The Silver Fleece

     Last minute I bundled myself into the car ( I had almost talked myself into not going out of sheer laziness)-Mike drove- and three hours later we were in Rhinebeck for the NY sheep and wool festival. It was a lovely fall  day out, complete with gusts of chilly wind and swirling dazzling fruit loop colored leaves. I almost bought a fleece-yes an entire fleece of which I was quite enamored, but Mike and and the better part of reason, prevented me. 

     We watched as the shearer deftly remove the entire fleece in about five minutes flat. He was so skilled, his small audience applauded after he was done. It was a beautiful shetland fleece, infused with lanolin and grass filings still in it,  and I lusted after it. The shearer invited us to step forward and touch it, and I could feel the oily lanolin and the warmth of the animal still held in the fiber. He told us that the sheep's body temperature is about 102 degrees and it felt very warm.

     Can you imagine??

     I had visions of lovingly carding and spinning the shimmering wool into lofty skeins which I would then knit into sturdy  guernsey's for my clan. Apparently I  had slipped into another century, or I was channeling some ancient Scottish  ancestor, who had the the great skill, the need, and the wherewithal to accomplish this.

     I did not buy the beautiful fleece. We watched the deft shearer shear a curly long haired goat whose fleece fell in silver locks to the ground and who was far less compliantly shorn of her dreads, than was her cousin the shetland sheep. None the less, he wrestled her to the ground and held her firmly on her back while he relieved her of her fleecy goodness. and we wandered away fleeceless. 

     But I did resolve, that if, in some future time, I keep the desire to obtain such a thing as this magical fleece, that I shall. And so it was that I came away with a renewed commitment to spin the fiber that I do have, and to bring my skills to where I could actually do the things I saw myself doing in my hallucinations.

      On the way home we picked up Sandy, Mike's dad's wife, and took her to dinner. It was a day well spent. Upon returning home, we popped an Inspector Lewis cd into the player and promptly fell asleep. 

     

     While we were away, Bailey had locked herself out of the house and had to break the back door frame in order to get in, but aside from that the house was still standing. And another Rhinebeck adventure has come to a close.