Maryland Sheep & Bankruptcy Festival
May. 4th, 2008 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsNo Sunday 7 - although, as I did spend Friday and Saturday getting the air conditioner blessed for the season, paying my bills, giving the house its monthly scrubdown, finishing a review book, clearing a shelf of clutter in the living room by putting the contents slightly more neatly in the basement, and reorganizing my CDs (uncoincidentally finding two missing ones), I think I've accomplished a fair deal of work.
Which is good, because I spent today at the Maryland Sheep and Bankruptcy Festival.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
faireraven, I'm sorry I missed the Ravelry gathering, but at 1:00 I was at the other end of the fair finally getting something desperately needed to eat and drink and just sit down!
There were snoozing bunnies and sheep of every make and model, and darling alpacas, and even a sheepdog demonstration, but this is *me* you're reading, so you're mostly going to hear about the shopping. First stop was the SCA-sponsored medieval and Renaissance textiles tent. It was very comprehensive, covering embroidery, card weaving (with real chopped-up playing cards, to my amusement), and bobbin lace. There was someone with a hands-on project, which M tried her hand at. I watched her, and I was impressed by the very reasonably-priced bobbin lace kit... but what I walked away with were six titles in the Feudal Gourmet booklet series.
Then it was pretty much just windowshopping up to Misty Mountain Farm where I drooled all over the handpainted linen and the soft and gorgeous pima cotton (links included so I can find them later when I can afford to buy the yarns) but I stuck to only buying some of the ebony-and-pearl needles and a couple of crochet hooks, which had the deepest notches I've seen. They have some free patterns online. They were also teamed in the booth with My Essential Fragrances, one of the billions of soap dealers; I picked up a couple of bars of Ginger Lemongrass.
I picked up other odds and ends here and there - a DVD on sockmaking (I taught myself to knit from quicktime movies on the Internet; I think I can teach myself socks from this); a pattern for a short-sleeved sweater knit side-to-side (sorry, no online link); a pattern for reversible cables (I'm not sure I actually understand the project instructions, but the cable instructions are given separately and they're clear and interesting and will probably be a future afghan... or I'll justbullshit my way through adapt the pattern a bit); a booklet on nalbinding edgings; and a ridiculously cute needlefelting kit for making cat toys ladybugs. (Oooo, look, a YouTube tutorial!)
I was just congratulating myself on a fairly restrained day as I hit the main exhibit shed and rediscovered Golding Precision Fiber Tools. Now, even then I felt proof against his stunning artistry and craftsmanship - having previously purchased the most beautiful lucet in the world (at least, the most beautiful until the SCA showed up with laser-cut ones with pictures of dragons and castles) from him, what else was there? After all, the spindles and spinning wheels and looms, however stunning, weren't my thing, and his knitting needles are surprisingly bland and boring. What else could there be for a knitter?
Oh, my God!
(For the purposes of comparison, This is what a regular ball winder looks like, and this is what a precision wooden ball winder looks like (and costs).)
Yes, I know! But this isn't one of those decisions that you defend with logic, although I do have reasons. It's one of those "at this moment I can do this, and I want this thing in my life enough to sacrifice whatever it takes" decisions.
You know the line about keeping nothing in your life except that which you know to be useful or believe to be beautiful? Life is good when something useful is also beautiful.
I tell ya, though, Golding seriously owes me an advertising kickback. Having come to the sticking point, I preferred to schlep it rather than leave it behind. So at least five people came up to talk to me about it, and headed off in his direction at high speed!
*waves to the Ravelry people I met*
Which is good, because I spent today at the Maryland Sheep and Bankruptcy Festival.
faireraven, I'm sorry I missed the Ravelry gathering, but at 1:00 I was at the other end of the fair finally getting something desperately needed to eat and drink and just sit down!There were snoozing bunnies and sheep of every make and model, and darling alpacas, and even a sheepdog demonstration, but this is *me* you're reading, so you're mostly going to hear about the shopping. First stop was the SCA-sponsored medieval and Renaissance textiles tent. It was very comprehensive, covering embroidery, card weaving (with real chopped-up playing cards, to my amusement), and bobbin lace. There was someone with a hands-on project, which M tried her hand at. I watched her, and I was impressed by the very reasonably-priced bobbin lace kit... but what I walked away with were six titles in the Feudal Gourmet booklet series.
