Kid 'n' Ewe

Thanks for all the well wishes about the bar, everyone! I was so relieved to find out that I passed. I wasn't terribly nervous before I checked the results, but afterwards my legs were ridiculously trembly for maybe an hour. Whew!

To celebrate, GPG took me out to a great dinner on Saturday, and yesterday my judge brought a bottle of champagne to work (my co-clerk passed the NY bar, so we had two bar exams to celebrate). It's definitely been a good week!

Kid 'n' Ewe now seems like a long time ago, but I wanted to share a couple pictures from our trip to Boerne. GPG took all of them (I didn't even bring my camera!), so there were hardly any yarn pictures to choose from. But I think he probably captured most of the interesting non-yarn things at the festival.

When we first arrived, we ran into a woman selling angora rabbits. They were very cute and incredibly soft. I think the one below is an English rabbit. If I recall correctly, the French ones have furry ears. (I think the French ones are cuter, but GPG didn't get a photo of those.)


The woman told us that when it's hot, the rabbits will sometimes get "summer ears"--the tips of their ears will droop, like you see in so many cartoon renderings of the Easter Bunny and other rabbits. The ears won't necessarily perk up again once it gets cold--they may be permanently droopy! I thought that was interesting.

There were also alpacas out back:


These were a lot of fun. They were small--shorter than I am--but their fleece was beautiful. Your hand sunk deep into the fleece when you petted them; I was surprised how thick and lofty their wool was. And the owner of this alpaca transported it in his minivan! When he has to take one or two of them somewhere, he just takes out the seats in the back and lays down some tarp, and in go the alpacas.

And here is a photo of some of the beautiful Brooks Farm yarn. They had a huge display of all their yarns, in a myriad of colors. It was total sensory overload to wander through the hanks and feel the yarns and look at the colors. They make some gorgeous stuff!


Some day I'll make something out of Brooks Farm yarn . . . just not now. GPG and our small apartment thank me for not adding to the size of the stash.

There were lots of classes and demonstrations going on at the festival--lots of spinners and knitters all over the place--but the most interesting demonstration we saw was a woman making lace. I had never seen this kind of fiber art before, and it was astounding. The woman had a cushion on a little table set before her, and on the cushion was a strip of paper (or some thin synthetic material) that had the pattern printed on it. She had probably twenty bobbins or so of thin, thin thread, and was weaving the thread into lace by overlapping bobbins and twisting the thread according to the pattern.


The multitude of pins you see stuck into the cushion helped secure the threads, and every now and then she'd take a pin from the "back" of the lace--the finished part--and move it to the "front" to help mark out the pattern for the part she was currently weaving. It was amazing.

The lace maker told us that this particular lace would make up a wedding garter for a relative. She said that it takes her an HOUR to make one inch of lace--and I have the feeling that she's as close as you can get to an expert. She was really flipping those bobbins around like it was nothing. And I thought knitting was time-consuming! I can only imagine how long it would take a beginner to make something like this.

I have no desire to learn something as intricate as this fiber art, but . . . at least the lace stash wouldn't take up much space, you know? (Hee.) And there's no denying that anything you made would really be an heirloom piece, something the recipient would keep with his or her most precious treasures.

Anyway, that was our trip to Kid 'n' Ewe 2007. It was a lot of fun! We definitely saw lots of interesting things.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving!!!