Two busy weekends

I spent the last two days in Placerville teaching Weave a V-Shawl to the Hangtown Fiber Guild. Here are the results:

Ladies,  please turn around.

These are the warps for shawls not quite finished:

Quite a variety of shawls!

Last weekend was Lambtown in Dixon, CA. The fiber building was so busy that I barely got outside to snap a few photos. The sheep-to-shawl contest was one of the most popular events. Teams come with looms already warped and they need to prepare and spin the yarn and weave the shawls during the contest. This year the fiber for the weft was Jacob wool from my flock. It got great reviews from the spinners.  Here is the winning shawl woven by the Silverado Guild from Napa:

And a close-up:

The Del Oro Guild got second place:

I didn’t get photos of the other shawls, but I did get one of Hangtown Guild’s portrayal of their theme of  “Au Naturel”:

There is a new use for all that roving that you don’t have time to spin! Hangtown always does it with a sense of humor!

One last photo taken at Lambtown:

Do I want to swap out my sheep for a flock of these  cuties? Hmmm…what is a group of chincillas called? Covey–no, that’s quail. Warren–isn’t that where rabbits live? Crowd? How about Cloud?

Colorful Evening

Spinners Night Out (SNO) was tonight. Some people spun, but others played with my rope machine. Look at what we did:

This colorful doll was made from lots of leftovers and she gained some “hair” after our ropemaking.

Handspun & handwoven Christmas present

I flew to Texas Christmas night to see my daughter, Katie. I spent the previous 2 days working on her Christmas present, after finally finishing all the weaving orders that I needed to get out before Christmas. Katie used to join our spinning nights and was a participant in Sheep-to-Shawl competitions. This is back  when she was in junior high and she’s a junior in college now. When she cleaned out her closet the last time she was home Katie gave me a box of her handspun yarn that she was never going to use. This included singles, 2-ply, slubby “beginner” yarn, thin yarn, thick yarn, and everything from Angora bunny to Navajo churro, all in a variety of colors.  I decided to weave her a blanket using her yarn. I wish I had a good photo of the pile of yarn before I started. I used about 20 different yarns, winding them in random order.

Randomly threaded warp using Katie's handspun yarn.

I wove the blanket using one of my mill-spun singles Jacob yarn in a dark gray.

Weaving the blanket

Close-up of finished blanket

Finished blanket

I don’t have a photo of Katie with her blanket. I need to get her to send one. The blanket turned out better than I could have hoped for. It is soft and has a wonderful hand.  This has inspired me to weave more like this!