Sheep to Shawl 2011

It's that wonderful time of year again -- fiber festival season! April brought the Columbia Gorge Fiber Festival, now May brings Sheep to Shawl at Mission Mill Museum. It's just a small, local festival, but with a little nurturing, we hope it will grow. Small though it may be, we still had fiber animals like sheep and their little baa-lambs:

And alpacas, with their "I'm too cool for my bad wig" expressions:

And a very patient Angora bunny whose soft fur was being spun off of his back:

There were spinners scattered around, as well as vendors:

And some sheep shearing:

And some shorn sheep ("Mom, what happened? Are you okay? Are we next? Mom? Mom!"):

On the historical side of things, there's a group that's carving a replica of a shovel-nosed canoe, which was used by the Kalapuyans, the native people of this area, for navigating marshes, rivers, and sloughs:

And our own Stephania of Three Fates Yarns, adding up a very nice sale:

I came only to look, and maybe buy a little fiber. Sigh... "a little" somehow became an 8 lb Romney fleece, very clean, charcoal grey, perfect for a fall coat I have in mind:

I keep looking at that stash box, thinking, "I really ought to be on a yarn diet... I really should use some of this up before I buy more... I really should resist..." If fiber festival season didn't fall during my off time, leaving me trying to knit up all that yarn during my busiest times of the year, maybe I could work through it all. Not all my fault... really... right?