A DK day

Last year, the first weekend in May was rainy and muddy, which made wandering around the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival rather a watery adventure. This year, it was hot and sunny.

I went on Saturday. I got to the fairgrounds at 8 in the morning. I've found this is a good time to arrive because there's not as much traffic, you can get a reasonably close parking space near the main gates, there's less of a crowd, and the morning air is cooler.

(You can click on the photos to embiggerate, BTW.)

My knitting group hosted a hospitality RV just outside the gates of the Howard County Fairgrounds:

Naturally, there were sheep:

And a friendly ram who loved being pet:

Alpacas:

Cute baby goats:

Oh, and yarn, of course:

Look at these huge spools!

Some wonderful fleeces:

Spinning wheels:

Some kind of loom:

And a yurt:

The guy who owns the yurt makes what I can only describe as paintings out of wool:

I saw a demonstration of his technique last year. He works with soaking wet wool to draw the image, and then felts it to get it all to stick together.

This was the line forming outside the Socks That Rock booth:

No lack of food choices:

This group played some great music:

The exhibition hall had some amazing things on display:

Two of the ladies in my knitting group, Denise and Dorothy, won ribbons for their entries!

This year's theme for my festival yarn buying was DK weight. I took four patterns with me, all of which required DK weight yarn, and I found what I wanted for three of them.

A garter stitch cardigan with a lace edging. The yarn is from Brooks Farm in Lancaster, Texas:

A vest. The yarn is from Shelridge Farm in Durham, Ontario. The colorway is called Azure:

A cropped sweater with ribbing that works up into a triangle on the front. This yarn is also from Shelridge Farm. The colorway is called Wine. Rarely do a I make a pattern in same color as shown in the prototype, but I loved the color:

Amazing that these vendors would travel all that way for this festival.

I think next year's yarn-buying theme will be sock yarn. I will definitely have knit down my stash of that by next May.