So many hobbies!

Goats, 'pacas and some fleece

I love wool but I think I might love goats more than sheep.  They have great personalities and the babies are very charming.  I think I've said this before, but if I ever get any fiber critters, it'll be pygora goats.  If you produce your own wool, you're limited to the breed(s) you have.  I like more variety than that.  Pygora can be spun alone or blended with just about any wool you want.  Plus, pygora fiber stays wonderfully soft throughout the life of the goat, unlike angoras whose fiber often is only soft up to the 3rd clip and gets coarser as they age.

I'm also rather fond of alpacas.  Don't these guys look like teddy bears?  They're so sweet.  Did you know they hum?  They hum when they're content, they hum when they're upset.  They hum.  And they're fiber is lovely and very warm.  They are, however, rather pricey so I'll be admiring them from afar.

Some of the Border Leicester fleece I bought Saturday and washed yesterday.  (The photo is crap.  I took it under the overhead light in my bedroom so it yellowed out the wool.  It's really gray.)  Ah, the crimp.  I'll have to cut off the brown tips to keep the gray color.  It'll be pretty spun up.   

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).

Maryland Sheep & Wool - Part 1

Sorry, tonight I'm going to brag... a little.  I'll do the rest of the Festival tomorrow.  I'm too pooped to be witty so tonight's post will be picture heavy and light on text.   Anyway, I entered five skeins of yarn in the contest and I'm pretty pleased with how I did:

I thought the Cormo skein would do the worst since it was so uneven but instead, the skein I thought was the best, did the worst.  Go figure.

Festival skeins

My choices for Maryland's skein contest:  Refreshing superwash sock yarn, Merino/mohair border yarn for my shawl and the Spring's Coming superwash worsted.  I think these are pretty good but I'm going to have my spinning group give them a critical eye and give me their opinion.

I mailed in my application for SOAR today.  Yeah, "opening day" is tomorrow.  I thought I was late in getting it in and I end up sending it in a day early.  Well, it's out of my hands now.  I hope I make it in.  There are some classes being offered that I'd really like to take.  Hopefully I'll be able to pick up a passenger if I go.  Eight hours is a long time to drive by yourself and well, gas isn't cheap.  I'm also going to need a roommate but I think you can put a request in for one and they'll match you up with someone else who needs a roommate.

I think I may have solved the problem with my photos being out of whack.  I was using a white background and I've switched to a gray one.  I think my camera was freaking out trying to deal with a really white background and a darker subject.  BTW, a public thanks to Maggie who offered to help me fix the photos of my spindle boxes if the ones I took turned out badly.  Thanks, Maggie.  It was also Maggie's idea to make a spindle box for the Harlot.  I'm so glad I had the extra one with me to give to Abby.  It was a hoot to see how excited she was to get it.

This has been a very long week for me and I can't tell you how happy I am the weekend is almost here.  I started designing the larger size of my spindle box (accomodating spindles up to 3.5" by 13") and I'll have some finished and up in my store by Sunday.  Also this weekend, I'll be cleaning up, picking up and reorganizing my trashed condo.  Definitely no company until I deal with the mess.  It's pretty bad.  Something has got to go.  My condo is pretty small and I just don't have room for everything.  I think it's time to start selling my no-longer-used rubberstamps on ebay.  Just as soon as I have some spare time.

First Annual Fiber Expo

The first Fiber Expo held at the Washtenaw County Fairgrounds was a nice event.  It was very well organized and there were about 50 vendors, a few make&takes and a variety of classes.  I was hoping for more animals - there were several alpacas, a couple of llamas and some rabbits - but it was a minor disappointment.  Rita and I happily wandered from booth to booth for a couple of hours.  I'm proud to say I was Rita's fiber enabler.  Rita:  Do you think I should get this?  Me:  Suuuure!  Rita bought alpaca roving, Cormo roving, merino/silk roving and a few ounces of a pink roving blend with sparkly stuff in it.  Neither Rita nor I are really pink people but the sample yarn was so intriguing it didn't take much enabling on my part for her to buy some.  I came home with 8 ounces of gorgeous merino/silk roving in the "Midnight Sea" colorway:

This is a bit dark (my light tent is on its way!) but you can see the highlights from the silk pretty clearly.  This is going to be lovely spun up.  I also came home with an ounce and a half of yak down.  Ooo, this stuff is soft!

Well, okay, it just looks like some brown fluff but take my word for it, this stuff is nice.  I'm sure eventually I'll figure out what to do with it.  In the meantime, my spinner's stash is growing nicely.  Isn't a nice stash what we spinners use to keep us happy and warm during the long, gray winter?

The Boysenberry yarn I started Thursday is done and is soaking.  I'll have pictures tomorrow.

Shopping and family

What could be better?  The Michigan Fiber Festival was so much fun.  There was shopping, visiting with friends, and of course, the skein contest.  One of the first booths I visited, Wild Meadow Angora, had lovely batts in various colorways.  A woman standing next to me turned to me, offered me a batt and said, "Touch this!"  That was all it took.  The batts were 60% Angora, 20% Cormo and 20% Bombyx silk.  I bought two.

In addition, I bought the most luscious, soft and squishy skein of 100% Cria Alpaca (the white one in the middle), a lovely skein of Mountain Colors, 4 oz. of Angora (top right) and, oh my God!, an ounce of Qiviut (bottom right)!  Beth was goading me to buy it and I folded like a house of cards.  It wasn't really a hard sell.  I also bought some back issues of Spin-Off magazine. 

Here's Kate, myself and Beth right after I bought the Qiviut.  I'm grinning big because, well, I have qiviut!!  Beth is still looking naughty.

Next was the skein contest.  There were chairs set up so you could watch the judging.  Listening to the judge's commets was very educational.  I learned that even if only one skein is submitted in a category, it doesn't automatically mean it will get the blue ribbon.  If the skein has flaws, the judge may award second or third place.  In this competition, it was almost as important that the end use be as appropriate to the yarn as was the skill of the spinning.  In the end, this is what I came home with:

Once again, I was floored... and grinning like a complete fool.  When I went to pick up my skeins, some of the staff wanted to meet me and congratulate me.  It was a fun and heady experience.  There was more of me grinning like a fool.

After I left the fiber fest, I drove north to my parents' cottage where I spent three and a half days with my family.  It was relaxing and wonderful.  I got to see my youngest nephews, who are 3 and 5, and my oldest niece and nephew, who are 19 and 22.  My 22-year-old nephew is heading out to California to start an assistant teacher position.  I'm so proud of him.  My niece is starting her second year of college and my two young nephews are starting pre-school and kindergarten.  I got to spend time with my sister which recharged my batteries.  There was much talking and laughing.  My brother-in-law a jokester who needs to be watched!  We had such a good time.  I love my family!