black sheep ’09!

so much fun at black sheep gathering yesterday! but first things first… baby goats! (the sound isn’t important, so turn off your sound now if you want.)

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5249164&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

i think we were told they’re 4 weeks old. oh so cute! but ok besides that…  fiber!

we looked at braid after braid of pretty fiber, and skein after skein of yarn, and i carried around that massive mesh bag full of this:

i went for lots of small amounts of all different colored dyed fiber, to use bits in my spinning for stripes and many-colored yarns.  this gave me the most variety and the best deals…

• 7 different colorways of wool from reflection farm, 1 ounce of each (not sure what kind of wool, probably a blend?)
• 100% merino in 4 different multi-colored colorways and 3 different solids, approximately 1 ounce of each from eugene textile center
• 5 “puppy” batts (about .5oz) and one bigger mini-batt (1.5oz) from schildt ranch in all different colors
• 3 ounces of dyed locks from the blackberry patch

and then there were the sheep… some very silly sheep, with some verrrry silly voices! hah!

and the goats!

and more baby goats!

and just one more… (you can see more animal shots here.)

and in case you didn’t believe me about the silly voices: (turn the sound on for this one!)

http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=71377

for lunch we went into downtown eugene and ate brown slices in our lotus delight.  then on the way home we stopped in salem for some blizzards (yumm strawberry cheesequake!)…

…and some thrifting!!

where i found some crafty stuff!  lots of buttons (yay!), a knit/crochet book from 1972 and a pretty good pillowcase set:

and then today i felt super inspired to spin, of course!  so spun for a total of about 4 hours, and 360 yards, in the form of 2 skeins of 2-ply (one 86 yards and one 34 yards)…

and am totally in love with that one – half alpaca, half all different assorted dyed wools, mostly dyed by me, with a few messy cocoons and beehives thrown in the mix for fun!  i don’t get to keep it though, it’ll be added to the shop once it’s washed and photographed.  and then i did a mini-skein for myself with all the different merino colors from eugene textile center.  the merino was kinda weird to spin, but i don’t have too hard a time with it as long as i’m spinning it thick and thin and not worrying about consistency… if i was trying to make a perfectly even yarn i would probably hate merino.  anyway, it was fun!

so now i’m looking forward to spinning a lot more!  i just ordered a bunch of undyed wools (bfl, shetland, merino, merino/bamboo blend, icelandic, corrie blend) from spunky eclectic, so once i get that i’m sure i’ll be doing tons of dyeing, followed by tons of spinning! and perfect timing, with the tour de fleece right around the corner!!