Estes Park Wool Festival 2009

Jaime and I had a super fantastic time in Estes Park last weekend at the Wool Festival! We were real excited about cuddling with all the adorable animals and checking out all the locally produced goods.

The Angora rabbits were first on our cuddle list. They were irresistible! We ended up buying a few bags of fairy-soft angora fluff from Woodlake Woolies. We hope to bring some of their angora fiber into our fiber loft soon!

Next stop--cute goats! Or could they be baby unicorns? Look at how pastoral they are with their curly locks and magical baby faces!

The highlight of the trip was being reunited with our favorite lamb, Diamond Lil. First we had to fight our way through crowds of her admirers.

We were lucky enough to be asked by our friends Peg and Woody to lamb-sit Diamond Lil' while they showed their Shetlands. Lil' was getting really sleepy in our laps watching the show. She was a little bigger, but she was still the smallest, cuddliest lamb in the barn!

We were super excited about the presence of Gotland sheep at this year's wool market. Gotlands are an ancient Swedish breed of sheep who were made famous by the Lord of the Rings films - it was Gotland wool that was used to make all of the Elvin invisibility cloaks. There are very few Gotlands here in the US (mostly they live in New Zealand today) so we were super-lucky to meet them. They were so pretty with their lustrous grey locks! Jaime and I acquired some sweet Oregon-made Gotland yarn and Jaime is already planning her invisibility cloak-lette. We hope to stock some Gotland yarn and roving soon for all of your Elvin needs. Nerd alert!

Here are some other highlights from the animal side of the festival - from top left moving clockwise: a Jacob sheep with totally sweet horns, a sleepy Wensleydale sheep, the leaping llama competition, a close up of Diamond Lil's adorable wool, the craziness of showing 7 Shetland lambs, and a freaked out Wensleydale!

Of course we had to visit the vendor barn - this is where you can buy everything from a whole fleece to hand-carved drop spindles. One of our favorite booths at the wool fest is Stephania's naturally hand-dyed rovings and yarns. Jaime had a tough time deciding, but ended up choosing a really pretty madder and tesu flower dyed corriedale.

Thanks Estes! We've got our fiber fix for the summer!