Michigan Fiber Festival
Last weekend I traveled to the Michigan Fiber Festival to pick up my roving from the Wooly Knob guys who were vending there. The Fiber Festival in Michigan is slightly closer than the mill in Indiana, and it also gave me chance to see the festival and visit my friend Kila in her shiny new house.
I had a last minute passenger...
Here is Bella-the-lamb looking very confused and not too happy to be leaving her friends. I decided to drive my small SUV rather than the pick up because it gets much better gas mileage. Also this allowed Bella to stay cool and I could drive during the day instead of at night.
Despite the fact that I clearly state on my website that do not deliver lambs / sheep, I ended up taking Bella to my friend's house and the buyer met me there. (If I did deliver sheep / lambs, I would have to charge way more for them since I sell small numbers of animals, so the price of the gas and wear on my car cannot be spread over the cost of each animal.) We will say that this is the exception that proves the rule.
Bella's buyer in northern Michigan had planned to take her home via the new quicker car ferry that goes across Lake Michigan. When when she called for the schedule and details, she found out that you cannot transport a lamb on the car ferry, even if it is in a dog crate and has a health certificate from a vet (required by USDA for transporting sheep across state lines). You can take a cat or a dog, but not a lamb. Perhaps it is the reputation that lambs have for randomly attacking members of the general public, going straight for the jugular.
The really stupid thing is that, according to the buyer, while the humans must shut off their car and to sit in the passenger area (I knew that), the cat or dog must remain in the car with the doors and windows closed. Given that this is a ride of at least a few hours and the ferry doesn't run in the winter months, how practical is that? You would kill your animal from heat stroke. I have never taken either of the ferries because I live too far south in Wisconsin to be near them and when I go to Michigan it isn't to the far northern part. Plus they are incredibly expensive. From here, it is cheaper (but less fun and certainly less relaxing) to drive around the lake.
Fortunately for the buyer, the guys at Wooly Knob got my roving done at just the right time, so I was going to Michigan anyway. Otherwise, I might have been forced to keep Bella for myself!! She is one of the prettiest lambs we have ever had and the only reason I sold her is that she is very related to the rest of my sheep.
The trip started out a little rocky, as initially Bella was sure she could escape by leaping out of the pen (through the roof of the car) or out the back window (through a metal pen and glass) to return to the farm and be reunited with her friends. I ended up putting one of my small shade tarps around the back half of the pen so that she couldn't see out the back window. Once she could only see out the front, where I was sitting, and a bit out the sides, she gave up her thoughts of suicide. It just made the drive seem a little longer as the trip became an exercise in using my side view mirrors.
Bella only baa-ed and tried to dig her way out for the first 90 minutes, and she finally decided to take a nap at the Indiana state line. She slept from Hammond, Indiana to Kalamazoo, Michigan at which time she had decided she was done with all this driving stuff and would like to be done. She expressed this opinion by peeing and pooping frequently. (Fortunately the layers of plastic under the pen worked very well and the straw soaked most of it up.) The buyer was waiting at my friend's house and we transferred the lamb into the back of her truck, where she seemed quite calm, being the experienced world traveler by this point. She had a tiny boo-boo on the top her head from the initial suicide attempts but was otherwise no worse for wear.
On Saturday, Kila and I went to the Michigan Fiber Festival at the Allegan County Fairgrounds in Allegan, Michigan which I have always been interested in but never attended. In addition to the usual offerings of "fair food" like lemon shake-ups, hamburgers, hot dogs and elephant ears, there was also...
a display of vintage tractors...
and a fiber rabbit "fun show" (not sanctioned by ARBA).
Most of the rabbits they had there were French Angoras or French Angora Crosses. (French Angoras do not have any wool on their face or ears, so their head looks like a regular rabbit. Their wool is characterized by spiky looking guard hairs which also stick out of the yarn when it is spun.)
