Taos Wool Festival October 2010

I have been trying to put together a blog post about my experience at the Taos Wool Festival for weeks.  This is why I end up not writing about my trips - I want to write about every moment & it's such an overwhelming task that I can't get past the first day.  So how about today I'll tell you about Taos in pictures?

Cool lodge where we stayed Taos Mountain Lodge

Food that we ate (I'm telling you - they put green chiles in everything! I loved them but seriously - I don't need every damn thing I eat to have chiles in it, and that includes you, Mr. Beer)

Welcome to the Taos Wool Festival 2010

When we got to the festival the very first thing we saw were critters!  This was a huge surprise to me - I wasn't expecting critters & I was very happy to see them there.
ALPACA!

SHEEP!

LLAMAS!

YAK & BABY YAK!

Scary llama video.  Keep watching & turn up the volume - you can hear him growling at me.

I had never been to New Mexico.  It is so gorgeous & I fell absolutely in love with it.  I'll go back tomorrow.  (apparently if you want to split gas & have a free place to stay, I'm your girl).

I was lucky enough to be traveling with Betty.  Betty is a firm believer in visiting local bars to get a feel for the place.

Yes, you are reading that right.  Abe's GROCERIES, Bar & Grill.  How could we not go check it out? 

Stray Dog Cantina (don't just call them Stray Dog - they don't like that much)- the only real bar open on the top of the mountain (in Ski Valley) out of season.

The Adobe Bar inside the historic Taos Inn

My personal favorite - there was a bar inside of the radio station. Yep - complete with a big dance hall, a swing band & lots of happy dancing people. It was a most unique experience.

Eske's Pub - this is where we drank the Green Chile beer - only because there weren't many options.  There were many BEER options since they brew their own, but if you don't like beer, don't go here. Having said that, I don't like beer but I did enjoy my beer.  How could I not taste it?

After we ate, and festivaled, and did sight seeing, and took in all  of the local flavor, we decided to....hit yarn shops.  What else, right?   Because surely we didn't buy enough dang yarn from all of the vendors  at Taos.  Geeze.
First we went to Weaving Southwest.  I've never seen anything like it & I've been to some pretty impressive yarn shops!

Red Willow Art and Fibers
This was a great shop that recently opened to showcase local artists. It is a great concept, Julie was positively charming, and the shop is so unique - you must go. (no web presence that I could find - but they are listed on this website)

This might be my favorite picture of the trip. We went to a shop that had a weaving demonstration. They let us sample Mexican hot chocolate & roam around. This was one of the many many many gorgeous rugs / wall hangings that were there.


And my very very favorite thing about the whole weekend? The vibe in this tent:

A Ravelry tent was set up & you could bring your chairs & hang out. It was such a fun & relaxing place to be that I swear, we spent nearly our whole time here. We would go look at some booths & pet yarn, come back to the Rav tent, hang out, knit, eat snacks, chat with new friends...it was just really cool. It was a place that you could leave your bag - a few times I even walked off without my wallet & never even worried about it for a minute. We met so many cool people & had great conversation, saw great knitted items, watched many talented knitters & spinner...we saw much show & tell, heard stories about what people bought & why, heard excitement from other people like ourselves that had never been & bought loads of stuff. It was just really neat. As a board member I'm helping to organize the DFW Fiber Fest & I wish I had a bottle of that atmosphere so that I could open it up at our event. Come join us in April 2011 & help us make that happen. (ok, shameless commercial, but if you are still reading you deserved a poke!)

What did I buy? I'll tell you as I knit it up because it's really embarrassing how much new stuff I got when I didn't even need one thing!

Peace.