I went to a sheep gathering! BAaAaAaAa



Most of the sheep I saw looked pretty happy. They talked to each other and munched on grass, and they probably knew that the cage thing was only for one day, sort of how people feel about airplane trips. By now they're all back on big pastures in the sun, munching on more grass.



Pictured above is the general atmosphere of the sheep fair. After looking at sheep I had curly fries and a cheeseburger, which I got from a surly employee of a really pretty food stand. She didn't seem to be well-liked by her co-workers. Maybe the other employees felt like those sheep in pens that got low-quality neighbors for one day.



Speaking of which, I saw two sheep, Matrix and Pilot, that looked like they wanted to fight. They were rams, which is sheep for guys. I'm pretty sure that their horns are made out of the same material as our fingernails, which makes it seems like it would be kind of fun and non-painful to have a giant fingernail-butting contest.

All of this is about sheep themselves, but the sheep fair there was an equally sized exposition of sheep products (e.g. yarn), and products of sheep products (e.g. socks), and tools and equipment for making sheep products (e.g. shears), and tools for making products out of those sheep products (e.g. knitting needles). They also had sheep by-products (e.g. lanolin soap, which is like soap made from greasy hair) and a few unrelated items (e.g. handmade wine bottle stoppers, rabbits).



One thing I didn't expect to see was the really vibrant, colorful yarn. Like screaming colorful. The woman who made the above yarn told me all about how she bleaches it first so that it can take on these saturated neon dyes. (I'm not sure if the digital photograph is capturing the vibrancy of those pigments). At another booth they advertised "natural" and "kaleidoscope" yarns. I guess the above yarn is "kaleidoscope." Cool.



Colophon: These pictures and videos were taken by Allison and I on her camera. They were subsequently stored on her computer, from which I write. My computer died two weeks ago, which has meant that I don't have all my favorite music right now. I found a spindle of CDs I burned when I was a DJ for college radio, so right now I'm listening to a CD by Takagi Masakatsu. It sounds like The Books meets Lullatone. Last night I played my copy of New Attitude by Dirty Projectors. There is a lyric on that album that seems appropriate for sharing: "Precious reciprocity/Two sheeps asleep/Counting one/one/one..."

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