The festival, which I'd gone to once before, has all the usual fun wool festival things like sheepdog herding demonstrations and small ruminant lectures, as well as pens full of sheep, cashmere & mohair goats, alpacas, angora rabbits, and llamas. And they have loads and loads of vendors of beautiful yarn.
Since everything at this festival is tempting, I decided this year to stay away from the roving and just look at the prepared yarn. And, in particular, yarn that was unique, created by hand by small farmers and artisans in small quantities. I especially love it when the vendors have spun wool from their own animals and can tell you the animals' names.
I came away with some great stuff. Here's what I bought:
A beautiful charcoal gray and pale green hand-spun mohair yarn, variegated in both texture and color, from Dillner Hillside Farm. Two of their cute tiny goats were in a pen right next to their vendor tent.
Luigi's Locks from Yellow Dog Farm,
dyed an intense grassy green
Green & gray hand-spun mohair
from the Dillner Hillside Farm,
variegated in both color and texture
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Five vegetable-dyed sampler yarns from Tidal Yarn that I plan to use to practice tapestry weaving. The owner of Tidal Yarn says she gets her yarn from small New England sheep farms and dyes much of it using plants she grows in her own garden.
A bouclé mohair yarn called "Luigi's Locks" from Yellow Dog Farm. The fleece was specifically from Luigi the Goat, whose picture graces the label of the yarn. It is a FANTASTIC color of grass green with little streaks of yellow that the owner said that she had just dyed that week specifically for the show.
A beautiful hand-spun combination of jewel-toned pink, burgundy, and lime green from Wiseacres Farm. The vendor said people did seem to like her "crazy mixes" (of which this was one).I only wish I'd been able to have a little bit of everything. You can find a full vendor list here.
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| My haul from the 2015 VT Sheep & Wool Festival |
