sheep shearing

I spent a little more than 48 hours in Flagstaff the other weekend. gorgeous weather. wonderful wool and fiber festival (even if my very favorite vendor couldn't be there this year). also, as always, the most excellent traveling companions. so grateful to those lovely humans. 

on Sunday, the last day of the festival, I spent 3 hours teaching a little lacemaking workshop and it was wonderful! just 6 enthusiastic students, plenty of time, plus friend Shannon helping out as unofficial assistant, and it all went so well. I'm so glad everyone came ready to learn and practice and struggle with the weirdness that is tatting and tatted lace. I hope they all keep going with it. and maybe some of them will join The Lace Coven too.

the days since then have felt like a dragging two-dimensional swamp, somehow. I think I need more rest.

since summer 2024 I've been prioritizing the whole weekend of Flag Wool, every June, for a getaway with fiber friends. (this year the festival dates conflicted with my favorite academic conference and I confess it was not quite a difficult choice even though I do miss Computers & Writing and all its fun community a good bit.) a different house rental each time. some shuffling of who attends. so much gratitude that I get to be included in the fun. 

at some point along the way I was handed a copy of this book, The Lost Flock, by Jane Cooper. a meandering autobiographical style, very well researched, and fascinating to read. will I ever find myself tending sheep on a remote Scottish island? highly unlikely. more than happy to read about it though. storms and mud and diseases and all, it sounds pretty romantic.

 

the book cover itself (not to mention the setting and the sheep and the land and all that too) reminded me of Pratchett's The Wee Free Men.

sheep and shepherds. cheese and fleece. community and stories. the books are not that similar at all but you can see the echoes across the two covers I'm sure. blue sky or sea. green hills. close-up on a fleecy sheep with beady ovine eyes. more fleecy sheep wandering the hills in the background.  

I don't reread books that often, but maybe I'll revisit these two again sometime soon. the whole Tiffany Aching series is splendid and poignant and worthy of deep attention. maybe I should acquire a boxed set of them. hmmm.

has anyone in the world of the wee free men considered teaching them how to perfectly shear a sheep? I can't remember.

sheep shearing is a dying art, they say. a strange little niche profession, so delicate and demanding. too bad we don't have any magical little dudes to help out with it. sometimes I wonder if I would or could ever learn. such a prospect feels almost as far-fetched though, most days. 

sheep need shearing. I'm glad that at least a few other humans out there still know how to shear them. the shearer who typically demonstrates at Flag Wool is Mick Hofmann. my guild friends who have fleecy animals hire him every spring to come shear for them too. 

 

there weren't many nice fleeces for sale at this year's festival. even if there had been though, I remain uninterested in acquiring any raw fleece to process myself. carding 6 batts of Finn two summers back was tedious enough, I promise. 

if the apocalypse arrives and all the industrial fiber mills become defunct and I need to process wool by hand, I'll get over the tedium and hopefully also make friends with someone who can teach me shepherding and shearing too.

miscellaneous tapestry

the many instantiations of various spinning and weaving arts and crafts consume me. there remains no time for blogging.

these are little tapestry weavings in various sizes. 

and I have a scarf-in-progress too:

so much in the middle of unfinished. which is as it should be I suppose. a merry-go-round of works in progress. 

guild things

last weekend I joined a few fellow guild members to demonstrate and display various handcrafted fiber arts at the annual Prescott Highland Games  & Celtic Faire event. I did not taste any whisky, but I did buy a very hot and flaky hand pie and wander around with a spindle for some hours each of the days.

(that is my little green spinning wheel back over on the right)

you'll have to imagine the raucous drones and strains of the bagpipes and fiddles in the air while all the Irish and Scottish and Welsh flags fly against the bluest sky. it was a very very sunny and warm fall day, but thankfully there was a decent breeze.

there was a little bit of knitting too, among the spinning adventures. I'm working on (and have been for like a year now) this two-color shawl from the Lyrical Knits collection. very slow progress.

in other guild news, we also have a ton of our work on display at the local library for October. five of these items are mine-- 4 little tapestry hoop weavings and 1 knitted cowl knit from handspun local merino wool.

next month we'll have our big holiday show and sale. my goal has been to have at least 400 yards of yarn made from the same fiber all done and ready for the ocassion-- and we'll see if I get that done. most likely the 2 skeins of wine-colored merino will get me there. much plying to do in the next 4 weeks...

