and "you didn't build that." A few memes have staying power but most have a relatively short life span. Gosling's meme related to knitting has been around for some time; so when I again saw another post about him recently, it was time to figure out the origin. Ryan Gosling is a Canadian actor born in Onta...
Post a Comment
Read more

Yarn Usage II: Crochet vs. Knit

All four swatches were made.  Each is 6.25" or 15.875 cm square; each prepared with the same sized yarn and needles or hook.  It took 25 stitches to get the appropriate width for the knit swatches and only 20 stitches for both of the crocheted squares.  That already says something, but I'll get to it in a minute.  (Don't know what I'm talking about here?  Check out this post first.) Unfortunately, you'll just have to trust me that four swatches were prepared and that they were all the same size.  In the excitement to get to measuring and weighing of the swatches, no photographic evidence was taken.  Luckily for me the results of this research doesn't have to be reviewed by a jury of my peer.  This blog post will be the sum and total of where this information is published. The remains of my four swatches What can be shared, however, are the balls of yarn rewound after the weighing and measuring was completed.  You will note the size ...
9 comments
Read more