SEQUIM — Children, dogs, sheep and spinning wheels took visitors into a past that remains vital in the present during the Shepherd’s Festival on Monday.
The annual festival celebrates the spinning arts and everything involved in the creation of spun fiber — from every step starting with lambs, sheep, angora rabbits and llamas to finished projects.
Sheep- and llama-shearing demonstrations were conducted.
Inside the Sequim Prairie Grange’s Macleay Hall, a half-dozen spinners worked their wheels to spin wool and hair into yarn and taught basic spinning to anyone with an interest in learning.
Vendors sold natural yarns, hats, scarves, duvets, rugs and other products made from fibers shorn from animals.
The process — from the animal in the field to the sweater knitted by mom — tends to fascinate people, said Heather Fetter, 76, of Port Angeles, one of the guild’s spinners at Monday’s event.
“Particularly the kids. It fascinates them to see the wool turn into yarn,” she said.
In the field behind the grange hall, the Lambchops 4-H Club offered a petting zoo with a miniature horse, rabbits, lambs, and chickens.
Grayson Mahany, 12, of Port Angeles, brought his bantam chickens.
The tiny chickens relaxed into the hands of their young handler and those of adults and children who petted the friendly birds.
Mahany, who hand-raised the bantams and intends to show them in 4-H shows later in the year, said the event is good practice for the birds, who need to become accustomed to crowds and being handled by strangers.
Becky Northaven, a Port Angeles area dog trainer, and her daughters — Kellan Northaven 9, and Ashlynn Northaven, 8 — conducted lamb-herding demonstrations by their border collie dogs, Knight, 4, and Breeze, 5.
“We get a chance to let people know about this sport for our dogs,” Northhaven said.
“It’s important to keep the public aware to preserve our sport.”
There are more than 30 breeds of dogs bred with the ability to herd — to see the animals as a group to be moved as a whole, rather than as individual animals as a retriever would see them, she said.
Many visitors to the festival brought their dogs to the event to learn if they have what it takes to be a herding dog.
Northaven offers instinct testing, which reveals whether an individual animal has the instinct to become a herder.
Sometimes non-herding breeds, such as poodles, have the knack, while large portions of some herding breeds, such as miniature Australian shepherds, have lost it, Northaven said.
For more information on herding dogs and instinct testing, phone Northaven at 360-477-0022 or email Northaven.herding@gmail.com.
The annual Shepherd’s Festival is sponsored by the North Olympic Shuttle and Spindle Guild and the Olympic Peninsula Fiber Growers Association.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
