MDS&W 2013

When it's the first full weekend in May, every fiber fanatic knows what that means: it's time for the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival!

Everything at the Golding booth is a piece of art -- a feast for the eyes and nourishment for the soul.

The craftsmanship that goes into each piece is just breathtaking.

I didn't set out with any "must buy" preconceptions this year. However, when I got to the Bosworth booth, all of these spindles just started singing my name.

Those creamy white spindles are made with moose antler. They're a bit out of my price range, but that doesn't stop one from dreaming, right?

I was happy to see that the folks at Bosworth are customers of Moo! Where else can you buy business cards with a different image on each card? I'm in love with Moo.

Before I left the Bosworth booth, I took a long, hard look at this specimen of engineering genius. Love it!

And there's The Lovely Stacey (back to camera), who thought long and hard about what spindle she was going to add to her collection. She made a great selection ... of course.

This booth was full of Shaker artistry, as well as the luscious scent of wood polish. It took me back to my father's basement workshop. He was always crafting something wonderful with wood, and that scent of polish can trigger a flashback like no one's business.

This is about half of the fleece sale area. One year I might just have to buy a fleece, no matter how hard I'm sure it is to choose (just one!).

The festival has all sorts of things that I just can't live without. I vow that I will make myself a rolled brim hat of my own one of these days.

This was a very popular spot. I really want to add a "I knit so no one has to die" sticker to my car.

No, wonderful vendor. Thank you!

One of my favorite parts of festival was visiting all the livestock, like this wonderful guy. His name is Moe -- seriously.

Oh, and the lambs! I just wanted to climb right into the pens and cuddle each one.

Oh, you lovely sheep! I gave this guy or gal lots of skritches and ear rubbing. It was very hard to walk away from all the love.

Note to self: Find this book.

I've seen pics like this on the interwebz, but I thought they were Photoshopped. Sadly, this is what some shepherds have to do to convince thieves to keep their mitts off sheep that don't belong to them.

I desperately need a haircut. This gal was quite skilled with the clippers. Hmm ... naaah!

Hello, Deb Robson! She's the coauthor of The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook.

This kind of mind-blowing array of color and texture is everywhere at the festival. It can easily become overwhelming.

Say hello to my little friend. I do believe that this wheel will be part of my future.

Glad to see that I'm not the only one who doesn't always look my best in pics. Derp!

See that guy in the kilt? Well, that's none other than the handsome, talented, and crazy-smart Brewergnome! I stepped outside my comfort zone and actually introduced myself to him. (He's kind of like a fiber rock star in the LSG group on Ravelry.)

The Lovely Stacey was one happy camper with her new spindle and color-coordinated fiber.

By the time you've finished tramping all over the fairgrounds and are ready to find your car, this guy and his trailer comes along to make the trek just a little easier.

The weather was sunny and cool. The companionship was wonderful. The festival-goers were friendly and numerous. The food was messy and delicious. The day? The day was perfect.

From Raw to Rawr: My Silk-Spinning Adventure

One of the things I bought at this year's Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival was silk.

 

I bought two bags of natural (i.e., not bleached) Tussah silk. Not having heard that silk is "so hard to spin," I just sat down at my wheel and gave it a whirl. I spun that silk obsessively (hmm ... seems to be the case anymore for anything I spin), including at this year's Highland Games.

Yes, I like to spin without shoes -- sue me. I'd applied a lovely shimmery gold nail polish the night before, so my toes were rockin'.

So, once I was done, I had about enough two-ply silk yarn to knit the Clementine Shawlette (pattern: Interweave Knits).

When I say about enough, I mean that it was going to be touch and go. But I do love to live life on the wild side.

So here's a closeup of my shawl. The color is a kind of really old, slightly dirty ivory -- not my best color.

The last weekend of August I attended an all-day workshop on dyeing with indigo and other natural plants. The program was held at the University of Delaware, and one of my FiberGuild buddies was there, too, so I felt a bit more comfortable. Having her there helped me avoid either of my two default settings for social nervousness: either silence or nearly nonstop talking.

I'd thought I might like to dye the shawl blue (i.e., with the indigo), but when I saw the results of the black walnut hull dyebath on another participant's silk fabric, I knew that this was the color for me.

I took this picture on a really sunny day, so the green is really way too vibrant compared to the shawl's real-life appearance.

Take a look at this. This is more what you see when you look at the finished product. There's that true silk shine!

And here's a shot of the whole shawl and the tiny ball of leftover silk. (Excuse the crappy "styling" in this photo. I was trying to get pictures as quickly as possible to keep Loki from suffering a nervous breakdown. He's such a momma's boy, and he didn't like being left inside.)

I can't wait until the next opportunity to spin myself some silk. If you haven't tried it yourself, why not give it a whirl?

MDS&W Festival Goodies

Let me preface this by saying that my shopping at MDS&W was underwritten by my guilt-free money. All year long, I put my pocket change into a jar. Periodically I'll wrap the coins, then set them aside. Once a year I take everything to the bank and exchange metal for paper. I can tell you that you'll be surprised by how much accumulates in one year. Oh, it also helps if your spouse puts his money in the jar, too. So, thanks to the money jar and a wonderful surprise gift from Ed, I was able to feed my fiber need.

Wonderful tussah silk -- I'm spinning this up right now, and it's absolutely wonderful. I thought that silk would have a fairly short staple (don't ask me why), but it's long, lustrous, and, well, silky.

