Shepherd's Harvest Festival 2014

The Shepherd's Harvest Festival is an annual event held at the Washington County Fairgrounds near Lake Elmo, MN and I have gone for the last four years. It was me and my mom hitting the festival again this year. I like to get there when it opens on the first non-class day so I get to see the most amount of yarn and wares from the vendors. (Greedy little yarn diva that I am - I don't want to miss a thing with building up my yarn stash!) 

This year we decided to start in the last building first as that building tends to get high traffic and is hard to maneuver, and that is all because of the gentleman above who graciously welcomed me and my mom when we walked in the door. That is StevenBe who is also known as The Glitter Knitter and he is just the warmest, kindest person. He is doing a tour this summer across America with Stephen West and my head kind of explodes to even think of that level of awesome combining. (Ok - Enough with the fan girl!)

So the festival this year had three buildings set up for vendors rather than four, so it did feel a little scaled back to me. This is also the first year that they charged for entry, so I thought that was interesting. Frankly I think they should have charged all along as it is such a wonderful festival, and anything that they can do to sustain it is good with me!

There were spinners here and there, like this gentleman from the Blackberry Hills booth. So fun to watch! This was a busy booth and is you can see behind where he is spinning, they had some gorgeous handmade shawls for sale along with their other items. The shawls were just beautiful!

This is another example of a vendor booth. So much yarn and fiber goodness! This was at the entrance to one of the buildings and had great light and you pretty much just walked right in to an explosion of color and fiber fun when you walked into the building. So awesome.

Although I am not much for fleece, I do appreciate what it gets turned into, so that makes me like the fleece even if I have no use for it. (I WILL NOT SPIN! If I keep saying that it will be true, right?) It was pretty much impossible to walk buy a bag of fleece and not plunge your hands into it.

Here is a picture of me holding the reins of Lonnie the Llama. Lonnie is about 8 years old according to his human and he was so majestic. We were walking across the fair grounds and I spotted him and had to go meet him. My mom snapped this shot of me grinning wildly up at Lonnie. I just wanted to hug him and take him home!

After meeting Lonnie we headed over to the critter barn and got to see some llama's and alpaca's. It is always so fun to get up close to these guys and see them in touching distance.

 

Next we were off to the Sheep shearing which was just impressive. This gentleman can shear a sheep in no time and we watched him shear several breeds of sheep and learned a lot about the sheep as well.  Really neat!

So I managed to control my splurging this year better than years past. This is the haul I came home with. Some ridiculously reduced price yarns at one booth - like the Boku and the Nashua yarn. The white skeins are 100% alpaca from a vendor that I search out for at this festival every year. Really nice guy and the yarn is like touching heaven. Am quite pleased with my stash enhancements this year and also proud that I controlled myself a little bit.

My other bit of wonderful I picked up is this mug. Both me and my mom got the same mug and I use it all the time. It makes me smile every time I see it and it's just a fun addition to my festival memories.

All in all it was just a wonderful time. I love going to this festival and it was great fun spending the day with my mom and touching fiber and talking yarn and eating deep fried egg roles while sitting in the grass and watching the people with all their hand knit items being worn (quite a fashion show!) while they walked the fair grounds. I look forward to this every year and it's just something special.

Shepard's Harvest Festival, Part 2

For my Part 2 post on the Shepard's Harvest Sheep & Wool Festival I thought I would share some animal pictures from the festival. But not quite yurt. First - A photo of a YURT!

I decided not to wonder in (Lots of people and a little warm out) but I did admire the yurt and the awesome Spinning Wheel. Even more intriguing to me was the the loom in the shape of a giant triangle. This is a Shawl Loom and the lady working it said she can get a giant shawl in just an hour or two! Amazing! I found a link to Triangle Shawl Looms here if you want more info. I find it fascinating! (Can you imagine the stash busting possibilities??!)

In one of the main buildings they had several tables set up with different breeds of Bunnies on the tables and nice cards that told you what breed the bunny was and what it produces for fiber, etc. They were all just so squishy and wonderful! Just wanted to go give them all a big squeeze!

A Trio of pretty Alpaca. They are so cute! They really curled up together a lot and would spend a lot of time moving away from the hands reaching out to touch. They are such sweet critters! In the background you can see some shawls hanging and some art work on display. Everywhere you looked here there was something else to draw your attention. It was fantastic!

It seemed there were a lot more llama in the barn when I went through than alpaca. These guys seemed to pose for me as I snapped my photo. They have such pretty eyes and expressive ears!

I borrowed my hubbies camera for the day and his camera makes a shutter noise when you snap a picture. This guys/girls (not sure of the sex) ears would come up AFTER each shot. Like they were wondering what that sound was. It was funny. Around my 4th picture the lady standing next to me started to laugh.

You got to love how proud this one looks even though some of it's lovely locks have been shorn. Behind him you can see the thin neck and cute head of it's neighbor who got shorn up to the head. I think they are so endearing when they are shaved and have these long scrawny necks. Just pen after pen of cute and funny.

And lastly for this post, a shot of the human animals walking around the pens. This is half of the barn - meaning there was another aisle just like this on the other side of the barn. There were a few critters I did not get to take pictures of as I couldn't get very close. The baby lambs had a big crowd around them of course!

Stay tuned for Part 3 of the Shepard's Harvest Festival post were I will show off my haul!