Various wool products were sold at the High Desert Wool Growers' Fiber Market Saturday afternoon at the Crook County Fairgrounds.

Redmond resident Carla Reynolds, who knits and crochets, said Saturday that she found plenty of reasons to be fascinated by wool yarn.

”Usually I just see yarn in the yarn store,” she said, ”and I’ve never seen how they harvest it, so to speak, and clean it and process it and turn it into yarn.”

At the High Desert Wool Growers’ annual Fiber Market Day, held indoors on the Crook County Fairgrounds, Reynolds browsed through booths hawking bundles of unspun wool and other animal fiber along with skeins of yarn and knitted shawls.

Event coordinator Robina Koenig said the market day featured wool and fiber products from locally raised sheep, goats, llamas and rabbits. She said the market day was created to allow small natural-fiber businesses to get their product out to the public, from raw wool to the finished product. No mass-produced products are allowed.

”It is the vendors’ show, so they can market their farm products,” Koenig said. ”There isn’t another place where you could put this much variety of stuff.”

Koenig said that, to her knowledge, the event is the largest wool and natural-fiber market in the state held east of the Cascades. Roughly 30 vendors set up shop at the fairgrounds Saturday, she said, and the number grows each year.

The market also allows wool and natural fiber enthusiasts, both customers and vendors, to connect, share information and learn from each other.

Bend resident Audra Philippy, who came to the market with two friends, said she enjoyed interacting with the vendors the most.

”I think it just makes you appreciate where your yarn comes from, to talk to the people who are raising and spinning it,” she said, explaining that she knits and spins herself.

Several vendors at the market were spinning wool or other fibers into yarn as they chatted up customers. One vendor wove cloth on a small loom near her booth. Demonstrations on spinning, dyeing and felting, or creating felt cloth by compacting wool, took place in one corner.

More than one person at the market commented on the felted gnomes – gnome sculptures created entirely by matting and compacting wool – featured at one booth.

Powell Butte resident Monika Koehler, 12, said the gnomes were her favorite thing at the market this year. She said her family attends every year because her mother, Sigrun, buys yarn for knitting and crocheting.

”It’s interesting looking at the new stuff,” Monika said. ”Every year it seems to get bigger.”

Sigrun Koehler said she’s always impressed by the quality of wool and yarn she finds at the market and likes the variety.

”It’s just a great opportunity to buy wool (yarn),” she said.

Redmond resident Reynolds said she never knew there were so many small fiber and wool producers in Eastern Oregon.

”I guess I never realized there was such a big market for it and so many people take it and spin it and make products with it,” she said. ”I like seeing other people’s creativity.”