There was one purebred German Angora who was a "junior" (under 6 months). Although French angora is my second favorite to spin (after German Angora) and there were many rabbits there for sale, I didn't find any that I thought were as beautiful as my rabbit "Kohl". (I might be a little biased.) So I wasn't tempted to add to my rabbit "flock" which was a good thing.
I thought that this little guy was pretty appealing though.
This is Lisa, the rabbit judge. She breeds Jersey Woolies. There weren't any Jersey Woolies entered in this show though. The white thing on the right is where they place the rabbits waiting their turn to be judged one particular class. Maybe at a sanctioned show the rabbits have a better sit-stay?? At this one, the rabbits would sit for a while and then hop out onto the table. It was quite interesting to watch the judge evaluate one rabbit while simultaneously putting the escapees back in their little compartments. She had a couple of "bunny wranglers" helping her also.
In the French Angoras, she seemed to be evaluating which ones had a balance of undercoat and the spiky guard hairs. She would also gently blow into the coat to see how thick the coat was (so she didn't see a lot of skin). She seemed to like it when their butts were sort of rounded, but didn't seem to rate that as highly as the coat since it was a fiber show. Because this was only a "fun show" she was able to tell the audience what she was thinking about each rabbit. She was very calm about handling each rabbit and the rabbits didn't seem to mind any of it.
Last but not least, there was quite a lot of available shopping. I feel that I was very, very good and did not go crazy. I bought a festival t-shirt (for my collection of every fiber festival I have attended except for one where they ran out early), a couple of bars of homemade soap, a very small print of Great Pyrenees puppies made from an original by Joan Arnold of Ohio, a handmade basket (which was just too pretty to resist) and a small knitting pattern book called Season's Change by Dina Mor which contains a shawl pattern called the Oblique Edged Shawl that I think I might need to attempt if I can ever tear myself away from sock knitting.
I did not bring home any fiber...
except for my own which filled the entire back of my truck. Thank goodness they vacuum packed a bunch and sealed them into two boxes (a medium box and a huge box) to prevent the air from coming back in. I still need to weigh it all and figure out my costs, so I will know what the price needs to be. It looks beautiful though.
I had a last minute passenger...
Here is Bella-the-lamb looking very confused and not too happy to be leaving her friends. I decided to drive my small SUV rather than the pick up because it gets much better gas mileage. Also this allowed Bella to stay cool and I could drive during the day instead of at night.
Despite the fact that I clearly state on my website that do not deliver lambs / sheep, I ended up taking Bella to my friend's house and the buyer met me there. (If I did deliver sheep / lambs, I would have to charge way more for them since I sell small numbers of animals, so the price of the gas and wear on my car cannot be spread over the cost of each animal.) We will say that this is the exception that proves the rule.
Bella's buyer in northern Michigan had planned to take her home via the new quicker car ferry that goes across Lake Michigan. When when she called for the schedule and details, she found out that you cannot transport a lamb on the car ferry, even if it is in a dog crate and has a health certificate from a vet (required by USDA for transporting sheep across state lines). You can take a cat or a dog, but not a lamb. Perhaps it is the reputation that lambs have for randomly attacking members of the general public, going straight for the jugular.
The really stupid thing is that, according to the buyer, while the humans must shut off their car and to sit in the passenger area (I knew that), the cat or dog must remain in the car with the doors and windows closed. Given that this is a ride of at least a few hours and the ferry doesn't run in the winter months, how practical is that? You would kill your animal from heat stroke. I have never taken either of the ferries because I live too far south in Wisconsin to be near them and when I go to Michigan it isn't to the far northern part. Plus they are incredibly expensive. From here, it is cheaper (but less fun and certainly less relaxing) to drive around the lake.
Fortunately for the buyer, the guys at Wooly Knob got my roving done at just the right time, so I was going to Michigan anyway. Otherwise, I might have been forced to keep Bella for myself!! She is one of the prettiest lambs we have ever had and the only reason I sold her is that she is very related to the rest of my sheep.