 

wheels and spindles

apparently I haven't blogged about the Tour de Fleece here yet. (you can read a bit more about this July spinning challenge event thing if you like). I've partly kinda-sorta spun along with the bicyclists in past years, but I never focused on it very well or had much of note to show for it at the end.

but this year I had the whole month as free as any summer month could be, and plenty of spinning experience and equipment and goals to work with, so I made some plans. 

 

starting with Jillian Eve's official Tour de Fleece 2024 bingo card, I narrowed her suggested challenges down to 20 that looked doable/interesting, and determined to let 1d20 pick one for me each day of the tour. here's the full list, with those the dice picked in bold and those I accomplished (whether or not their number got rolled) marked with checks + annotations. I've got a few photos of some of it, too.

✓ 1 Spin the oldest fiber in your stash (caliente red Kraemer roving)
✓ 2 Spin the newest fiber in your stash (cherry red Kraemer roving)

 

✓ 3 Spin outside (my back patio; the parking lot of a busy cafe one morning)
✓ 4 Spin in public (aforementioned parking lot, Fiber Creek, Sharlot Hall, various waiting rooms)
✓ 5 Spin a fiber you've never spun before (gorgeous CVM/merino blend from Cactus Hill Farm; BFL from Greenwood Fiberworks)

✓ 6 Use a new technique (drafting two rovings together)

✓ 7 Spin more than 1 hour in a day
✓ 8 Teach someone else to spin (hurrah for enthusiastic newbies!)
✓ 9 Spin a chunky yarn (well, as chunky as I could manage)
✓ 10 Spin a lace-weight yarn (usually my default so pretty easy for me)
11 Spin a plant fiber (glad this one didn't come up actually. I am scared of cotton)
12 Fractal spin (started this one late and haven't quite finished it yet... so it only sort of counts)
✓ 13 Spin a textured yarn (the pre-carded Finn was almost too textured, I say)
✓ 14 Spin fiber you processed by hand (just a sample of re-carded Albuquerque Finn-- but I tediously and lovingly carded all the rest of it for later)

✓ 15 Spin local wool (llama and alpaca from 2 different local ranches)

16 Ply with thread (someday I'll try this but I'm not in a hurry to)
✓ 17 Create yarn that tells a story (I am still not sure what I want this to mean. we'll see.)
✓ 18 Hold your fiber in the opposite hand (easier with the little e-spinner for some reason)

✓ 19 Spin while watching a movie (La La Land. it was alright)
✓ 20 Spin while listening to an audiobook (mostly Demon Copperhead. loved it)

in case you're as persistently curious about abbreviations as I am, CVM stands for California Variegated Mutant, a highly regarded and unique breed of American sheep. slightly less interestingly, BFL stands for Blue-faced Leicester, another highly regarded breed of sheep, from the UK. 

it took me a bit longer than the official tour to get anything finished, but that wasn't necessarily part of my game. I'm happy to have tried some new things and stretched my spinning skills in a few different directions. and I have every intention of continuing. who needs the excuse of a cycling tournament going on?

next goals:
finish the 4-ply alpaca (just needs washing and measuring)
wind off the CVM spindle soon-ish
finish the fractal BFL sample
ply the second half of a commissioned spin for Rose
spin more blended red (get 3 bobbinsful at least)

 

P.S. I also spent a decent chunk of the month working on this fun addition to my spinning arsenal. if I can figure out how old she is I'll see about naming her after another suitable ancestor of mine.

one week later

from what I've seen around the internet this week, plenty of people name their spinning wheels. I'm still thinking about what this one might want to be called. Angelica? Penelope? suggestions are welcome. 

almost every day in the past week, I've spent at least a little time scrubbing grime off of her various parts. there's actually paint underneath-- a yellow/tan sort of color. 

don't worry-- I'm plotting a comprehensive, photo-filled documentation of the whole "cleaning/fixing/learning-to-use my antique spinning wheel" process. stay tuned. 

so far, from a group of antique wheel experts and aficionados on Ravelry, I've learned that this wheel was likely made in Canada by a family of wheelmakers called Paradis. I haven't dug much deeper into them yet, but one kind commenter estimated a date between 1860‐1870. 

if it is that old, it is in pretty remarkable shape for its 150 years. well cared for, I imagine. 

I hope I can also care for it well enough for it to last at least one more lifetime.