Day 3 of the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival 2007. Just finished the two day class at the Festival, Aran Sweater Design with Janet Szabo. Her website, where you can get her book, is Big Sky Knitting.com See photo of my classmates above. What an amazing class! I found out a few days prior that I had "volunteered" to be teacher's helper in this class either while I was hypnotized or in a coma or something because I was unaware that I had "volunteered" for this job but it turned out to be fine because Janet was super nice and easy to do things for.

One of my duties was to bring her lunch each day and Thursday she had politely requested a turkey sandwich. I made sure that I had all ingredients in the house on Wednesday but, come Thursday morning, things got ugly. I rushed my son Nick to the school bus and came back to my kitchen to find that Nick had used the mayonnaise and left it on the counter. I entered the kitchen to find Blair, the bad dog, standing, paws up on the counter, licking the mayonnaise. Uh Oh! I doubted that Janet wanted dog-licked mayonnaise so I had to rush to Safeway for the Turkey Sandwich.

Later that day, I presented the sandwich, along with the Yogurt that Janet requested but the, sealed, Yogurt turned out to have a blob of spongy, green mold in it! Not at all embarrassing. Janet took it well, very politely pointing it out and saying, "It's not a problem, I just didn't want you to think I threw out perfectly good food." Very gracious of her but I was already imagining one of my beloved children leaving the yogurt in their hot lunch box for two days and then putting it BACK IN THE REFRIGERATOR!! So I guess the moral of this story is that Janet's mother raised her right but I did not do quite so well with my little monsters. Here is Janet, eating a perfectly safe apple (supplied by herself) and giving me her polite version of the "stop taking my photo!" look:







Speaking of humiliation, these classes are always a little stressful for me because I am that one slow witted knitter who makes all the others in any given class look smart and perfect. Show me a knitting chart and I'll show you some bad, backwards, sideways or just plain wrong knitting that in no way resembles the chart. First I read my chart backwards and, when everyone else produced a perfect little knitted circle, I had a strange lump. Here is my ex-friend Toni Minkle's knitted circle:






Just kidding; we are still friends but Toni did show me up with her stupid circle. Of course, like pretty much every other student there, she is a knitting teacher! People think I'm exaggerating when I say this, but it's true. Besides Toni, Paula and Susan, we also had for a classmate, Andrea Wong who is not only a knitting teacher, but our teacher, Janet Szabo, will be taking class from ANDREA at the next big knitting event. Is THAT really fair to mentally slow knitters like me? Andrea's blog: Andrea Wong Knits



Later we got to make a sample sweater from the neck down with a beautiful Aran pattern on it. Here is my friend, Susan Slider's sample:







Note the gorgeous stitch definition and the "horseshoe motive on either side of the main design. When I told her that I hated her, Susan, always a good sport, quickly pointed out that she thought our friend, Paula Bomhoff's was better. Here is Paula's Aran sample:







And, here, shamefully, is Kate Perez's Aran sample:







On top of the very poor stitch definition, there is clearly one horseshoe missing on the right side of my design and that is AFTER I joined the shoulder saddles backwards and had to re-join them, TWICE! The tragic thing is that, despite being remarkably thick when it comes to figuring out knitting patterns, I love to knit, so I had a great time in this class anyway. Maybe I should write a book for pattern impaired knitters. It could be called, Nit-Wit Knitting.



Part of the thrill of these classes is getting to see the extensive swatch collection of the teacher. Last year, we ooohed and aaahed over the Fair Isle swatch collection of Ann Feitelson and this year it was Aran swatches from Janet's collection:









Note the perfect, mustard colored circle. Grrrr. Janet was working on something of her own which turned out to be made from Alpaca that she got from a friend of hers. I was excited to see that she was not one of these pattern people who shun alpaca because they think it doesn't show the stitches well enough.






While she knit, she told us a very funny story about how she ran over a COW at home in Montana but could not find it when she stopped. It later turned up alive and fine, but with some hide scraped off. The cow didn't even learn its lesson about breaking out and it later appeared standing in the road again! But we already knew that cows are not rocket scientists. If they were, they'd just sit on you when you tried to milk them. I really think that Janet should put this story in her next book. I would certainly buy it. I highly recommend her Aran Sweater Design book too, by the way. The directions are very clear, even for a dork like me. Here is a close-up of the alpaca hat:






During the lunch break, we cruised over to Judith Mackenzie McCuin's spinning class where I fell in love with this spinning wheel:







I do not need another spinning wheel so I had to exit from there fast and go drool over this year's Sheep and Wool Festival merchandise. I love to check out this year's T-shirt colors and the new types of merchandise even though I know it gets on the nerves of the T-shirt booth Committee members. This year there is a new tie-dye Festival T-shirt, a coral/melon colored one, a black one with day-glo pink logo and CD wallets! There is also a camouflage themed shirt, which seems weird to me but, whatever! I am planning to buy the melon colored shirt for Yvette and Nicole and a Hawaiian print Festival Tote bag for my mother-in-law.


I drove home in a state of happy mental exhaustion, sated on knitting patterns and techniques, excited about the rest of the Sheep and Wool Festival to come and, as always, very grateful to be able to live as part of the farm community. I had to pull over on my way home to share with you only a few of the beautiful scenes that are part of the drive from my farm in Mount Airy to the home of the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, the Howard County Fairgrounds. A couple of miles from the fairgrounds on 144 is a beautiful old farm with an ivy covered silo and a field of super cute donkeys:











In addition to the donkeys, these people have what looks like an albino cow although I have no idea if there is such a thing. Maybe this is just some odd breed. Either way, he's very pretty. Let's hope Janet doesn't drive by this road! Just kidding Janet, besides, the fence looks sturdy.








Up where Rt.144 meets Daisy Rd, is a lovely burnished gold-colored field with a white building in it. Anyone know what crop this is?








And, everywhere you look this time of year is what I think is wild mustard. I say, I think because, if you ask any "real farmer", "Hey, what's that?" and point, they invariably answer, "A weed." but people call it wild mustard anyway. Look how cheery it is after the dreary, gray, winter fields.







Tonight, we will take entries for the Sheep Poster contest - PLEASE ENTER! It's free. Yours truly will be very honored to help to judge the lamb and wool queen contest, then Los Perez (our family) will head to the Vendor dinner and then home to sleep before the Festival opens to the public tomorrow morning.

Saturday, Toni and I, along with our friend Roseann, Roseann's Amazing Knitting Blog will run the Jr. Handspinner's contest at 2:30 in the Pavillion. Please Enter! It's free.


Want to talk about alpacas or how to spin alpaca? Come see me at barn 6, booth 6 at the Festival.