Then it was pretty much just windowshopping up to Misty Mountain Farm where I drooled all over the handpainted linen and the soft and gorgeous pima cotton (links included so I can find them later when I can afford to buy the yarns) but I stuck to only buying some of the ebony-and-pearl needles and a couple of crochet hooks, which had the deepest notches I've seen. They have some free patterns online. They were also teamed in the booth with My Essential Fragrances, one of the billions of soap dealers; I picked up a couple of bars of Ginger Lemongrass.
I picked up other odds and ends here and there - a DVD on sockmaking (I taught myself to knit from quicktime movies on the Internet; I think I can teach myself socks from this); a pattern for a short-sleeved sweater knit side-to-side (sorry, no online link); a pattern for reversible cables (I'm not sure I actually understand the project instructions, but the cable instructions are given separately and they're clear and interesting and will probably be a future afghan... or I'll just
I was just congratulating myself on a fairly restrained day as I hit the main exhibit shed and rediscovered Golding Precision Fiber Tools. Now, even then I felt proof against his stunning artistry and craftsmanship - having previously purchased the most beautiful lucet in the world (at least, the most beautiful until the SCA showed up with laser-cut ones with pictures of dragons and castles) from him, what else was there? After all, the spindles and spinning wheels and looms, however stunning, weren't my thing, and his knitting needles are surprisingly bland and boring. What else could there be for a knitter?
Oh, my God!
(For the purposes of comparison, This is what a regular ball winder looks like, and this is what a precision wooden ball winder looks like (and costs).)
Yes, I know! But this isn't one of those decisions that you defend with logic, although I do have reasons. It's one of those "at this moment I can do this, and I want this thing in my life enough to sacrifice whatever it takes" decisions.
You know the line about keeping nothing in your life except that which you know to be useful or believe to be beautiful? Life is good when something useful is also beautiful.
I tell ya, though, Golding seriously owes me an advertising kickback. Having come to the sticking point, I preferred to schlep it rather than leave it behind. So at least five people came up to talk to me about it, and headed off in his direction at high speed!
*waves to the Ravelry people I met*
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-05 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-05 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-05 10:33 pm (UTC)BOY did she get pissed the last time I plucked another rabbit out of her during a huge molt...
Spunky never had an issue with it, Trixie would put up with it for a while and then get pissy, Beemer's never really molted enough to look shaggy for some reason, but Sarah just despises it...
no subject
Date: 2008-05-07 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-07 08:25 pm (UTC)Trixie was what I referred to as "my curmudgeon of a pissybun"... I swear she acted like a cranky old man! She would bite almost anyone and anything who came near her... I was one of the few people she wouldn't bite, but then again, she grew up in a dog store... She would growl before she bit! I learned to interpret her moods and respond accordingly. :)
On the other hand, Spunky was an absolute lover, adoring it when you rubbed the fur between his eyes, earning him the nickname of "spoonhead" because he would then look like a little cardassian bunny... But I had to be careful to not overgroom him, because I'd accidentally groomed him bald in patches, once! His fur came out far easier than anyone else's, so he'd get these little bald patches when groomed... So I took it easy on him.
Sarah, while usually afraid of everyone, is not afraid to let me know she doesn't like being groomed! But she's always been a solitary bunny...
And Beemer was a rescue who came from an overcrowded food farm... The owner had 45 rabbits in a 15'x4' pen, living in about 4" of their own excrement! While he's always happy (and greedy) to get papaya tablets and food, he's not so much on the petting thing... His ears still show signs of former litter-mates having chewed the hell out of him, so I can understand why he'd be less than thrilled about the idea of being groomed... Although he's perfectly content to be scritched when he's being fed. :) Since he's never been much of a molter, I've never been inclined to brush the extra bunnies out of him, especially since he doesn't take well to petting to begin with.
Yeah, I have two bunnies in my house now (and at one point four), but they are/were all rescues of one kind or another, so I've always had rabbits with mental issues... :) Most of my bunnies have been ones nobody else wanted, so I took them home. This tends to result in more neurosis than are generally found in rabbits... :)
no subject
Date: 2008-05-07 09:26 pm (UTC)Marvin OTOH I got from the local rabbit sanctuary, where he'd apparently been very very popular with the local volunteers and well-handled. He comes right up to people, loves being petted, but between the number of times I was picking him up to put him in a small space with a nervous nippy Trixie and then the five days I spent putting drops in his eyes three times a day after he scratched a cornea... He does not like being picked up and held, which saddens me since I was told that he used to be really placid about it -- his name at the sanctuary was Trance. Still, he and Trixie bonded quickly and she's learned from his example -- now I walk into the living room and both bunnies charge my ankles for petting.