Saturday, September 15, 2007

Fiber Festival

What fun!!! Today I went to a Fiber Festival. Now, fabric and textiles are all well and good. Who doesn't like feeling nice soft things (keep your minds out of the gutter people!)? But at this fiber festival I wasn't spending all my time pouring over luscious yarns, exquisitely made sweaters, mounds of wool and fleece-nope, not me. Oh sure, I perused and glanced, and said, "Wow cool...but, What would I do with that and God that's expensive!" but my time was spent with the animals!!!! There were angora bunnies, llama, alpaca, ducks, draft horses, dogs and lots and lots of sheep! I spend a good portion of my time talking with a shepherdess and watching her work her dogs. Toby and Luna are Australian Shepard Dogs and they herded both sheep and ducks! Then another woman showed her Border Collie. He was amazing with the sheep-but felt he was above the ducks and had no interest in herding them! There was to have been a Herding Competition, but, unfortunately, it had to be cancelled as there weren't enough entrants. Luckily these women agreed to give demos anyway. The one woman's sheep (notice how I know her dogs name, but not hers) were super friendly-they enjoyed getting pets and Baby even tried getting into my bag! (Yes, I even know some of the names of her sheep, but not her.) After watching these guys I went in search of food. I admit it-I had a lamb sandwich. I felt bad-but boy did it taste good!!! My guilt was very short lived. I also had salt potatoes. Yummm. Then I met Rose and Checkers-the two draft horses giving wagon rides around the fairgrounds. And yes, I know their names and not their owners-even though I spoke with the owners for quite a while. But while the sheep I met personally were very sweet (one even tried to give me a kiss!), the dogs were amazing, and the horses were funny (yawning and wanting to go their own way) by far the cutest animals there were the alpacas. What adorable animals. Spending a day talking with people who love animals, watching animals who love to work do the jobs they were bred to do, and pet the sweet animals themselves...now that's my idea of a fiber festival!

2 comments:

Victoria Bolton said...

Hey, Kat,
When are you going to add a couple of alpacas to your menagerie? I see spinning yarn and knitting alpaca scarves in your future...
Miss you and all the RF folks. Happy blogging!

Katreader said...

Hee hee, if only I had the room. Alpacas are small though...hmmmm.