Rhinebeck 2009 - 3

Well, this took a day or so to get to, but you'll have to wait for a post or two to find out why.
Between the first two barns was a rather unusual structure - a yurt. No! not a Hollywood-style plastic yurt, but a genuine Turkish yurt. If you think that they're only from the steppes of central Asia, think a little longer: the turkish people only arrived in what is now Turkey a little over a thousand years ago. The yurt is a convenient and portable structure well suited to nomadic people, and, as people found who entered this one, very warm indeed, even with two open doors.

Yurts are made of felted material - sheep wool or horsehair in Asia, probably, and are held upright with thin wooden supports. Inside this one was a display of art on woolen items, including this piece of material with images of a bird and two people, found in a town called Catal Huyuk, from about 6000 yeas ago.

The people appear to be headless, which accounts for their positions - lying down. A bird-cult? Who knows. Anyhow, the yurt was staffed by people from Ikonium, who are very friendly and have lots of fun stories to tell and info about felting to provide.

Between the second and third barns were a pair of lines of outdoor stalls - very cold for the poor vendors - where we found, amongst others, CreativelyDyedYarns. Dianne Lutz produces hand-dyed yarn of various mixes, including some wonderfully soft mix of wool and seaweed! I want it called Mermaid Tresses, and, like all her yarn, had beautiful colours.











Finally for this episode, some local colour. I believe this worthy was employed to keep the sheep under control: certainly they were all well controlled.

More rambling very soon Photos all on Photobucket.
PS. The MD Sheep & Wool was back here.

TTFN