Yesterday (Saturday) was the Michigan Fiber Festival in Allegan, Michigan. The weather was beautiful and four of us from the local art-party group drove 2 1/2 hours to the Festival. It was good to get away and see what others are doing with threads and fibers.

The festival was held at the Allegan County Fair Grounds, a lovely setting with trees, a charming restored village, and plenty of space for the animals, classes, vendors, and pariticpants.

This is one of the most fun booths in the entire show! The artist is Lynn Shuck, who obviously has a sense of humor—and does some of the most beautiful nuno felting I've ever seen. The way she combined sheer woven silk and roving created beautiful contrast between textures and colors.


There were more than 75 vendors with an incredible array of yarn, roving, books, and other goodies I'd never seen before.



Rug hooking was represented well by this treasure trove of woven wools, original patterns, tools and other supplies for hooking.


There were alpaca, such as this fellow with the sweet face, angora rabbits, sheep, sheep dogs, and llamas. The was much to learn about the fur and fleece from these creatures.

We brought great bags of roving in every imaginable fiber (including mulberry, silk, tensel, soy, various types of wool, alpaca, and more), silk tops, silk hankies, wool nebs (I'd never heard of them; they look like snarls from the sheep's fleece), ribbons, and some sparkly stuff called FireStar. More on those tomorrow.



After many happy hours at the festival, we drove to Pawpaw to visit a winery. It was in the old waterworks building that had been repurposed with restaurants, wine caves, a small covered bridge over the bubbling stream, and a shaded patio with lots of tables.

(left to right above) Christine, Beth, and Rosie enjoy the cool shade of the covered bridge. Below, Lori bypasses the smaller bottles in favor of the over-size magnum she WISHES was filled with chilled chardonnay.


Aah! A perfect ending to a delightful day: Home-baked pizza and peach wine coolers shared with fellow adventurers. We missed the rest of the art-party group. Hope you can join us next time!