handset letterpress and sheep shearing!

today, alison and i decided to hit up the burbs and head out to the "hot type, cool books" fair at the north andover museum of printing. the folks of the fair carefully planned it to coincide with the north andover sheep shearing festival, so we hit two cultural activities with one stone.

we got some pretty cool chapbooks and printing projects from some small local presses, as well as a linotype of our names! i had a really nice time smelling the smells of printing, touching the furniture and type and composing sticks, and just...being there.

we saw a press just recently retired from use - it was the last handset press to be used for newspaper publication. truly the end of an era, i suppose.

and then: the sheep shearing. we missed the actual shearing, but were able to watch a sheep herding demonstration. amazing - sheep really are herd animals; they just stuck together like glue and ran like hell from the dogs. they all had cheery little bells on that tinkled when they moved. speaking of tinking, when they peed, the third grader inside of us forced out snickers and pointing. jesus - time to grow up, kathryn!

mostly, it was really cool to see working dogs...well, working. we could've stood there for hours watching them herd.