What a full weekend! We set up our booth at the Black Sheep Gathering on Thursday. On Friday I was in the booth for the day while Jeff and Bracken had adventures of their own. Jeff usually stays in the booth while I’m with Bracken and it’s fun when we change roles for a day. We get a deeper appreciation for what the other does, and Bracken was SO happy to have a day with his dad all to himself. In between helping customers I was tying buttons on cards like crazy. We finally did get all the buttons tied on cards and what a good feeling that was!

It was the first time we put up our new banner on our booth (the one that didn’t arrive in time for the Mother Earth News Fair.) When we first got the banner we couldn’t believe how huge it was and thought it must have been a mistake, but when we looked it up realized we had indeed ordered that size (the only size that was long enough for our booth.) It is very large, but it helps people find our booth easily. You certainly can’t miss it!

It was such a whirlwind as we prepared for the festival: getting our display ready, packing things up (while continually remembering more things we needed to bring), and getting all our making wrapped up. Our friend found us a secondhand tabletop display for our buttons, which I was excited about. It was black and inspired us to spray paint our other stand up turning displays (that had previously been white) black as well. For one, we wanted all of our displays to match, but we also like the way our buttons look with the black display stands so much better.

I had the pleasure of meeting my friend Annie Claire in person. We’ve been in touch online and collaborated on a knitting pattern she released (more on that later) and I was already fond of her through our communications, but getting to actually meet her in person was a real treat. And I loved meeting her darling daughter. They felt like instant kindred spirits.

On Sunday my dad and stepmom drove up from southern Oregon to visit us at the Black Sheep Gathering. I went to my self-defense class that morning because they switched the day to Sunday and I’m hardly ever in town on Sundays, so hadn’t been there in a long time. My dad came at the end so I could show him where our self-defense classes are held and also so I could introduce him to the gal who started it. Once upon a time he taught self-defense classes for women and I’m proud of him, so I might have bragged about him a little.

We walked all around looking at the booths and went to the other building to visit the animals. Bracken got to feed an alpaca a carrot a few times while we were there. We felt the bags of fiber and I learned a lot more about alpacas, and now know there are different breeds. (My dad and stepmom have Suris.) It’s challenging to take pictures inside the large building where our booth was (natural lighting is so much easier), but I wanted to give you a peek at the festival. I could have stayed in Brooke’s booth, Sincere Sheep, for hours. I’m amazed at all the colors she gets with natural dyes, each and every skein is gorgeous.

It was great that Bracken had his grandpa and grandma visiting on the third day because I think he was feeling a bit exhausted and well, done by that point. Having them there to play with made all the difference. And I can’t say how grateful we were to have the extra hands to pack out at the end of the day! We weren’t able to fit our dolly in our car this time because it was too full with other things and we had to carry out every bit of our display. It would have taken Jeff and I a long time to do that just the two of us, but with their help we were able to pack up in record time. And what better way to celebrate the end of a great weekend than with ice cream? Yes, Vanilla Jill’s was an essential stop before we headed home.

Being at the Black Sheep Gathering all those days, surrounded by so much yarn and spotting lovely hand knits on so many people walking by, inspired me to get back knitting. I haven’t been knitting much lately because my hands have been busy with tying buttons on cards nonstop. As soon as we got home though, before I’d even gotten everything unpacked, I pulled out my yarn bin, added a few new skeins to it (yay!), and picked up some knitting projects. I’m knitting once again and have so many projects dancing around in my head. Never mind it’s summer now, I’ll knit with wool any time of year.