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Saturday morning the skies threatened to open up. I donned rain gear, boots, a hat. I packed two cameras and notebooks and some dollars for food. For yarn, I slipped my checkbook into my bag. Nothing would deter me from the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool Festival. My friend Chris and I left for the fair at 9 a.m., just as splats of wet pounded from the skies. Sigh. Yet by the time we reached the fairgrounds an hour away, the sun had pushed the clouds aside. We cheered.

The Hopkinton fairgrounds are extensive. I’d done the fair before, so I knew I’d need my fanny pack (talk about dorkie-looking) and my backpack (for my camera) and Ben’s bug juice, for the ever-present blackflies. Did I care I felt like a pack horse? Naw.

I met lots of old friends, like spinning and knitting guru Anne Hennessy (The Wool Room), master dyer and farmer Barbara Parry (Foxfire), farmer and master dyer Margaret Wilson (Mostly Merino), angora bunnista Charlene Schultz (HoneyBuns) and cashmere goat gal Pat Bacon (Roka Farm).

I met a bunch of new folks, too, such as Julia Farwell-Clay. I love twist collective, and I sure was surprised to run into TC’s features director. I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with her. Pat Bull from Decadent Fibers and Ellen Garges from Maple Creek Farm brought their gorgeous yarns. Loved chatting with The Merlin Tree

folks, makers of fantastic portable spinning wheels. And two of the loveliest folks ever – Carl and Eileen Koop of Bijou Basin Ranch, raisers of Yak. I want Yak here in New Hampshire. Maybe they’ll open a branch in the East. I’d love it.

So many more folks, everyone wearing smiles, laughing, touching the fabulous fibers from yarn to roving and back again. Myriad books for sale, as well as drop spindles and knitting needles and needles for felting. Shawl pins and hair pins and silk and bamboo and soy. On and on and on.

But, for me, it’s always about the animals.

Llama, sheep (so many varieties!), border collies, alpaca, Angora bunnies, and Angora goats. Getting up-close-and-personal with the critters really made the day for me. Funny, how I love the smells of farm animals—rich, earthy, life itself. And seeing the kids —these marvelous 4-H-ers—raising and tending their animals always makes my spirit sing. Sure, we’re in an intensely industrial age. Heck, I Twitter, I Facebook, I Ravelry, and more. But kids still raise animals and they do it with enormous enthusiasm. What’s sweeter than that?