the maryland lowdown

On the way to the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival last Friday, one of Secondo's friends texted him, asking him why he got to leave school early. (Bad grammar, I know, too tired to fix.) Secondo said he was going to a sheep and wool festival. When the friend replied, "What's that?" Secondo said he would have to try and explain it on Monday. It was just too difficult to cover in a text.

Indeed.

Same goes for my preparations, it seems, seeing that my last post was almost a week ago. I am dead tired from the weekend; a difficult trip down, a lingering cold and the excessive heat all weekend just sucked me dry. The easiest way to explain lack of posts seems to be a series of before and after posts.

Before packing a few pounds of dyed roving (from left to right: Pin Oak, Jersey Tomato, Hydrangea and Clematis):

After packing:

Boards before repair:

And after, thanks to my friend's loan of her laminating machine (it is my new favorite machine, almost displacing our crock pot in my affections)

Sample skeins of yarn (and roving needed for another skein) before being finished:

After, in their place in the breed display -- I spun four of the six skeins last week, the purple roving was plied with grey roving in the skein on the right:

Breed display before judging:

And after:

Yep, two ribbons. We won first in our division (wool breeds) and grand champion for all the breed displays there. Not too shabby for our first time at that festival and the best part of all: I have gotten the set-up down to a half-hour, thanks to the tinker-toy like arrangement of pvc piping augmented by zip ties. I am adding it to my list of things that I am good at that aren't worth a darn thing in real life.