I'm participating in Ravelry's version of the Olympic games: the Ravellenic Games (renamed after the term "Ravelympics" offended the powers that be).
Several weeks ago, a lovely lady decided that she needed to jettison a fair amount of her fiber and fiber-related tools to make room in her home and life so that she could pursue her desire to become a massage therapist. "Take it," she said. I felt like I should offer her something; however, since 1) my income is nearly nonexistent and 2) she truly wanted nothing for her treasures, I agreed to haul everything home in the dad-mobile.
Among the items was one I've wanted but had no hopes of ever having: a picker. This is a Pat Green picker, a fearsome and awesome tool that transforms clumps of fleece into clouds of fiber. It's not a tool for sissies or fools. You can do some serious damage both to body and wardrobe if you're not careful. I wound up with a small scratch and put a couple holes in a shirt before I figured out what I was doing. Safety, my dears, is the name of the game.
The fiber I was given is lovely Wensleydale, a longwool that's as shiny as can be and curly, too. It has no "kink," as does, say, merino. Still, it's soft and luminous, begging to be spun.
Picked and ready for dyeing. This batch is destined to become shades of purple, thanks again to my generous benefactor.
Ta-daaah!
Dyed, picked, and carded. I'm good to go!
A friend of mine, whose father owns many, many alpacas, gave me a suri fleece. She did, because she knows that I'll actually spin it up and make something. She can't wait to see the result, and neither can I!
So, until next time, I'll be spinning up a storm, fighting deep-vein thrombosis (yes, it's a medical benefit of spinning), building lovely calf muscles, and soothing my psyche at my wheel.
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.
This past weekend was the annual Sheep & Wool Festival in Maryland. If you're not into sheep, wool, or festivals, then you'll probably want to move along.
Saturday morning, I traveled to the springtime mecca for fiber enthusiasts: the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival. With my new friend, Pam, driving, Brenda in the shotgun position, and Linda in the back with me, we drove for about an hour and a half to the fairground.
We took the exit and got in the slow-moving line with the rest of cars inching toward the fairgrounds entrance. The Jeep in front of us sported a few gun-loving bumperstickers, including one that said something like, “I’ll keep my money, my Bible, and my guns, and you can keep your change.” Not an Obama lover, then.
After about 15 minutes or so, we turned into the hilly field where dozens – hundreds? – of cars were already parked. Once we parked, I took a couple of pictures of the view from our spot toward the fair proper in case we’d need help finding it again when we were ready to leave.
Now I’m an impatient walker. At an event like this, I’m not in the mood for strolling along right out of the gate. So as soon as we passed the front gate (no admission charge – yippee!), I made right for the second tent, where the festival booklets were laid out. Smart people that they are, the festival organizers include in their booklets a postcard that you can send in, requesting that they mail you next year’s booklet as soon as it’s available. This time I’ll try to remember to do that.
Right at the top of my list this year was cotton for spinning on the charka WonderfulEd gave me for my birthday this year. The one vendor that I know who carries bags of carded cotton is the Little Barn. That’s good. What’s bad is that they’re in the Main Exhibition Hall, right at the end of the main drag. And they’re right at the far end of the hall, too.
So, saying that I’d catch up with them later, I left Pam, Linda, and Brenda, and kicked it into high gear for the Main Exhibition Hall. On the way, I made a pit stop, having downed my usual two diet Cokes (with caffeine) on the drive down. The wait wasn’t too bad, and the bathroom was wonderfully clean. (The staff at the fairgrounds does a superb job of keeping the facilities clean – kudos!)
A woman who walks like she means business is one who gets where she wants to go. I made it to and through the hall in good time. I made my selections pretty quickly (cotton, silk, and some bluefaced Leicester, just to see what the fuss is all about) and went to pay.
Interestingly, a line snaked out of the booth and nearly all the way to the other side of the hall, where the exhibition fleeces were laid out. Yep, that was the line to pay.
Note: It’s been my experience – so far – that fiber people are among the friendliest and most honest people you’re going to meet. It would have been so easy to have just lost myself in the crowd with my stuff before I’d paid for it. Heck, we *all* could have made off with things from any of a number of vendors’ booths. But that sort of thing just isn’t done. I don’t know about you, but I like being able to sleep at night with a clean conscience.
So, I had a nice conversation about socks with the woman in front of me and showed off my Kai-Mei socks (Sock Innovation by Cookie A) and then paid cash for a 10% discount. Even though I’d dropped my camera (no damage, thank Bob), I was very happy with my visit to the Little Barn.
Saturday was h-o-t, and even though the fans in the hall were huge and working hard, everyone was sweating by 11. Since my personal thermostat seems to be broken, I did more than my fair share. I’m sure that’s more than you care to know about that part of the festival.
So, I wandered over to the fleece display, whose entrance and exit were each guarded by two volunteers.
Bags and bags and bags of wonderful fleece, just begging to be taken home. I fondled and groped, along with everyone else.
Fortunately for my back, I remembered that whatever I bought would have to be schlepped around the fairgrounds until we left, sometime after 6. So I squeezed out the exit (they were quite serious about making sure no one left with something they shouldn’t) and headed back through the hall.
Fiber ready to be spun, yarn, accoutrements, books, baskets, buttons, wheels, spindles, looms – it’s all a bit much to take in at one go. I left the hall with a little difficulty, squirting out through the mass of humanity like a wet bar of soap. This is one of the very few instances where I’ll make an exception to my overall avoidance of crowds. Hate ‘em. They make me muy cranky.
I went next door and began admiring the sheep. So many different sizes and appearances. I know next to nothing about sheep, so this part of the festival is one I particularly love. And if the sheep are interesting, they’re owners are even more so.
