Crafting Chronicles: Estes Park, a decade later

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I visited the Estes Park Wool Market this month with my mom. I think the last time I went was in 1999, though I can't be certain. By that time, I had graduated high school and didn't *have* to go to the show for all the benefits of showing llamas.

Growing up, I remember we would go to the show for mom's birthday. At least, I remember going to it a lot. It was always painfully boring. I usually started the day looking like the llama on the right, yawning as mom talked to all the people she knew.

It seemed like we had to stop at every, single booth in the shop barn. Sometimes we even stopped at them multiple times. They would talk about not only the fiber (or wheels or other tools in the booth) but then they'd do what "old" people do and start talking about *other* things. This would mean would be there for hours and hours. Or at least it would seem that way.

By the end of the day, my sister and I probably looked like this goat. Sprawling limbs and exaggerated sighs of boredom. Eventually we would get to look at all the animals there but that too would lead to boredom. Especially once the talking started. In those early years, we didn't actually bring animals and would only spend part of a day up there. The best part was that if we "suffered" in mostly silence, we would eventually go into town and get to buy some amazing salt water taffy.

When I hit middle school, we actually owned llamas and we would attend as exhibitors. This would mean staying in a hotel for the weekend. I think my sister and I nearly got us kicked out of the hotel a couple of years in a row because we were hyper and annoying. Something about getting the "giggles". We would also do silly things like decide we were tired of waiting for mom to finish talking and walk back to our hotel which would only take a "few minutes" to get there. Try closer to an hour. A five minute drive can take much longer by foot though we still beat mom to the hotel. Being an exhibitor was almost worse than just going to visit. First of all, I showed llamas.

Grant and I doing an obstacle course.

Being 13 years old is awkward to begin with and when you add in braces and llamas, well, it was hilarious. At least the animals had some grace to them as I was certainly lacking. The big advantage of showing llamas, even when there are a million other kids doing it (or so it seemed at the shows), was that it made me really unique. I wrote a college entrance essay about having llamas. I was well remembered by one of the Dean's of my college as we talked about llamas when we met her. Everyone knew I was the girl with the llamas when I visited Coe, which is where I ended up going to college. It took getting into theatre and going to London for me to be known as something other than the girl with the llamas. As much as I hated it then, I'm grateful for it now as it got me to do things that were often uncomfortable and potentially humiliating in public and being able to handle it well. It was all about building character and giving me stories.

So years later, I plan a trip to visit my mom for the week, arriving so that we can go to the wool market. There were still the moments where she talked to people she knew for a long time. Of course, they remembered me (or thought I was my sister) and I honestly don't remember them. My brain can only hold so much. The llamas show has dramatically shrunk to a handful of participants where in my day there were hundreds of people and llamas. I had the most fun in the sale barn, where I exhibited some control. I bought some yarn to dye and I could have bought a lot more. The first booth we stopped in, belonging to one of mom's friends, I had already started petting the yarn there. One of the people in the booth decided to help by taking them all out of the basket so I could see them better....

Below are some photos of the really awesome things that I saw and that I managed to not buy.