In the event of a wool apocalypse...

Don't worry. I have things covered. This weekend was a great opportunity to add to the fiber stash. Saturday morning I drove up to Estes Park for the Estes Park Wool Market, which is a fiber lovers dream. They had more than 50 vendors (most of them from Colorado and surrounding states) along with lots of fiber-bearing animals to look at.

I found a couple of things that needed to come home with me.



There's two skeins of 100% silk roving at the top, a skein of the softest Alpaca yarn ever that was produced at a local mill, three bundles of superwash merino and one bundle of merino/tencel roving from Bonkers in Lawrence, Kan., and a walnut Magpie drop spindle. Isn't it pretty? The gold pin on the whorl is because it needed a little more weight in that area to be balanced.



And this is fur plucked from angora bunnies named Lilli and Black Jack.



And in two separate moments of insanity, I decided that I needed to prepare and spin my own fleece. I ended up with a gorgeous silver grey fleece...6.5 pounds of a corridale cross fiber.



Then I stumbled upon a screaming deal on a 2 pound merino/corridale fleece. The fiber is really soft and will be a dream to spin. The catch. It is absolutely filthy because the sheep hadn't been coated.



I've washed about half of it so far and I'm afraid my bathtub will never be the same, but it's cleaning up fairly well. I think a good portion of the fiber will be usable.

Aside from the shopping, the highlight of the wool market is the animals.

There were alpacas...



I loved this haircut. I thought she looked like a chow chow.



And there were goats...



And vicunas...



And there were also llama and sheep and bunnies, but I didn't get any photos of them...so here is another alpaca photo. These boys were all for sale. I don't think they'd enjoy living on a balcony, so I didn't bring one home with me.



Ashford doesn't think we need an alpaca either.