This man, who's giving his sleepy sheep a touch up, had driven with his flock (note I didn’t say “had driven his flock”) all the way from California. Dang!
One man, seeing how much I was enjoying the breeze from the jet-sized fan, struck up a conversation with me. He started by telling me all about Jacob sheep and their biblical origins. (These guys were fairly "busy," and since I didn't want to blind them with a flash, we've got that crappy blurred snapshot thing going here. Sorry!) Then he told me how his ancestor had been given the deed to his property by William Penn himself. Dang, again!
Since it was getting close to time for me to meet my wool combs connection from Ravelry, I stood in line to buy a gyro. After 5 minutes and no sign of movement in that line, I gave up and hustled over to the Dining Hall.
Linda (from Ohio) told me that she was one of a group that would be wearing “I’m with Hotpants” tee shirts, and there she was, standing right near the door. Um, OK, so that wasn’t her, but the woman sitting on the bench *was.* (That's Linda on the left, Mr. Hotpants in the center, and Linda's friend on the right -- pic is from Ravelry.)
She was very nice and wanted me to check the combs to be sure I was happy with their condition. Believe me, at $70 for the whole shebang, I would have been thrilled with them, even if they’d had their own little colony of cockroaches (a la my very first treadle sewing machine – fortunately, I found the little buggers before I brought the machine in the house and smashed each of those suckers flat).
Combs in hand and a smile on my face, I went into the blessed air conditioning of the Dining Hall to listen to Jackie Bland talk about “the 40 manifestations of fleece.” One hour and one power bar later, I felt refreshed and a bit more knowledgeable than I had before listening to Jackie.
Fiber fans: the best gift you can give yourself or someone else is Jackie’s fleece study. You’ll receive 40 one-ounce samples of different fleece. They’re raw, so you get to/have to wash them before you either spin them yourself or have a friend of yours do it for you. By the time you’re done, you’ll have filled your notebook (provided) with insight about what you like and what you don’t like about the different fleeces. Go. Now. Buy it. WonderfulEd loves me and gave it to me two Christmases ago. I love him, too.
Yesterday I went to my first wool and sheep festival: the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival. I survived the trip down (~1 hr 40 min) and had no clue how big this event is. The stream of cars from VA, PA, NY, DE, NJ, and elsewhere made it easy to negotiate the last few miles, which had me worried, since there were several legs of only a few tenths of a mile but that had me turning at every leg.
The weather was perfect. It was coolish and overcast until about noon, when the sun came out and made it a bit warmer than I was ready for. In fact, I drove down in shorts and ended up changing into jeans in the car, which was an interesting maneuver.
I was much more interested in checking out the sheep at first, and put off buying until a bit later. When I slipped in my first patch of sheep poo, I was taken by surprise; however, it was a reminder about what it's all about: the animals. After all, happy, healthy sheep make the best wool, and that's what we were all there for.
(Well, some were there for meat, but I can't even think about that. I'm not a vegetarian [I'm a dessertarian], but the idea of eating lamb while petting sheep just leaves me cold. But that's just me.)
I just loved seeing all the sheep -- and alpacas, too. I approached the sheep that didn't seem skittish and held out my hand (back side up, fingers together, in the approved fashion for dogs, which is as close as I've ever been to livestock. Well, except for Pete the cow; but that's a different story). Each one was very gentle and sniffed my hand. There was no "lipping," like you often get with horses. I just was struck by their calm demeanor and willingness to adapt to the strange surroundings. (Remember, these were the calm ones. The skittish ones were not at all happy to be there. There was just one sheep that was cranky, and he was about to butt me when he remembered that there were metal bars between us. I got the message, though.
The festival was a wonderful experience. The cleanliness of the bathrooms helped offset the ridiculously long lines (for the women's room, of course). Sadly, I had to give all the classic festival food a miss, thanks to a rebellious stomach, but it all smelled wonderful.
And the shopping? It was too, too wonderful! Thank goodness I've been working so hard at all my freelancing, so that I had cash I could spend without feeling any guilt or remorse. Quite the opposite! I'll post pictures of everything that followed me home from MS&W next time. Right now, I have another freelance job to work on. Hmm. I wonder when and where the next festival will be ... after all, I'll have more freelance money with which to stimulate the economy!
By the way, according to my 10-year-old, I spent the day yesterday at a "wool concert." Gotta love it!
In lieu of the standard pictures of my boys (2) and dogs (2), here's a shot of some wonderful merino in a sage colorway -- part of a fiberlicious birthday present from my mother. I'm so impressed: she actually bought this (plus fawn alpaca, cream alpaca, and a salt-and-pepper Norwegian wool) online. Nicely done!
The whole fiber thing started innocently enough with a renewed interest in knitting. In a futile effort to get me to broaden my horizons, my spouse gave me a Kromski Sonata spinning wheel for Christmas. Big mistake.
I have bags of wool that cry out to me everytime I walk by, "Spiiiiinnnn me!" If it weren't for the pesky need to eat, sleep, write, and earn money to buy more to spin, I'd be spinning nonstop. Like baking bread, there's something that's just so fulfilling about spinning individual fibers into a slender cord, then plying two cords together to make yarn, and making a wonderful twisty skein that you can point to with pride, "I made that!" Yes, I know the animals that grew the fibers actually made the fibers; however, I took a mass of miscellaneous fibers and made them bend to my will. Ah ha ha ha ha! [That's supposed to be a megalomaniacal laugh, BTW.]
After bathing sons 1 and 2, dealing with the week's trash, and making sure there's clean clothes for everyone to wear tomorrow, I'll be able to get back to my fiber therapy!
