We went to the Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, Oregon. It was my first time there, but it has been going on a long time. We camped in a parking lot at the fairgrounds with lots of other spinners and spent 3 days looking at sheep, aren't they cute?
and fleece, and yarn. It was a blast. We camped next to a large group from Washington that always had a circle of spinners going, and I sat and spun with them several times. My guild was there too and we participated in the Sheep to Shawl contest. This was new to me too, a team of spinners and a weaver take a washed fleece, a warped loom and make a shawl in 5 hours. I got to be one of the spinners, and I'm sure that is why we came in third instead of first. It was great fun. Here is the fleece we started with.
Here is our team of spinners
one person carded, several were spinning and one person plied to keep our weaver supplied with yarn for the weft.
Here is Linda our weaver. She made it all look so effortless.
It didn't take as long as I thought it would, only about three and a half hours. And it was not intense, our team is pretty laid back, good thing too, because I was nervous. It was fun, though.Here is our finished shawl with the whole team from left to right.
me, Linda, Donna, Linda (the weaver), Will (behind her) , Kate, and Velija.
Here is a detail of the shawl showing the pattern and the natural colors
Isn't the overall pattern pretty? It is all done with the different colors in the warp and how the weft, which is basically light grey, either goes over or under it to create the subtle blocks. (you can tell I am a neophyte at weaving, I have so much to learn)
Saturday night they have a potluck (yes we ate lamb!) and the spinners lead. People who have made something from their own sheep get to model it while leading their sheep in the arena with everyone watching. The shawls get to be modeled as well. Rose had the honor of modeling our team shawl and someone let her lead a sheep too. She got an award for being brave enough to do that for the first time, the sheep was HUGE!all in all we had great fun.
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