Lambtown

Some weekends there are just too many fun things to do. Recently Full Belly Farm hosted Hoesdown, a harvest celebration, on the same weekend as Dixon had Lambtown, a celebration of the sheep industry (and Calpaca joined in with an alpaca show) and San Francisco had Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a big free music festival in Golden Gate Park.

I spent Saturday at Lambtown. I'd meant to just go for a short time, dash in, say hi to my friends in the sheep to shawl competition, say hi to Bruce and Joan and their alpacas and restock my mohair supply. But Lambtown has gotten big. Dixon is a small town of about 18000, close to Davis, and Lambtown used to be this little event where they shut down a few blocks in the center of town and had a lamb cook off on the street with some vendors and a few people demonstrating spinning and weaving in a not very large room. Now it's at the fairgrounds and there is a giant warehouse full of people selling fiber arts related things and supplies, there's a long walkway lined with vendors, everything from people selling wool and knitting needles, to sunglasses and bonsai. There was a lot to see.

I was wondering how to find Ah...Sweet Alpacas when I ran into Bruce walking Phantom around to garner interest in the alpacas which were tucked away in a corner of the fairgrounds. I got to show Bruce and Joan the finished yarn that I'd started at their farm. Meanwhile, my old sheep-to-shawl team of the Silverado Guild made a beautiful lacy shawl out of wool and alpaca to win the competition and after the excitement was over, I was able to visit with some folks I hadn't seen for a while. I ran into three ladies from Anne's Web, the spinning guild in Salinas that was one of my favorite things about being in that area. We had a good fibery talk while we waited and waited and waited for the wool show to finish their judging so we could buy fleeces.

My goal had been to buy a kid mohair fleece and knitting needles for the rose-grey alpaca shawl and nothing more. There were so many tempting things, so setting myself a goal was really wise. But the farm where I'd been hoping to buy mohair brought fleeces for the show, but didn't have a booth and I was about to give up when my friend Vera found some gorgeously silky kid mohair from Janet Heppler's Nebo Rock Ranch. It was a small fleece, so I bought it. Then the wool show sale opened and I ended up buying the first place mohair fleece from Eureka Mohair, the farm I'd been looking for (and I think it's the ranch that produced the first mohair I ever bought, a batt of natural red yearling). That kid must be enjoying life, lots of dirt and vegetable matter, but the curl and shine are amazing.

Here's a photo of some Eureka Mohair Farm kid mohair in a new bag I sewed to store the picked locks: