Wool Gathering

I imagine that the telepathic message the border collie was sending the sheep went something like, "I eat you, you don't move, you stupid, omnomnom,"  or "I am wolf in bunny clothing, hurry to safety of blond lady."  This dog got a lot of applause.  Not all dogs can move so many sheep at such a distance so adroitly.
 
The image is deceptive though.  I "photo shopped" it.  Well, truthfully I used my much cheaper and easier to use program, Paint Shop Pro so it's not technically photo shopped, but then that border collie on the left isn't technically that close to the sheep.  With your mind's eye, double the width of the picture and put the Border Collie on the far left edge.  Yep, that dog was a good 50 to 100 yards away from the sheep while willing them into the pen.  

The dog's blond handler on the right of the picture also technically has a face, but I didn't technically ask her if I could use this picture on my blog so I smudged her at the same time that I moved the dog closer to the sheep.  No offense lady, just protecting your privacy.  You have a genius dog though.

I took a few pictures at the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival, but I won't be posting them all today.  Some will be going up over the next couple of weeks, others will pop up when you least expect them.

I'm bummed.  I didn't get to take a class I really wanted to take.  It was cancelled day before yesterday. I was so looking forward to meeting Jacey Boggs and learning her technique on slub and coils that I took a whole day off work. Anyone who knows me understands that I only take off a whole day's work for amputations and/or oral surgery.  

BUT, I did get great roving and a new and necessary tool.  So I'm not TOTALLY bummed. 

I've been wanting a smaller niddy-noddy for taking off novelty and art yarns as I make them.  Nels Wiberg, inventor of my favorite spinning wheel, makes a little one-yard niddy-noddy out of PVC and it's less than $10.  I also picked up two large balls of dark brown jacob roving for $4 each, and a 1.5 oz. ball of Cormo Sheep's Wool blended with Angora Bunny.  

Prairie Moonrise Farm out of Minnesota had Bunny Fur for sale at $6 an ounce and they had it in those clear plastic take-away containers ... the kind that hold a full sized meal.  You know the size I mean, the size that is contributing to the obesity of this nation?  That size.  

I'm hoping they start selling it on the internet soon because I keep stopping and getting up  from the computer to go over and touch the roving.  Wool from a sheep whose daddy was a corridale and whose mama was merino all carded up with fluffy bunny.   It's something.

 $6 an ounce may sound expensive, but there is a LOT bunny fluff in an ounce.  

Finally, I ran into one of the owners of Argyle Fiber Mill.  I've been wanting to visit them for some time because they're an honest to goodness fiber mill in South Central Wisconsin that processes local wool.  50 Mile Fiber is what they call it.  They also hold what sounds like absolutely hilarious and fun knitting get-togethers at their mill.   Who knows ... maybe they'll let me take pictures.  

I'll be posting again later in the week as I finalize some designs I've been working on for the Drooling Crumb-Crusher Line of Halloween Haute Couture.  I have a model lined up for the "Punk" and "Li'l Punk N Head" Halloween hats but the "Li'L Shoggoth" hat is giving me problems.  Making a three dimensional static representation of ... a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us ... particularly one that people might actually buy to put on their 6-month-old's head, has proved to be challenging.  

How's that for a convoluted Lovecraftian sentence married to an gross understatement?  Until later this week ...