an old post I wrote and never posted from late May

I have been so busy with the end of the school year here at the University. We all love graduation and seeing the students achieve great things and how happy their families are, but it also exhausting. The worst part in my program is….it isn’t over yet! I still have my students until the end of June.

But, then in the second week of July we are taking a group of 35 of them to Buenos Aires, Argentina! Until I did some research I was unaware that Argentina was the third largest producer of Merino wool in the world. I’m hoping to find some great yarn when I am there!

The other great thing is one of my students, Jonathon is traveling to Chile with his family the week before we meet up in Argentina, so he has promised to buy me some alpaca when he is there. I also have a personal invite to visit Chile in the future, and his wife Carmen’s family.

After graduation was over on Saturday, I stopped at Wool and Word for their fire sale. I bought out all of the BaBa Joes in two different colors to make two cable knit sweaters this winter. I also got more sock yarn (like that was needed!) When I made it home my box from knit picks was waiting and again more sock yarn, and the yarn for Jake’s new needle felted sweater. So, on my day off on Monday I reorganized the wool cabinet,

BEFORE

AFTER

Part of the end of Spring fun was the Massachusetts Sheep and Wool Fair. This is the only fair we made it to this year as vendors. It is usually our best and we know so many people, it make the fair more fun. Saturday began with the truck breaking down in a mountain road- I was following in the car, so we were stuck for about 40 minutes, until Tim got the truck patched up.

We made it to the fairgrounds and set up in record time, only 40 minutes past when the fair opened, and both sweating profusely (it was a very hot day in the Northeast).

Sales of the colored roving was great on Saturday- we made more than Sat/Sun of the previous year and we picked up quite a bit of processing. Sunday was awful for sales (only 2 customers bought) but picked up loads for processing. I think Sunday was just too hot, no one was buying anything.

I did buy something however, I bought myself a new swift to match my new ballwinder.