Octopus meets "The Traveling Sock" (and some sheepishness, too)

Boy, did I have a busy weekend! What did I do? Well, here's a little clue:




Yes, octopus and I spent a lovely Sunday in Northampton, MA, and we just happened (...ahem) to stumble across the wonderfully funny (and flat out wonderful) Yarn Harlot and a veritable kaleidoscope of knitters.

Unfortunately the magnets in octopus's feet weren't attracted to Stephanie's aluminum (I assume) needles (I did a poor job explaining that they were mainly for cat entanglement purposes, not for gripping knitting needles) -- so if you look closely you will see that he's impaled for photographic purposes. He didn't mind a bit, as he was completely entranced with the rippling reds of the traveling sock. (He also doesn't mind that Stephanie took his picture, too, and he's currently one of the knitters showcased in her Webs recap post. In fact, he thinks he looks quite handsome.)

Here's a refresher of what octopus can do to an unsuspecting feline:








I had a great time listening to Stephanie speak, meeting other knitters, and admiring all the sock yarn that Webs had on sale in honor of the event. I picked up a copy of her new book -- and a nifty Ravelry sticker featuring "Bob" and a pin from Jess herself:



Bob is such a cutie : )

On top of that, I spent Saturday at the Connecticut Sheep and Wool Festival with a bunch of new friends (including sunflowerfairyknits, missalicefaye, knittingeweonthego, and blogless Anne -- all of whom I drove up with). Thanks for letting me come along, guys!

In keeping with my tradition of putting way too many photos in my posts, here are some photos from Saturday.

Spiky-haired alpacas:


Sheep dog trials:

Run!

Woolly sheep backs (I just love the texture!):


UConn sheep in a pen... waiting to be em-baldened (note that they're camera-shy even with all their "clothes" on):



I'm sure you're wondering how the sheep go from this:


to this:


Well, here you go:












The aftermath.

Here is the sequence as a video slideshow (no music), if you're interested.

Quite intriguing, yes? I have to tell you that I have no photos of a whole segment of the shearing process due to the fact that the expert sheep shearer was wielding the giant electric clippers blithely around the facial area (specifically over and around the eyes) while the sheep nervously kicked and struggled. I feared for her eyeballs and had to look away repeatedly (geez, am I a wimp, or what), hence the lack of photographs.

I did make some lovely fiber acquisitions, but I'll detail those in a later post.

Happy (belated) Earth Day, and I hope you're all having a good last week in April : )