the quacking fiber addict

I got 4 hours of sleep last night, because I had to get up reallyreally early (for me) to go to the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival. Because of this, I have a feeling I wasn't at my best today. I totally missed Sachi! (wail) How lame is that?

Emmos, TheBon, Emmos' coworker, and I piled into Emmos' car at around 8 this morning. After a long series of bizarre conversations, bad directions, and getting lost we arrived at the Canby Fairgrounds. Thank G-d for helpful locals. The Fest was ENORMOUS this year, OMG, I couldn't believe it. There were, like, two expo halls full of animals and 2 full of vendors and a giant lawn full of vendors as well.

In the sheep show, we saw our favourite Shetland Sheep breeders, McTavish Farm - look for T in the lavender coat... We also ran into Miriam and her Mum at the McTavish stalls.


And Miriam and I became enamoured with this little ewe, Annabelle, and begged for the rights to the fleece...


Miriam fell in love with, and bought!, this antique spinning wheel from the 19th century:


We, her 'support group', had fun poking at it, examining it, and just perplexing bystanders.

On the way out of town, we found this - err- strange, landmark:

The Spinning Wheel Restaurant and Lounge. We even went in and asked to see the spinning wheel, please, and only got some strange looks for our trouble. The locals probably thought we were crazy. It also amused the hell outta me that there was a Spinning Wheel Budweiser sign:


On the way from Canby (OF&F) to The Pendleton Mill End Annex thingy, we saw this:


Honest to G-d, the area just south of Portland is full of strange stuff. Just... wow. Crazy stuff. See the Bon's blog for more. Seriously.

Anyway, we arrived at the Annex, and silliness took over. They had toooons of wool yardage, scraps, and other oddments. I think the day finally got to Miriam:


The sales lady just smiled at us, nodded, and backed away. I swear. She did. Twas too funny.

Since it's late, I'm tired and not too intelligent, I'm just going to show you a pic of my haul today:


3 books: 2 by Barbara Walker - SCORE! - and Women's Work in hardback. 1 exotic mytery batt, 1 silk cap, 2 skeins of superwash/ bombyx for socks, 2 Denise cables, a sheep measuring tape, and a whole bunch of wool remnants.

I think that's everything. I'm so sorry we missed you Sachi! We finally left at 3, dying of hunger and exhaustion. I was starting to whine, I admit it. It wasn't pretty, I'm sure.

I want to go and decompress. I took a nap, but still feel a bit... edgy. Too many hours in a car, I bet. Back to the SKB - I'm onto my 2nd ball of yarn, and nearly ready to put the sleeves on waste-yarn!! (rejoicing)