Shepherd's Harvest Recap

Life has been really busy lately with lots of family and real-life stuff getting in the way of fibery pursuits. I did have plans to attend Shepherd's Harvest Festival with a friend though and snuck away to do just that.
We drove down on Friday with a stop at Trader Joe's along the way, neither of us had been to one before so that was super fun. My friend picked up a little Rosemary plant that became her mascot for the weekend, like Prince William is mine. Yes, we are knitting nerds, we are also proud of it.
Friday we got to the hotel and checked in, lugged all our stuff up to our room and settled in to relax. I made a nice little nest of knitting and spinning on my bed and got all cozy.

The way we travel, we like the option to be anti-social in the evenings so we packed food for our little room fridge including these amazing little goat cheese medallions with herbes de provence. I could write a sonnet about them, they were amazingly delicious!

We crashed early and slept well; away from responsibilities like husbands, pets and children (hers not mine, the children at least). Saturday morning Prince William was raring to go.

He didn't want me to have a few minute to knit my purse sock and wake up. He wanted to get there!
Prince William loved the bunny agility.

Tested out a Sidekick wheel and tried desperately to talk me into taking it home with us.

It is awfully cute and he is awfully persuasive. One may have to come live here in the future.
All that persuading is rough on Prince William though, so he took a rest on the grass.

We decided to head back to the hotel for the day and have some relaxing time. I had barely purchased anything at this point, I seemed to just have trouble deciding what I wanted, that seemed to follow me all through the festival.  I just kept remembering the nice wool at home. Who actually does that?
Saturday evening at the hotel I relaxed and my friend attended the Antique Wheel talk downstairs. It sounded interesting but after all the outdoor time and wool fumes, I was ready to zone out in front of the TV. I didn't even get a whole lot of knitting done.
Sunday we got all our things together and headed back to the festival. This time I was able to make decisions (at least, to a point) I picked out a couple of things from the amazing choices at Cloudlover.

And because of these sweet little additions to my friend's home, we set up outside with our wheels.

Meet Sugar and Stinker, two adorable little red-eyed white angora rabbits. They're both females and are a mix of English, French and mostly German Angora. She's super excited to have fibery animals and is learned all kinds of things about their care.

Prince William really enjoyed the spinning outside, although lots of people thought we were demonstrators and asked us lots of questions. He even conceded that the Matchless is a very good, if heavy to carry around wheel and we could wait on the Sidekick (it helped that the one we tried was conspicuously absent from the festival the second day).
Eventually the time came to pack up and head for home. Rosemary and Prince William said a sad good-bye.

We headed off for home with some lovely things in tow.

It was a great time and I'm so glad we got away from everything for a couple of days. I really think I should get away again. Like today. (Too much real-life stress.)
I've definitely rekindled my passion for my spinning, which has been lacking the last couple of weeks, and I'm excited to actually get some knitting done too.

Some lovely things are kicking around needing finishing.