When I wrote about the Sheep & Wool Festival, I mentioned that we bought a broom, among other things. And in the comments, I mentioned that we also bought a blanket.

Here they are.

For the past three years, the Sheep & Wool Festival has issued a limited edition blanket commissioned and designed just for the festival. They had one blanket left from 2005 and I much preferred it over this year’s design because of the stripes. It’s a throw blanket, not big enough for enough a small bed. It’s wonderfully light, soft and warm.

A certificate came with the blanket as well. I tried to scan it to include here, but can’t get that to work today for some reason. It reads:

The Hudson Valley Blanket

Series 2: Number 001

This limited edition blanket has been created using wool grown in the Hudson River Valley. It is the result of a joint project between The Chas. W. House & Sons, Inc. woolen mill and New York State’s Hudson Valley sheep producers. The Hudson River Valley is bordered by the scenic Catskill Mountains to the West and the Berkshires to the East. This is depicted in the blanket design with naturally colored stripes.

The following flocks have contributed wool to this blanket:

Mary Godesky, Red Hook, NY
Jessi & Ethan Page, Salt Point, NY
North Breeze Farm, Millbrook, NY
Wild Apple Farm Ltd., Hudson, NY
Jeff & Debbie Traver, Pleasant Valley, NY
Shepherds Garden, Clermont, NY

[I’ve elided the phone numbers of the growers for their privacy.]

The wool in this Hudson Valley blanket consists of fleeces from Corriedale, Dorset, Columbia, Hampshire and Merino sheep. The employees of Chas. W. House & Sons, Inc. and the Hudson Valley sheep producers hope you will enjoy this quality wool product for many years.

I remembered that the “art” brooms were called plaited brooms because of the way the stems were attached to the handle:

The stems are partially split and plaited all around the handle. The dried stems are used in their natural form, untrimmed. You can even see some seedheads still left on the ends of the stems:

The handle itself is a natural form. This was the most bent one of all those on display. I actually liked it the most. It looks like a classic witch’s broom. It may make an appearance this Halloween!

All the handles of the plaited brooms were carved. Each had a different design. This was the only one which also had ant tunnels on it. Again, I liked that difference this handle had from all the others. It’s a unique piece of hand-work.

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Okay, so the U.S. now has over 300 million people, but where are they?

Here they are.

Credit: NASA image by Robert Simmon, based on data archived by the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)

This map, based on population estimates made in 2005, charts out the number of people in every square kilometer of the United States.

As has been the case historically, the most densely populated parts of the United States are east of the Mississippi River. Rings of decreasing population density radiate out from the major urban centers of New York, Philadelphia, and Washington along the East Coast. Other cities—Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, and Dallas—punctuate the map in the country’s interior. The west remains lightly populated except for clearly defined urban regions. Like their counterparts in the east, the largest cities in the west (San Diego and Los Angeles in the south; San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose farther north) hug the coast, with the densest populations in Southern California. Other large western cities readily visible here include Portland, Seattle, Phoenix, and Denver.

– New Image: United States Population Density, NASA, Earth Observatory, Newsroom, October 26, 2006

Unusual for U.S. maps, it includes both Alaska and Hawaii, in their geographically correct locations, rather than floating off to the side in little boxes as they usually do. The map also includes all of Canada.

[2006.11.08 12noon EST: Major overhaul. I just moved each section of photos to their own pages. See notes below.]

[2006.10.23 11:30 EDT: Linked title to Sheep&Wool Web site.]
[2006.10.22 22:50 EDT: Added Yarn and Stuff, indexed by category.]
[2006.10.22 20:00 EDT: Added explanatory text. Added photos of Sheep Dog Trials, Broom-making, Hand-spinning.]
[2006.10.22 15:20 EDT: Added photos of “The Scene“, Musicians, Goats, Llamas and Alpacas.]
[2001.10.21 23:55 EDT: Initial placeholder with link to Flickr set.]

Thanks to Bev Wigney of Burning Silo, I decided to move each section of photos to their own page, instead of keeping everything in one huuuuge page. Each of the links in this table of contents will take you to a page with just those photos. At the bottom of each page you’ll find a link to the “Previous” and “Next” sections, and a link back to the “Table of Contents,” this page. As before, each photo on each page links to the Flick page for that photo.

1. The Scene
2. Musicians
3. Goats
4. Llamas and Alpacas
5. Sheep Dog Trials
6. Broom-making
7. Hand-spinning
8. Yarn and Stuff
9. Blanket and Broomstick

These are most of the photos from my Flickr set of the Festival. In the Flickr set, they’re simply listed in the order they were taken, without any explanations. The photos are also geotagged on Flickr, so you can see where they were taken on the fairgrounds.

1. The Scene

As you can see from these photos, it was a perfect fall day. The drive up the Taconic State Parkway was beautiful. The drive took an hour more than we had planned. Because of construction along the road, we bailed for Route 9 south of Poughkeepsie. That area was in peak fall foliage. The Dutchess County Fairgrounds were just past peak; a lot of the leaves had already fallen, but there was still plenty of color on many of the trees.

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2. Musicians

An organ grinder (with a stuffed toy monkey banging little cymbals). Check out the large picture of the organ itself so you can see the beautiful inlay work on the audience-facing side.

Banjoist (dreamy … sigh …).

Nickel-harpist. I’ve never seen one of these instruments before. I did a double-take once I realized what she was doing. Basically a violin with keyed fingering on the strings for different notes and chords.

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3. Goats

We love goats. So there’s lots of pictures of goats. The long-haired shaggy ones are Angora Goats. I don’t know what the other ones are.

[Updated 2006.10.23 11:43 EDT: A friend of mine from Vermont who has goats says that the non-Angora goats are Cashmere goats.]

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4. Llamas and Alpacas

Beautiful animals. Not economical, but they seem to produce useful and desirable wool.

Llamas have attitude. Alpacas are cute. Five foot tall and still cute. The Seussian creature to the left is an alpaca.

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5. Sheep Dog Trials

Lots of fun. It wasn’t always clear what the dogs were supposed to do, but watching it for a while, you understood the course. It wasn’t until I left that I saw the big board with all the explanations, and the map of the course.

On this course, the sheep were actually out of sight, over a small rise. The handler set the dog out on a right outrun. These dogs don’t run, they fly. I tried to capture some sense of their speed in the photos. The second set of drive gates, after the post, were actually on the “left-hand” side of the course, closest to the observers (and the photographer). Those are the ones you see in the photos below.

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6. Broom-making

This shows Bob Haffly of Lone Oak Brooms in Pennsylvania making brooms by hand using antique equipment outside of the Horticulture building (which had nothing to do with horticulture for the festival). The first photo shows a brook-making machine on display in the Antique Museum Barn.

We bought an “art” broom. I don’t know what else to call it. It has a naturally curved, not straight, handle. The wood has fine tunnels on the surface, probably caused by ants beneath the bark. It’s then hard-carved and stained with an ivy pattern. Each such broom was truly a unique work of art. Bob insisted that it’s a working broom, and we shouldn’t be afraid to use it. It’s an amazing construction.

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7. Hand-spinning

This is Sunny Huppert, demonstrating how to spin rough wool and hair into yarn with a foot-powered wheel. She was working with a mix of wool and dog hair.


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