This was all the way back in May, but I went to the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival along with my super amazing wife and her super amazing mom! This post is titled “III” because it is now I suppose de rigueur that I write about the festival when I go to it. We went back in 2022 and 2023, but hadn’t been able to go in the intervening years because of course we were in Sierra Leone.

As was totally expected, we had a lot of fun going to the festival this year. The most interesting thing is that this year we frankly felt a bit rushed. The previous years it had felt very easy to see everything at the festival and at some point it just felt natural to head on home. This year however we knew we needed to stay until the very end. My super amazing wife you see had entered a sweater into the knitting competition, and the only way to get your entry back was to pick it up at the very end of the festival, after 4:30pm on Sunday. I was foolishly a bit worried what we would do all afternoon while waiting for knitting entry pickup time to roll around.

What the difference was I don’t know. I don’t think the festival had expanded all that much in the intervening years. Maybe we just had more to do. Upon arrival we head on into the gate and of course the first thing we had to do was to see how my super amazing wife faired in the competition. Alas, she did not get a ribbon. This was due to two factors, one being that there were some absolutely amazing entries in all the knitwear and wool-related competitions (they also had like rug-making and art felting and a whole host of things) so it was always going to be tough. The competition area always has stunningly gorgeous pieces that people have created and even though it is kind squirreled away at the far end of the exhibition areas you should always make sure to check it out. The other factor was strategic – she had entered a sweater she was knitting anyways, one that was mostly a solid color with a small ribbing of colorwork around the collar. This unfortunately meant it had to be entered into the colorwork category, going up against sweaters entirely made of colorwork, and so was probably disfavored among its peers. But none of that really matters, she got a thrill out of participating, and it was fun to see her handiwork up there on display.

Another new thing for us we made sure to see was the parade of sheep breeds. This has been going on for the duration of the festival but we hadn’t stopped by before. That was a lot of fun to watch. It is pretty much what it sounds like. In the central show arena the announcer introduces each breed of sheep before it gets trotted out, more or less willingly, and shown around the arena. There are also some fun facts being centered mostly around the breed’s history and the relative qualities of both its wool and its carcass. You know what sheep look like, fluffy things with four legs, and I have seen plenty of sheep breeds at this point, but it was different to see them all lined up with each other. I knew that Shetland sheep were small but you don’t understand how tiny they are until they are standing next to something like a Lincoln Longwool.

One particular sheep breed we learned about at the festival was the Hog Island sheep, pictured above (the top of them anyway). That was exciting for being something of a local breed; turns out modern-day Mt. Vernon got themselves a flock for their closeness to what George Washington would have kept. My super amazing wife got herself some Hog Island sheep wool roving to do some spinning later, which brings us the next major thing we needed to accomplish, which was looking at e-spinners. She wants to get an e-spinner as a more portable version of the slightly more traditional wheel she currently uses (an upright model from Ashford), and so wanted to check out some in person. These, turns out, are very expensive but there were some nice more affordable models. She did not walk out of the festival with a new wheel but she got a feel for some of the relevant features.

Then of course there were the other standard things you have to do at the Sheep & Wool Festival. We saw some of the sheep dog demonstrations, amused as always by watching just how excited the sheep dogs are to sheep dog sheep. All they want in the whole world is to round those suckers up. We also had to have some lunch, the only major decision being exactly what kind of lamb we were going to morbidly eat. We’ll eat fish at an aquarium, and we’ll eat lamb at a Sheep & Wool festival, unafraid to look either animal in the eye afterwards. I went with a lamb Milanesa, my super amazing mother-in-law with a lamb pita, and my super amazing wife with lamb mac n’ cheese, if I am remembering correctly. Then we had to check out all the vendors of which there were very very many. Our collective was only in the market for a bit of yarn this year, but was keeping a keen eye out for other accessories. I got some pewter buttons for the sweater my super amazing wife is going to super amazingly knit for me (even though I have been mostly recently bumped farther down the to-do list in favor of a baby blanket for her best friend). We resisted in the end buying some more sheep cheese.

And after having checked out even more sheep it was all-too-soon time to pick up the sweater from the craft competition and go home. I don’t know the next time we’ll be able to visit this particular festival but no matter where we go my super amazing wife will find a way to visit a sheep & wool or a yarn festival so there will be more fiber content on this blog in the future, don’t worry.