I love the Estes Park Wool Festival. To be fair, I haven't been to any other wool festival except Taos, but one thing especially draws me back to Estes every year.

The fleece and fiber judging.

Oh sure, I love the rest of it, but being able to learn so much from the fleece judge is such a treat. This year's judge was Amy Wolf. I suspect she hears a lot of jokes about her name being Wolf, but she definitely knows her sheep! She raises sheep herself, is a shearer, and a handspinner. So she can comment about the producer side of the fleeces as well as what is attractive to handspinners. Her advice about how to prepare and spin different kinds of fleece and deal with problem fleeces was invaluable. And as you may be able to tell from the photo below, she has a great sense of humor as well as a huge desire to help people understand these animals and their fleece.

Today was the white fleece judging.