I glanced at the schedule for a new Sheep and Wool Festival in the Midwest. Because that’s what I do with my spare time these days to avoid reading or thinking about the manure-storm that is our country. I dream of driving down back roads bursting with fall colors, getting lost and swearing only a minimum number of times before I finally locate the barns full of bleating sheep and dancing yarns. I fantasize about digging my hands into bags of fluff and handing over my charge card dozens of times.

However, I was surprised to see “Lamb Cooking Demonstrations” on the docket for this new fest. Granted, it’s called the “Sheep and Wool” festival, not simply “Flock and Fiber” or “Fiber Fusion” like other fiber gatherings. But I’ve never seen such an offering at what I call a Yarn Orgy.

I get that these are agricultural animals with multiple purposes, and I applaud any local farm that humanely raises and butchers their animals and uses the entire animal. Indeed, the annual fiber fest where I volunteer features mutton on the grill for the volunteer potluck. Which I have not attended.

I maintain, however, that a festival that highlights “Sheep Snuggling” side-by-side with a play-by-play on chopping and boiling a nice mutton stew, as this new festival does, has a wee bit of a multiple personality disorder. Hug adorable Herman this morning and chomp on his hocks this afternoon.

That might fly for those raised on farms. But I’ve only attended yarn festivals on the west coast, where the attendees all appear to be urban folks who are there for the yarn, and who buy their meat packaged in Styrofoam or have it served to them in high-priced Farm-to-Table restaurants along with a nice merlot. At the half dozen fiber fests I’ve attended, crowds of post-menopausal ladies roam the tents full of hand-painted lace-weight merino yarn. Only well-off ladies who can afford health insurance can manage the hefty prices for these fancy skeins.

Wool and lambchops are very, very separate.

Do I want to turn my head away from reality? That we slaughter and eat some of these adorable fluffy critters while using other long-lived sheep for their coats? That thousands of people in our county are being hauled out of their beds in the middle of the night and incarcerated in inhumane cages? That we are breeding an epidemic of violent young men with easy access to mind-boggling weapons? That the regular slaughter of school children barely makes the news anymore?

Yes. Yes, I do want to turn my head. I want to sweep it all under the crocheted rag-rug since none of it is happening to me. Just let me finish this next row on my sweater project. It’s a tricky one and has become a jumble of dropped stitches and tangles since I keep getting distracted by the latest horror I can do nothing about.

Just let me hug Herman and then head back to the Yarn Barn before he is sacrificed over the flame.

[Photo from Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival]