More of the fiber competition

Besides handspun, there were competitions for garments, weaving, sculptural pieces and photography.  I took photos of some of my favorite pieces:

This one was my favorite.  It's a dinosaur (an Iquanadon?) head needle felted onto/around a mitten made specifically for that purpose.  It's a beautiful piece. 

This bear was quite the charmer, eating his salmon.  I don't think he placed but I thought he was quite wonderful.  I think it's the eyes I like the best.

Mr. Frog was great, too.  He took Best in Show.

The Maryland show was fun but it was HOT and it was crowded, at least on Saturday.  I would have liked it to be longer than just two days.  You need a day or two for shopping and another day or two to see everything else that's going on.  There were the working sheep dog demos and the Sheep to Shawl contest, both of which I completely missed.  We saw the Parade of Breeds.  My pictures are not very good because the sheep were in motion so I don't think I'll post any of those.

I bought myself a lovely gray/black Border Leicester fleece (which is much stinkier than the Cormo I bought last year).  After Zeilinger's ruined the Cormo/Border Leicester fleece I had them process last year, I will be doing it all with this fleece.  Later this summer, I'll be getting a drum carder and I'll turn the cleaned wool into batts for spinning.  Aside from being rather fragrant, it's a very clean fleece.  What vegetable matter I've seen is large and very easily removed.  I'd say it was from a coated sheep except the tips are bleached brown.  It's definitely been skirted for spinning, too.  All the nasty, dirty, poopy wool has been removed.

I really didn't buy that much besides the fleece.  I bought a couple of books (Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters and a book on planting a dyeing garden), a couple of T-shirts, some angora, a couple of bottles of wool scour to clean the fleece and a single skein of Socks that Rock sock yarn.  I'd heard good things about the yarn and decided to try a skein.  I was thinking of buying a Golding spindle but decided that the three spindles I have, in various weights, are enough for any spindle spinning I might do.  There wasn't anything else that called out to me.  Well, nothing I could afford or carry back on the plane.  I chatted with Otto Strauch about his Petite drum carder and learned how to clean it, how to use it and what fibers it will card (nearly everything, the exception being cotton with extremely short staples don't do well - long-stapled Pima cotton does fine).

Comments

[Nicole]

Those are amazing!

[elizabeth]

Huh. The women in my guild swear by Zeilingers, and I was thinking I'd have them process the two fleeces I'm buying from a local shepherdess. You should tell me more.