We’re back from the weekend of travel to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, and a wonderful weekend with spinning friends!

First, I’ll report on the fair, I suppose. It was a bit of a disappointment to hubby and I. The fairgrounds were unbearably crowded on Saturday, the food was not great and was overpriced–2 lamb gyros, a sandwich, tiny chili and a lemonade was $36–and I’m a carnivore, but would it kill vendors to offer a salad or some fruit, really? They had lamb served 56 ways–I felt like Bubba from Forrest Gump “….lamb stew, lamb gyro, lamb kabob, lamb chili, roast lamb, bbq lamb…” you get the picture. The food, drink and bathroom lines were long, there was nowhere to sit out of the hot sun, and little A and I nearly got trampled to death trying to buy a T-shirt, a sport I abandoned quickly when a woman in front of us got pushed to the ground and nobody came to help her. This fair has most definitely outgrown it’s property and needs to either move on to a larger venue, charge admission to weed out people who are just trying to kill a day, or maybe make the vendors park off the fair grounds to free up some space. It was really unreasonable and uncomfortable and not at all family/kid friendly, imo. I plan to write a letter to the organizers about all this to let them know our impressions of the whole thing. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention hubby’s disappointment that the local traffic control police were deliberately making up some bs story of a horrible car accident “blocking the road in that direction” to make people go the way they wanted to (can you tell he didn’t follow their ‘orders’ to turn left out of the parking lot?)

On the other hand, the animal barns were great, vendors had beautiful things and were friendly and helpful, the spin-in on Saturday night was great fun! I did manage to add a pile of goodies to my spinning stash, and didn’t bring home any sheep, heh. When I get my tech hubby to figure out how I screwed up my ftp editor, I’ll add a photo of the goodies that I just had to bring home–yay–I finally got things fixed, here’s my photo:

I got two new Jumbo bobbins for my wheel, two ounces of mixed bright colors of Silk Noil for blending, rosy tussah silk roving, a bump of cormo roving in fall colors, a gorgeous mixed batt that I split with the enabler Angela, and a whole bunch of mohair and cotswold locks that were so gorgeous, brightly colored and ultra clean that I couldn’t resist, plus some silk hankies in orange and burgundy.

The best part of the trip was the excellent company of old spinning friends who I haven’t seen since October, and meeting new friends from my blog and internet travels, (though I’m sad to say that I missed some of you, unfortunately.) It was great to shop together, share spinning techniques and info., swap fiber at the spin-in, and stay up late chatting at the hotel. I made out like a bandit with extra fibers and goodies from Julie-Ann, Natasha, and Elizabeth, and will have to do some digging through my stash to make up some fun goodie packages to mail out soon!

We arrived home late Sunday after stopping several times with a sick kiddo in the car who ended up with a fever and nasty head cold on arrival home. Then there was the usual unbearable NY traffic; we sat on Staten Island for over an hour in traffic, only to find that 3 construction barrels were blocking off a lane for no reason–not even a pothole, aargh. I love NY, I swear it! All in all, we had a nice time, and I miss all of my spinning pals already and wish we lived closer. And so another weekend passes into history…