Yesterday was a truly fantastic day, and a much needed departure from the standard weekend activities. Maria had organized a bus to ship a bunch of us out to the Hallockville Museum in Long Island, which was hosting the Long Island Fleece and Fiber Fair. The morning started out for me when I woke up at 5:30am as the sun rose and then proceeded to sleep through my alarm at 7. In order to avoid being late, I took a cab and arrived early, giving me plenty of time to grab some coffee before the day started, fortunately, that was the end of the trouble for the day.
We arrived at the Hallockville Museum and as we got off the bus we all received goodies from Vogue Knitting, which included two of their recent magazines, and a very useful bag for holding squishy yarn shaped things. Even though it was a small fair as far as many fiber festivals go, there was more to do than we had time for. Maria and I took a first look through all of the vendors before catching Tabbethia, from the Long Island Livestock Company, doing the first shearing of the day. Tabbethia explained to us about shearing sheep, and her particular specialty, sheering llamas. She spent significantly more time explaining how she does it and how she got into her business than it actually took her to shear the sheep, she’s quick!
We met so many adorable animals, including angora bunnies, softest velvety rabbit, sheep, llamas, alpacas.
If Maria and I hadn’t been on a budget, we probably would have found a way to smuggle one of the alpacas that was for sale back onto the bus with us.
We also got to see Tabbethia’s husband Christopher, a farrier, shape and finnish a horseshoe from a standard iron bar. He travels to the farms that he shoes horses at, so his truck was set up to do everything he needed, complete with a propane oven that could reach exceedingly hot temperatures.
I managed to limit myself to two skeins, a gorgeous BFL sock yarn from Hampton Artistic Yarns, and the squishiest of Alpaca/Cormo yarns from Flatland Alpacas. I also got the Knit Notes designers notebook, which I saw on Sweatshop of Love a few weeks ago and fell in love with. I nearly got a braid of roving, because there were some truly gorgeous ones there, but I decided that I would save myself from falling down that slippery slope until after Maria teaches me how to spin, which she has promised to do this summer.
I hear that there’s going to be another bus next year, so I hope some of you decide to come with us, it was such a great trip!























