Black Sheep Gathering 2016

Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, Oregon is an event I always look forward to. I don't go as a vendor so it's not work. It's more like a road trip with sheep. Usually friends and Farm Club members (who are friends too) carpool but this year we were all on different schedules and instead we met up once we were in Oregon.

Loaded and ready to go. I took ten sheep, five of which were going to a new home. Fortunately only two were yearlings and the rest were lambs or I wouldn't have had room. That was Thursday. It was a long day because I just couldn't seem to stay awake for the drive. I left the house at 6:30 a.m. but stopped at several rest stops to take short naps and finally pulled into the fairgrounds about 4:30.

Black Sheep Gathering opened Friday morning with too many choices. What is a fiber fanatic to do? Watch the wool show? Watch the sheep show? Go to class? Shop?

Several friends participated in the Sheep-to-Shawl competition on Friday in which teams have five hours to prep fiber, spin yarn, and weave a shawl.

They spent many hours prior to the event dyeing and spinning the warp yarn, warping the loom, and sampling...

...to determine how they would use this beautiful fiber to spin the weft yarn.

Weaver, Gynna, wove a beautiful shawl (but I didn't get a photo when it was finished).

Walking back to the barn to get ready for the Jacob sheep show I saw...

...this Shetland ram displaying his ribbon.

Time to take the sheep to the show ring. 

Even though we had spent time working with the sheep they were not always cooperative. That is ram lambs, Marv and Meyer.

A friend who lives in Davis helped me show. That's the judge inspecting Meyer's fleece.

Checking Marv's fleece.

This is Lauren, one of the yearling ewes. I hadn't planned to sell her but she stayed in Oregon as a trade for another yearling. (That will be another story.)

Meridian Marv (Meridian Rotor x Meridian Marilyn) won Champion Jacob Ram...

...and yearling, Meridian Honey (Meridian Alex x Meridian Hot Lips), was Champion Jacob Ewe.

It's fun to win ribbons and trophies, but there were only two of us exhibiting sheep and I was the lucky one this year. In other years they have won the ribbons. The other breeder has beautiful sheep too and I  brought three of them home with me.

This is one of them and she will be introduced formally in another post.