Valley resident to display work at Trailing of the Sheep Festival’s Folklife Fair
BY HAYDEN SEDER
The 22nd annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival starts this week and with it comes one of the festival’s staples, the Sheep Folklife Fair. The free event will feature over 75 vendors, demonstrations by artisans, kids’ craft activities, music, displays of sheep shearing, sheep wagons, and more. It will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 13, at Roberta McKercher Gateway Park in Hailey.
“The fair is a great place to interact with vendors, see cultural performers, enjoy lamb, see demonstrations,” Laura Drake, executive director of the Trailing of the Sheep Festival, said. “The fair was part of the festival from the very beginning and continues to be part of who we are as a festival and organization.”
In addition to sheep-shearing demonstrations, there will also be wool spinning and weaving done by regional and local artisans, music and dancing by traditional performers, and food and beverages. The juried arts and crafts show requires vendors to offer handmade items made of wool, alpaca, wool blends, or items related to sheep, such as soaps and lotions from lanolin, sheep cheeses, or items that augment cooking with lamb.
Ketchum resident Merete Abbott has participated with the folklife fair for the last six years. Under the name of Purls and Shawls MJA (her initials), Abbott sells homemade knitted shawls, ponchos, and mini ponchos. In addition to the folklife fair, Abbott also sells her goods at the annual Ketchum Arts and Crafts Festival and Janet Dunbar’s Artisans Invitational.
For more than six decades, knitting has always been a part of Abbott’s life; she has been knitting since she was 10 years old.
“I started out of necessity because I was the second of four children, so I made a lot of my own clothing,” Abbott said. “If I wanted a new outfit for school, I would knit a new sweater, then go to the fabric shop and buy a little piece of material to make a miniskirt, and then I’d have a new outfit.”
Abbott grew up in Denmark where the practice of hygge—a word used in Danish and Norwegian cultures to describe the mood of coziness and contentment—is often practiced. Abbott brought the concept of hygge to her home of 25 years in Ketchum. She will often light a candle, make some tea, put on some soft music, and spend some time knitting.
While Abbott knits quite often for her business now, she spent years of her life as a translator in English, German, Spanish, French and Danish, and knitting in her spare time.
“I’ve always been knitting,” Abbott said. “And now my husband is an airline pilot and he invites me on long trips, so I bring my knitting.”
Abbott appreciates the community of people the Trailing of the Sheep’s Folklife Fair brings together, and the long traditions.
“As an immigrant myself, it’s nice seeing the Basque dancers,” Abbott said. “And making yarn out of wool is a tradition going back hundreds of years.”
