wool festival

Finally! The last of this week's catch up posts. Hopefully I can figure out a way to blog about all the fun, educational opportunities we keep coming across in a more timely manner so nobody has to wade through acres of posts! But, in the meantime, keep scrolling down and reading to find out about the rest of our adventures this past week!

Saturday we took the kids to a local sheep and wool festival. Here is J, the Llama, ready to learn how wool goes from a fiber animal and eventually becomes a sweater (or a hat, or a purse, or a felted toy....)

Zoo Boy (in the front in the blue) checks out some 4-H sheep. Both boys were really interested in both the sheep and how that wool growing on them gets removed and processed into usable things. Even though they are growing up on a sheep farm, our current flock are hair sheep, which means they don't produce any wool, so this was the first chance for the boys to really see this side of shepherding.

Zoo Boy finds a good perch to watch the sheep shearing. The Map Man and I have decided to buy the boys their own wool lamb this year so that they can explore the entire process themselves. At one time I ran a small cottage industry selling wool from our sheep (and rabbits), but we disbanded the business when the kids were born (just too many strains on our time). But I've always planned to get back to it someday, and this seems like a fine time to at least introduce the kids to one of the coolest things going -- growing and eventually wearing your own wool!

One of the sheep being sheared. After watching the wool being removed, we watched some people carding wool, then the spinners turning it to yarn, and also plying it. We then visited various people throughout the festival who were dyeing, knitting, crocheting, weaving, and felting. By the time we were done, we'd seen just about every way of using wool imaginable! The kids were interested throughout.

Of course, their favorite part of the day were the ox cart rides! But we're not buying them a team of oxen. Well, at least not this year....