handmade by stefanie

On Saturday, I headed up to the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival with my pal Lauren and my husband Tyler (who was our official photographer - you can see all of his photos here !). This is my second time attending, and it's always worth the drive up north. It was fairly hot for most of the day, but that didn't seem to deter anyone. There was a pretty good crowd on Saturday! There was plenty of temptation - so much wool to squish! I'm in heaven! Amazingly, enough, I managed to only come home with spinning fiber. With SOAR next month and VK Live in November, I've got to pace myself! I think I did a pretty good job. My first purchase was 8 oz. of undyed Organic Polwarth from Gale's Art (click  here  to view her Etsy shop) which I might try dyeing as roving before I spin it up: After surveying both vendor buildings, I decided to head back to the Hearthside Fibers booth (click here  to view their Etsy shop), which had some lovely breed-specific ...

Note: I do realize it's not Saturday today! This was the post I wrote yesterday before my internet connection went haywire. I decided to take my Ladybug out to the back porch to spin up my Wensleydale top, and now that my internet connection has mysteriously righted itself, I am sharing this post today!  I'm still spinning up a storm! This week, I pulled out two fibers from my stash: the first, 5 oz. Finn top from Spunky Eclectic in natural cream that I've had in my fiber stash for several years; the second, a braid of very pretty hand-dyed Wensleydale roving from Northbound Knitting , which I purchased earlier this year. I thought it might be interesting to spin singles from both of these fibers and ply them together, but a lot of that depends on how the Wensleydale spins up. The Finn (also known as Finnish Landrace or Finnsheep) was surprisingly lofty - you can't really see the halo in the photo below, but trust me, it's there! It was really a dream...

Breaking news in the world of Craftsy Deals - these Lantern Moon Cool Sheep kits  (shown below in black , also available here in white!) are a-dor-able! Looks like there aren't very many left - but I think they'd make a great gift!

Some friends and I went to the Walworth County Fair yesterday - I spent lots of time petting sheep and goats, but there was also a considerable amount of fried food consumed.  Here are the highlights - you can view the entire album here !