Cotton -- This I'll be spinning on my charka. The cool thing about cotton is that you set the twist (or finish it or whatever it's called) by boiling your skeins. The cotton Ed gave me with my charka turned from a kind of light mildewy ivory to a beautiful olive color as I watched. Cool!

Blueface Leicester -- I bought a bag of this to see what all the fuss is about. Some people talk about BFL as if it were a miracle or the be-all end-all. Well, I've spun all this up (~525 yards, 2 ply), and it was wonderful to spin. I'm looking forward to my next encounter with this fiber.

4-pitch English wool combs -- A woman on Ravelry was offering this set for sale, pickup to be at the festival. I've wanted wool combs for a while now. In fact, I made a set myself, based on instructions I found on the interwebz. I used nails, and they worked fairly well, except I had to hold both of the combs and wound up straining muscles in my forearms. Not good. I've used these new combs (which were available at less than half the current going rate for a set like this), and I'm ecstatic. They do what they're meant to do. And I haven't impaled myself yet!

Duster, niddy noddy, needle/project tubes, and hand-comb cleaner -- Since we live between two major highways, the dirt is a constant presence. And since I don't have the necessary housekeeping gene to keep things from getting out of hand, we need all the help we can get. So far I've been really happy with my little duster -- this is not to say that I like dusting, though. The mini niddy noddy (say that 10 times fast) will be a great addition to my spinning tools. The needle/project tubes should help keep me from tearing my hair out over missing needles and socks that have tried to escape their needles before they're done. The tiny hand-comb cleaner (touted to me by the Mr. Strauch himself, no less) will be so much more efficient than using a junk needle to pick out the leftover bits from my combs.

WPI tool and shawl pin -- I've been trying to make my own WPI (wraps per inch) tool, and it just wasn't working for me. Bill Hardy, who has the most wonderful wood products imaginable, solved that problem nicely. The shawl pin will be a wonderful addition to the black one I have. These little things are unbelievably useful.

Soap, The Complete Guide to Natural Dyeing, measurement cards, earrings -- I just love the smell and feel of handmade soap, so Leslie's Garden was my first stop after the Little Barn. The book and cards I bought at The Mannings and should be interesting and helpful, each in their own way. The earrings were a happy find. They're old typewriter keys -- one is the ;/: key and the other is the @/[cent symbol] key. Since I'm a writer, I did a happy dance right in that vendor's booth.

And that's it. A year's worth of fiber-related goodies, all purchased with my guilt-free money. Hmm ... I was at the store this morning. Time to start filling that jar again!

More MDS&W Festival

I'm trying something new and uploading all my pictures first, then adding text. We shall see if this way works better (i.e., makes me feel less like chewing off my own hands).

For me, the highlight of the festival is always -- always -- the animals. I don't know why, but this part never gets old. Here's some sort of long wool (I think) getting a touch up. I finally got up the nerve to ask this woman why the sheep didn't just kick her through the wall, especially since she was working around his ... um ... tender bits. She told me that sheep don't kick. Really? No, seriously ... really? Wow!

This guy is going incognito to keep clean. I felt so bad for him (or her) because it was so hot.

I worked up the courage to ask the man tending these sheep why they were wearing clothes. I figured it was to keep them clean, and it was. However, they wear these sweaters or jammies to keep their skin taut, which is, the man said, a good thing. Huh. Learning new things all the time.

Just look at that black wool. Yummy...

Hello to you two, too!

At about 3:00, I headed to where the sheep dog demonstration would be held. Unfortunately, I had to schlep there from the opposite end of the fairgrounds. Between the heat and the crowds, I was fairly tired by this point.

This woman had a microphone clipped to her shirt and told us everything she was going to do and why. This was a great part of my day, both because I was able to sit on the cool grass in some shade, and also because a little boy of about 1 or 2 decided to plonk himself down on my lap to watch the demonstration. The father was a bit anxious that his son was bothering me, but I told him that, since my "babies" are now 12 and 15, having such a little guy want to spend time with me was a treat.

Once the demonstration was over, I turned around to see this. Ugh. A sea of people, and many, many more in all the buildings. Still, this is a once-a-year deal, so I set out to take a look at the main exhibition hall again. (I'd missed seeing a lot when I was hurrying to get to the Little Barn.)

This exhibitor was just inside the main door. They were from some sort of coverlet museum in Pennsylvania. What stopped me in my tracks is that my father has two of these coverlets, which have been in his family for umpteen years. I'll have to have him haul them out so that I can photograph them. I sure can't actually use them, not in this house!

Here's a yurt. Those panels are felted wool, thick and heavy.

Inside the yurt, you can see the way the thing goes together. Don't ask me how they get the panels up onto the roof.

Even though it was very hot, it was quite cool in the yurt, and there was a wonderful breeze coming in through the doorway and up and out the top. I think I want a yurt of my own. I know that Ed wants one, too. Maybe we can get a yurt for ourselves and leave the boys and dogs to take care of themselves.

By this point, I had to sit down and take my shoes off. Yes, I was wearing hand-knit socks of wool. I felt less like a bum sitting there with my shoes off since I had my Kai-Mei (pattern by Cookie A.) socks on.

Where I was sitting (back where that woman is with the red tank top, I was able to admire the alpacas, including this guy.

And this one, too.

The pen next to the alpacas had llamas. I kept my distance, though, since our family history includes an incident of llama spitting on my brother. No spit for me, thanks.


And this is my haul. Man, were my shoulders aching by the end of the day. Once I resize the pictures, I'll do another post to show off my goodies.