The trip started out a little rocky, as initially Bella was sure she could escape by leaping out of the pen (through the roof of the car) or out the back window (through a metal pen and glass) to return to the farm and be reunited with her friends. I ended up putting one of my small shade tarps around the back half of the pen so that she couldn't see out the back window. Once she could only see out the front, where I was sitting, and a bit out the sides, she gave up her thoughts of suicide. It just made the drive seem a little longer as the trip became an exercise in using my side view mirrors.
Bella only baa-ed and tried to dig her way out for the first 90 minutes, and she finally decided to take a nap at the Indiana state line. She slept from Hammond, Indiana to Kalamazoo, Michigan at which time she had decided she was done with all this driving stuff and would like to be done. She expressed this opinion by peeing and pooping frequently. (Fortunately the layers of plastic under the pen worked very well and the straw soaked most of it up.) The buyer was waiting at my friend's house and we transferred the lamb into the back of her truck, where she seemed quite calm, being the experienced world traveler by this point. She had a tiny boo-boo on the top her head from the initial suicide attempts but was otherwise no worse for wear.
On Saturday, Kila and I went to the Michigan Fiber Festival at the Allegan County Fairgrounds in Allegan, Michigan which I have always been interested in but never attended. In addition to the usual offerings of "fair food" like lemon shake-ups, hamburgers, hot dogs and elephant ears, there was also...
a display of vintage tractors...
and a fiber rabbit "fun show" (not sanctioned by ARBA).
Most of the rabbits they had there were French Angoras or French Angora Crosses. (French Angoras do not have any wool on their face or ears, so their head looks like a regular rabbit. Their wool is characterized by spiky looking guard hairs which also stick out of the yarn when it is spun.)
There was one purebred German Angora who was a "junior" (under 6 months). Although French angora is my second favorite to spin (after German Angora) and there were many rabbits there for sale, I didn't find any that I thought were as beautiful as my rabbit "Kohl". (I might be a little biased.) So I wasn't tempted to add to my rabbit "flock" which was a good thing.
I thought that this little guy was pretty appealing though.
This is Lisa, the rabbit judge. She breeds Jersey Woolies. There weren't any Jersey Woolies entered in this show though. The white thing on the right is where they place the rabbits waiting their turn to be judged one particular class. Maybe at a sanctioned show the rabbits have a better sit-stay?? At this one, the rabbits would sit for a while and then hop out onto the table. It was quite interesting to watch the judge evaluate one rabbit while simultaneously putting the escapees back in their little compartments. She had a couple of "bunny wranglers" helping her also.
In the French Angoras, she seemed to be evaluating which ones had a balance of undercoat and the spiky guard hairs. She would also gently blow into the coat to see how thick the coat was (so she didn't see a lot of skin). She seemed to like it when their butts were sort of rounded, but didn't seem to rate that as highly as the coat since it was a fiber show. Because this was only a "fun show" she was able to tell the audience what she was thinking about each rabbit. She was very calm about handling each rabbit and the rabbits didn't seem to mind any of it.
Last but not least, there was quite a lot of available shopping. I feel that I was very, very good and did not go crazy. I bought a festival t-shirt (for my collection of every fiber festival I have attended except for one where they ran out early), a couple of bars of homemade soap, a very small print of Great Pyrenees puppies made from an original by Joan Arnold of Ohio, a handmade basket (which was just too pretty to resist) and a small knitting pattern book called Season's Change by Dina Mor which contains a shawl pattern called the Oblique Edged Shawl that I think I might need to attempt if I can ever tear myself away from sock knitting.
I did not bring home any fiber...
except for my own which filled the entire back of my truck. Thank goodness they vacuum packed a bunch and sealed them into two boxes (a medium box and a huge box) to prevent the air from coming back in. I still need to weigh it all and figure out my costs, so I will know what the price needs to be. It looks beautiful though.
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