Bahhhhhhh....Ram.....& you!

I'd done this sort of thing before...travelling someplace I had never been to learn about something I knew little to nothing about. It's a pattern with me. Some might say... a sickness not unlike my overuse of ellipses.

This time, I was to board a bus from from somewhere inside Philadelphia which was bound for a destination somewhere outside Baltimore for the purpose of attending a Sheep and Wool Festival.

What 's a sheep and wool festival? I'm glad you asked. It's sort of like a mass introduction of one group of people - The producers of yarn and yarn-related anythings with their equal and opposite counterparts - the people who wish to buy them.

As with anything, there are some who would consider the prospect of a Sheep and Wool Festival to be oxymoronic at best (the OAB's) and others who get very, very exited about it (the VVE's) I was about to board a bus with 100 VVE's followed closely by another 100 in seperate bus, all setting sail from one little yarn shop.

Even odder, to the OAB's is the fact that we must have leapfrogged 10 other buses full of VVE's on the way down. Since I'm not a spinner or a knitter, most of the conversation was foreign to me so I kept quiet except for an occasional expletive when I dropped my hook and a thank you when it was returned to me.

I did manage to ask someone if that was a Mike-n-Ike under their seat or did they lose a needle covery thing. It was a Mike-n-Ike.

Anyway, the event.

I go to these sorts of things to learn stuff, but also to reconnect myself with humanity at large and to remind myself that no, I am neither the most fashion challenged person on the planet, nor the oddest looking one.

Everyone except me, it would seem, had something that they had created on or about their persons. There were sweaters, tops, shawls, belts, headbands, headwraps, skirts, bags, swaddling clothes, you name it.

To me, it was like walking the streets of a bazaar in a country I had never been to. Constant chatter hummed around me broken only by the occasional MMMMMMBLEEEEEAAAAAGGGHHH of a sheep or ram. (Ram, by the way, have freakishly large testicles. I'm pretty sure that a hollowed out sheep nut could house an Indonesian family.)

There were shouts of glee at the prices a particular yarn hawker was offering. There were shouts of recognition as old friends and cyber-friends recognized each other across paddocks. There were shouts of "Oh, crap!" as those distracted by all the colorful string walked right into fresh piles of sheep poop.

What stuck me most is that fiber artists are such a diverse group that we cannot be stereotyped. The common images of the crunchy patchouli-soaked weaver or the knitter with as many cats as grandchildren just don't hold up.

We come in as many colors and weights and fibers as there were yarns available at this gig and we do just about as many things with it all. As for me, I took some time to see all this through my camera lens and then set about doing some shopping.

Most notable of my purchases is a skein of "naked" wool yarn for the purpose of dyeing it myself with Kool-Aid. Apparently it's not just for deranged cult leaders anymore!

I also came home with a sunburn that looked not unlike a yoke around my neck, but that's alright. I have bigger worries...most importantly, how I can get a note to the U.N. about having solved the world housing crisis through sheep testicle technology.

You can see some pictures, here. http://www.flickr.com/photos/bean_sidhe/?savedsettings=2465624787#photo2465624787

Of the event, not the ram balls.