Sheep and Wool Festival

Sheep competition

Sheep… I'd need more time to look at them to get their anatomy better and let's not forget they're covered in wool. I tried sketching their faces: all different. And their coats, some tight like a Berber carpet, some more like people hair, dread locks. The contestant in the foreground above appeared to have gotten himself a high-top fade.  Did this "do" occur naturally or did his shepherd fix it that way?  I couldn't figure out all the criteria the sheep judge was using, he felt their coats, their legs and backs. He worked at a clip, signaling his decisions with hand motions, making color commentary and encouragement. Their shepherds kept trying to coax the sheep into a stance, as if they were show dogs. No one seemed fazed at all that the sheep relieved themselves almost continually during the process. It didn't seem to count against a contestant.

Young competitor

WOOL. We went all the way to the festival of yarn and fiber knowing we did NOT NEED ANOTHER THING. Madeline got a few silk hankies for Nuno felting and for our felting friend, Linda who couldn't make it. I DID NOT BUY ANYTHING! Nothing called out to me. That is how big my stash is already. I couldn't even make a good excuse for the fiber blending board I saw in person, which I've been gazing at online, where your brain can interpose a great many more possibilities for an item than reality may allow.  
All I bought was a hamburger and fries so I could have the dense calories needed to keep trudging around the fair grounds sucking up fibery goodness with my eyes.

Our operating premise for the trip (I thought it was a pretense really) was that we would go to Sheep & Wool to sketch. My brain snickered at me every time I thought it. Nevertheless it was sketches: 3. Bags of wool: 0. 

Cold Spring, New York

On Sunday after the festival we drove to Cold Spring, NY. It's right on the Hudson, a ferry deposits tourists. They stroll around just as they do in other places full up on the quaint. The mountains on the other side are majestic. Architecture and landscape, I suck it up with my eyes.

Happy to meet Sonya Philip again.