As promised courtesy of Friend Merlyn (she of far better photo sense than I ever will have) is our day at the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival. All the photos here are hers, reproduced here by permission.

To start, no sheep festival is complete without its eponymous totem. Here are a couple of girls, still in their fluffy finery, checking us out for illicit snacks.

By contrast, this guy is far more aloof. “Snacks? I disdain the possibility of snacks. Ooh, do I see hot sheep chix in the next stall?”

Which leads us to sheepy strippers.

That’s a lot of fuzz. Spinners and dyers were in a special heaven at this show because of all the raw and semi-processed fleece, dyed fleece and roving; spinning gear, and dyeing classes and supplies.

Here’s one tough spinner:

“Yo. You wanna talk grist? I’ll see your grist and raise you 5.”

Actually, there were quite a few men at the show sitting and spinning (or like this guy, wandering around with a drop spindle).

Which takes us on to my main target of opportunity. Yarn. A day of selective yarn acquisition. Selective because there’s a mismatch between my imagination – what I can see myself doing with the yarn – and available time/yarn budget dollars.

Here are the three of us, daughters large and small, and (in my first appearance on this website) a small shot of magenta-clad me, poking through the Bartlett booth, then buying some laceweight at a totally different venue, from a vendor whose name I neglected to note:

I’ve got an eye bending, giant lump of black Jaggerspun 20/2, elder daughter’s buying the same thing in screaming russet. (She’s thinking of doing a Paisley, but that thought is still quite larval.) Even younger daughter got into the spin of the day, making a felted snake at the American Textile History Museum‘s booth:

But back to the vendor displays. As I wrote earlier, I was especially taken with the creativity of the Tsock Tsarina patterns, on display at the Holiday Yarn booth. I’m not quite sure how I’d wear or care for these art object socks, but the exuberance and detail of these designs are fantastic. And I enjoyed the opera theme of the entire line:

The colors and abundance of the yarn on display for sale was spectacular. Who wouldn’t be inspired by all of this?

And the day had its non-yarn amusements as well. I’ve decided that alpacas are animals designed by anime artists: those long, snaky necks and staring oversize eyes; the fluffy hairdos, and overly earnest expressions; the stylish baggy-leg look. The only thing missing is gigantic, oversized feet and “!!!”s floating over their heads:

Since plenty of shoots and leaves were on the menu for the day, we got a kick of of this class announcement, too.

Special thanks again to photo documenter Merlyn for providing today’s run of eye candy. You can check out the rest of her sheepy shots here.

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