Black Sheep Gathering III

Q: What did I get at Black Sheep?
A: Too much stuff!

But I love it all and am very happy about it.

I purchased 4 spindles, an assortment of fibers and 2 books from Galina Khmeleva at Skaska. The books were Gossamer Webs and Please to the Table. Please to the Table is the best Russian Cookbook I have seen and is only recently back in print.
I have 8 ounces of red wool dyed by Mountain Colors from Village Spinning and Weaving, the same table that had the niddy noddy and inkle shuttle with the woodburned stick figure on them. I've been looking for a full sized niddy noddy from that company for 2 years and now I have one! Huzzah!
I also found a number of miniature shuttles from the same company as we found at Lakeside Fibers in Madison, Wisconsin last summer. Those were bought from Carolina Handspun along with a 5-needle needle-felting-thingy, a crosspatch creations bat of fiber, a book on needle felting, and a skein of Mountain Colors Bearfoot in Meadow.
From Blackberry Patch (farm?) I bought some lovely dyed locks of wool and both my roomate and I got treats for our secret pals.
From Simply Natural I bought pinky-purple natural dyed roving, one is bombyx/merino, the other tussah silk which I intend to ply with each other for a shawl.

That is the extent of my purchases. K's friend bought fleeces which she sent parts of home with us. We will be trading her something not yet specified for them. I am particularly looking forward to playing with the mohair that she sent with us. There are a couple naturally colored wool fleeces that should also be fun to play with.

The very first morning there (ie: Saturday) we watched the proprietor of DyeLots! give a presentation on spinning silk. She gave us a coccoon to attenuate and spin and I did, it's not much, but I spun it. She also gave us a layer of dyed hanky which I have not yet worked with, it's jumbled together and hopefully will still be useable when I get around to it. The presentation was very inspiring, I'd love to dye and spin some hankies or bells, the only question is when!

At noonish (whenever it opened) we went into the fleece sale to look at it during the viewing portion of things. T and I left before they started selling fleeces because we didn't need one to follow us home!

That evening we went to the potluck, it's always fun trying to feed K at a potluck, but there were things there he would eat so all was well. We sat in the winning portion of the tent for the raffle drawings, it's a shame we didn't buy any tickets, maybe we would have won something... oh wait, we stopped buying things because we were going to have to tie the dog to the roof rack, maybe winning something wouldn't have been such a red-hot idea!

Sunday we wandered some more, picked up some last purchases and got spinning advice from Galina (see earlier post). Then T went outside to knit and sort things and I listened to the presentation on German angora bunnies. The presenter was informative and very opinionated. She believes that the Germans are the best bunnies out there and given the information she presented I understand why. I'm not in the market for a fiber bunny at the moment, but I will seriously consider Germans if that ever changes. (I'll also do some more research as I'm sure the English, Satin and French bunns each have their own equally devoted fan clubs)

Then we headed home. We are blessed with a dog that loves car rides. He sat, perfectly contentedly at my feet in the front passenger footwell for 6 hours each way (more like 8 on the return trip due to weather and traffic). I will love him even if he doesn't get his double coat back this winter... he's wonderful (and puppyfishing is so much fun!)

I'm rambling and I'm supposed to be folding laundry. So off to work I go, and then to bed.