Thursday, October 07, 2010

Taos Wool Festival 2010

We took a trip down to Taos this weekend for the Taos Wool Festival, an annual market which features vendors selling locally produced wool and fiber. We were so excited to see so many fiber farms representing the amazing fiber produced in our region!


We saw many Colorado folks we know and love--Lonesome Stone Fiber Mill, Elsawool, Bisou Basin Ranch, Woodlake Woolies, Jabberwocky Farms--as well as some of our favorite farms from Texas and New Mexico.



Yarn and fleeces and locks, oh my! It was hard to resist all the luscious, lustrous, woolly goodies. Chase and Emily picked up some lock yarn from La Lana wool, Amber considered taking up weaving to make a rug out some huge skeins of Churro yarn, and Jaime finally decided on some local Cormo yarn from Elsawool.


A big part of the festival is fleece judging. Jaime and I scored a prize-winning black Wendsleydale fleece for our new Black Sheep needlefelting kit! We can't wait to share it with you!


The Weaving Southwest gallery and studio was filled with amazing handwoven art pieces that we all coveted. They were also putting on demonstrations, and we were lucky to catch this one about nuno felting. Nuno felting is a method of wet felting onto a fabric base. We learned all the ins and outs of this unique fiber art.


On the way back to Denver, we stopped off at the amazing Bishop's Castle. This stone and iron structure is located in the beautiful San Isabel National Forest and was built by one man, Jim Bishop. Mr. Bishop has been working on this masterpiece for over 40 years, and it was amazing to explore it and courageously climb it.

Yay for fiber trips! We were so inspired to see all of the amazing fleece and yarn and and talk with the farmers from our region. Our roadtrip left us refreshed and inspired to immerse ourselves in wool!

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