I usually like to have photos to go with all that I want to say. This time I have no photos of the main event and some photos to go with my peripheral commentary. I’ve been working hard to have a full complement of items for my table at the 7th annual Fibershed Wool Symposium, held in Pt. Reyes Station every year.
I finished these ten ponchos just in time to take them with me. 
Driving over early Saturday morning, the brown, smoky skies and red sun are a reminder of the tragic fires still burning in California. (The sun looked red in real life.)
Our area is impacted by the Camp fire in northern CA.
Once at the venue I got my area set up. We are given one table so I bring some grids to put in back and expand my space. I fit a lot of weaving and yarn into one place.
Friends stopped by and took photos.
Some vendors are outside or in other rooms and have foot traffic throughout the day. I have always wanted to be in the main room where the speakers are presenting. That means the sales opportunities are clustered into a few breaks and the long lunch time.
In most years I have gone home following the Symposium. Now that we have formed the Northern CA Fibershed Ag Coop and I am a Board member I stayed in the area Saturday night to be at a Board meeting on Sunday. A couple of us “camped” at the Olema Campground. In this case it was really a matter of finding the campground after dark and then crawling into the back of the truck to sleep. About 15 minutes after leaving home Saturday morning I realized that I had left my sheepskin behind–the one I sleep on when we camp. I didn’t have time to go back for it. Instead I slept in my sleeping bag with a 1/4″ thick yoga mat on our plywood platform in the truck. Surprisingly I was almost warm enough most of the night if I didn’t put any body parts out of the sleeping bag or move very much, but I must say that there was something lacking in the comfort department. 
Photo from the inside of the camper shell shows that it was a lot colder than it’s been at home. 
Fellow camper and Board member, Carol (sleeping in a van next to my truck), went with me as soon as we emerged from our vehicles to go find warmth at a coffee shop while we waited for time to go to our meeting. We were both still dressed in everything we wore to bed.
Saturday’s Symposium was amazing as always. It is exciting when you go somewhere and you think you already know about the topic and then you find out all the stuff that you didn’t know that you don’t know. This year’s speakers and panels discussed the importance of prescribed fire and grazing in restoring ecological systems. The topic of fire was chosen following last year’s devastating fires that occurred right before the 2017 Symposium. It is ironic that the most destructive fire in California began only last Thursday and is still burning. I wouldn’t do the Symposium justice if I tried to summarize all that the speakers spoke about with great passion and the thought and hard work that Rebecca Burgess put into the composition of the speaker line-up. The Symposium was live-streamed on the Fibershed website and soon (I think) you’ll be able to see the video of all these presentations there.
Sunday’s meeting was for the board of the newly formed Northern CA Fibershed Ag Coop, an entity that is separate from Fibershed (non-profit) but working closely with the non-profit. There is a lot of work ahead for the Coop and lots of exciting opportunities but for now we are focusing on getting more members and bringing more goods to the newly launched Fibershed Marketplace where consumers who want to support locally farmers and artisans can buy our goods.
When I go somewhere away from home I often home a newspaper for Dan. He seems to be happy about that. Today I picked up the Sunday edition of the SF Chronicle.
This is one of the articles inside. Although they don’t talk about sourcing our clothes from locally grown fibers, they do address the issue of the incredible waste in the textile industry and consumerism. Seems appropriate to end the weekend.
This local church was booked for any of the Fibershed group who wanted to spend the night after the long day at the Symposium.
It is a great place to stay for anyone traveling in that area. 
This was originally a house that was purchased from the Frick family in 1950 and turned into a church. There is a fascinating multi-level maze of rooms and halls and stairways. This view looks down from the third floor on what was originally the family’s living room.
I love this dining area, partly because the table is of the same era (at least from looking at some of it’s features) as the table that my mom bought and we still use, although this one is in much better shape than ours.
I stayed in this bedroom with five other women. There are several bedrooms with different numbers of beds. I think the place can accommodate 36 people.
When I got up on Sunday morning I decided to take a walk before our meeting and headed up a road I found behind the church.
This is my kind of Sunday morning.
The road I found led me back down to the main road and Tomales Bay.
It is great when you find open space accessible to the public.
Rebecca pointed out huckleberries which were still on the bushes, although the normal harvest season was over. I wouldn’t have known and would have avoided these unknown berries.
Stephanie (wearing her handknit Jacob sweater) ate her share as did the rest of us.
This is a much wetter area than where I usually find myself and there were still signs of the previous night’s rain.
Another testament to the dampness were the large slugs that we saw.
The view overlooking Tomales Bay. What a beautiful day we had!
As we were coming back down from the ridge that has a view of the ocean, another hiker coming up the hill saw our silhouettes and offered to take our photo. This is the view that she saw.
When I asked how many alpacas there are, Mary said between 150 and 200. They roam the hills on the ranch, accompanied by guardian dogs.
This is one of the many ranch dogs that include guardian and herding dogs. We were told that this one is only 8 months old.
Our meeting was in the greenhouse located near the field where the bucks live.
This guy seemed pretty friendly.
Before we started the meeting we admired each others fiber products. This is one of the Twirl yarns produced by Mary.
This is what I brought to share–sheepskins, buttons, yarn, and shawls from my Jacob sheep. The new 
This is a felted hat made by 
Here is 
…and this is a piece she felted from the wool of Vicki, one of my Jacob sheep.
We were able to see the recently produced Wool and Fine Fiber Book. Each producer has a spread in which samples of their fiber is attached. These books will be circulated to designers and manufacturers who want to find out what kinds of fiber are available locally, how to contact the producers, and to learn how these fibers might be used in end products. This was an amazing undertaking by Fibershed.
While hearing about all this we were also doing what Fibershed producers do best, eating and baby animal snuggling. This is a two-day old kid who needs some TLC.
One of the dogs was feeling left out.
Even Rebecca found some goat snuggling time.
Ringo got the most ewes so he had the pasture.
Saturday was the Grow Your Jeans event that was the culmination of over a year’s planning and work by the 
Mary let out the bottle babies…
Here is where the fleeces are dried. Mary had several fleeces spread out so that the visitors could handle them and feel the characteristics that we’d been talking about all day.
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