Achievement Unlocked! MDSW 2018

I believe my first Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival was in 2001, before I knew anything about yarn or knitting or fiber. I went with some friends who used to live in Maryland - they promised a fun day out and stopping in Frederick for Indian food on the way home. I haven’t missed a festival since. One of the things I love about this particular festival is that there always seems to be something new to grow into. In my early years, I just bought yarn and knitting supplies. Then I started to look at spinning fiber, and I took some classes. I attended the lectures and became more interested in the sheep themselves. And this year, my friends, I finally bought a fleece!

This is Adrianne, one of the many helpful volunteers staffing the Fleece Barn. You can see what it’s like in there – just long tables full of giant plastic bags full of fleeces. They are mostly sorted by category (fine wools together, long wools together, etc.). I wasn’t really sure what I wanted, so I just started opening bags. I was drawn to the gray colored fleeces and spent a long time staring at a Romney and something else I’ve already forgotten. That’s when Adrianne took me under her wing. She conducted what this librarian recognizes as a “reference interview,” which wasn’t easy because I didn’t have an idea about price point (fleeces are priced by the pound) or what I wanted to make with them. Finally, I settled on wanting a fleece that would give me a very positive first experience. Adrianne asked if I would be willing to spent a bit more per pound than the Romney I was holding (which was a bargain). When I said that I wasn’t going to let $2 or $5 per pound stand between a challenging first experience and a really good one, she said “wait here” and ran off to another table. At this point, she transformed into a personal shopper!

She brought back two fleeces from Shepherd’s Hey Farm and said that this farm routinely produces excellent fleeces. I was a little surprised that they were both crosses rather than pure breeds… but she said the shepherd is known for her breeding program. When we examined the fleece, even I could see how it differed from the other ones I had considered. But they were also bigger (and so more expensive). Here are the two we were looking at:

It seemed like the coffee brown one (from a sheep named Tamarind) might be “better” for a beginner, but I was really drawn to the color variation in the lighter one (from a sheep named Muesli). I dragged my bags up to the front of the barn to wait for Dave to show up and weigh in. In the meantime, I saw a woman I took a class with a couple years ago. As soon as she saw the Shepherd’s Hey label, she started gushing. Apparently this shepherd wins a lot of awards. So I figured I had a winner.

Dave showed up. I was thinking we would split one of these, but he immediately said he’d be happy to split them both. So off we went to the checkout, high on the lanolin fumes.

And wouldn’t you know… the shepherd (Lee Langstaff) was working in the checkout area! This is her in the yellow:

Our next challenge was to divide our spoils. We procured two extra bags at the fleece sale and proceeded to The Grassy Knoll (if you’ve ever been to MDSW, you know where this is). Dave confidently spread out the fleece. We divided it stem to stern, so that we each had the same color variation.

We did the same thing with Tamarind, though this one didn’t unroll quite as neatly:

I plan to wash these myself in my top-loading washing machine, and then experiment with various carding and combing techniques to make all sorts of yarn. Another chapter begins!

I went back to the festival on Sunday because I wanted to hear the two lectures on tap. Elizabeth Johnston presented “Textiles and the Warp Weighted Loom – from the Bronze-Age to the Present,” and Judith MacKenzie presented “Preserve and Protect: The Legacy of Primitive Sheep Breeds.” Both were excellent. Here is one gorgeous photo of stones holding a warp taut:

And here is the entire loom:

Very interesting. Judith showed us some very old whorls and reminded us that spinning is part of our history whether you spin or not. She likes to say “it’s how we got out of the cave.” Today we are indifferent to the fibers around us and so the quality is nosediving. People used to take really good care of textiles because they were laborious to produce and not easy to replace.

I also stopped by the Sheep to Shawl competition this morning. My favorite team (of course) was called Yarn Scouts. They had a delicious display that included cookies and badges. Each team member wore a handwoven sash. Their warp was a very Girl Scout-y green. All in all, perhaps my favorite team theme ever! Here are a few photos:

I have always enjoyed seeing the Skein & Garment Competition winners… but in recent years I make sure to look at the posters, which I believe are submitted by 4H students. Where else can you learn about the undersheep that wins big?!?

I came home with some non-fleece stash, as well. I got 8 oz of prepared fiber to spin – these merino-silk gradient bumps will become a 2-ply yarn someday:

I also got a kit to make a poncho/shawl thing called Blackbird. The construction is ingenious – it is mostly a big rectangle worked flat with one strand of sock yarn and one of kid mohair. For the 2” border, you join to work in the round, and work colorwork with a steek (which is an achievement I have NOT yet unlocked). You can wear it a couple of ways. I intend to use another color in place of the red that came with the kit – that is a tiny amount of sock yarn that I can easily pull from stash.

I also picked up this interesting cone of slub yarn that will be good for towels on my Cricket loom:

And the real surprise is that I bought a handwoven garment. This is kind of a shawl, but it looks like a jacket. I’ll have to model it at some future point to really show it to you. I just love this thing, and the weaver’s studio is in nearby Chambersburg, PA!

Another year, another festival. Whew! I am taking a vacation day tomorrow to recover. (Really.)