Roo, roo, roo your sheep....

Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. (yep, I've finally gone completely wacko)

Thank you Tylor for your graphic expertise....

The kids loved it when we handed them some fleece to touch and take with them.

We had to blade shear this guy a bit to finish.

Another large crowd for the demo

Most of this one was roo'd easily, but the neck wool wasn't quite ready and she was finished off with hand  shears

Garrett showing the fleece to the crowd, this fleece was sold right off the sheep and Kim donated the proceeds to FFSSA....Thank you Kim!!! 

Display Booth.....next to the demo booth

Shepherd's Harvest was a great experience and loads of fun for myself, Kim and Garrett this past weekend.  We had planned on doing 4 demos, 2 on Saturday and 2 on Sunday, but the response to the the rooing demo's were so positive and well attended, we just kept going and managed to do 10 sheep!!!!  The weather was perfect and I understand from the event organizer that there were over 8,000 people in attendance at this year's festival.  Sunday morning Sandy (part of the festival organization crew) commented to Garrett that our display and demos were getting a lot of buzz and some very positive comments about how interesting there were to watch.  The response exceeded our expectations, and despite it being a lot of work, we had a blast.  We were given permission to sell the raw fleeces we roo'd as long as the proceeds were going to our organization and we sold 2 fleeces right off the sheep.  We have been invited back for next year's event, and maybe we can use a few of the things we saw and heard at this year's festival to make changes for next year.

Some of the comments that were made were.... "I had no idea that Shetland sheep did that". The best part was that so many people said "This is Shetland? I didn't know Shetland was this nice". And that's why we are working so hard to educate and give the fiber community the chance to see how wonderful Shetland fleece can be.  We also had a range of finished garments that illustrated how to utilize the fleece from various areas of the sheep, as well as a handout that indicated how each fleece type could be used in a finished item.   And once again, Eek, the felted mouse sculpture created by Sabrina was a big hit.

A huge Thank you to Kim Nikolai for letting me stay with her this weekend, plus a giant Thank you to Bob for grilling those perfect steaks on the grill Friday night.  I can't forget to thank Garrett and Tylor for all their help too.  None of of could have done this alone, so I'm grateful for the time and money spent to make this whole thing a reality.