The Yarn Harlot Discovers Madison

Last night I had the pleasure of finally hearing in person and meeting Stephanie Pearl-McPhee aka The Yarn Harlot.

Her Friday night appearance in Chicagoland was cancelled due to the fact she could not get to O’Hare.  Believe me, the weather was BAD.  1″ hail does not do good things to airplanes.   So I had a fear that the Chicagoland people would make a pilgramage to Madison.  I knew with the long drive I had I would need to get to Borders early to get an arm band.

Bless the staff at Borders!  We were expected and they were prepared.  They did have more chairs to put out, but it was standing room only by the time it started.  I got my armband at about 3:00 and promptly went geocaching.  I was able to find a couple before finding dinner (Mmmmm….Noodles & Company…..Yum!) and headed back to Borders about 1.5 hours before the event.

Here is what it looked like over an hour before the event.

 

 This is the side I sat on.  It filled quickly once people found the chairs over there

Notice the Ravelry bag.  I need one of those!  How did I miss them?

Anyhow I tried to settle down and work on one of my projects.  The Shetland-Shetland Blend PI shawl refused to behave.  It kept sliding off my lap and me working on a French Market Bag with commercial wool just didn’t feel right.  I mean, I’m a handspinner…duh..  So I whipped out a Bosworth spindle and some leftover fiber from the Abby seminar I went to last month.  After a while I realized that -I- had people watching me.  That totally took me off guard.  I mean, I was only about 20 minutes (if that) from Susan’s Fiber Shop.  I didn’t expect so few people to be spinners in this group.  What does that say about my view of the world of knitters….hmmm….

Stephanie arrives and once she gets set up she promptly takes pictures of all of us. 

She discussed how relieved our group was much smaller than the one she had spoken to the night before at the WEBS event.  No fear of her fainting from fright with us!

This is my first time hearing her in person.  Her humor had a serious message behind it which took me off guard.  Also her discussion about her adventure “walking to town” when she was Northern Ontario was absolutely on the mark.  I mean, people warning her about killer deer and not questioning her sanity when she states she was walking 14 km to town? 

See the tired baby.  See Steph sign book.  What you don’t see is the tired baby not smile for Steph when she tried to take a picture of the baby.

I did have her sign a couple books for me before I had to fly back to Illinois.  I was able to give her the fiber I brought for her (yeah!)  I hope that is some of the stuff she mailed home either that or she has a HUGE suitcase.  She recognized me and my blog (gulp!). 

It was a tiring but well worth it trip.  The drive back on US 12 had me looking for killer deer the entire way :)  And I managed to get home before midnight.

Sorry I have not posted the results of the last fiber group, but the paco-vicuna has gone on walkabout and I have yet to locate it.  Plus I’m scurrying around getting ready to to to my Meg Swanson workshop this weekend!  This will be my first knitting seminar ever.  Wish me luck!

Wool Fumes (With Apologies to the Yarn Harlot)

That’s the only way I can explain it…must have been wool fumes….

Tuesday we discovered what happens when the sump pump goes out in the basement.  I walked down to find 1/2 inch of standing water.  We switch into emergency mode, salvage things on the floor that were the most valuable such as my dogs scent articles (made of leather and metal), some old video tapes, and wool stored down there.

Three unwashed fleeces got wet, others washed and unwashed, were just fine.  So today I started washing these fleeces.  All three were just wet and two should wash up just fine.

But the third…I mean…what the heck was I thinking when I bought it.  Yes it was a rare breed and yes I was at a fiber festival.  But after 20 years of buying fleeces I KNOW better.  The longwool fleece was caked in mud and sheep poo so bad that parts of the fleece even after a 30 minute soak in 120 degree water with Dawn was still caked.  The mud areas did wash up to expose a fleece full of burrs and hay.  I carefully looked through the fleece, nope the whole thing was like this.  Forget it…my time was too important.  It went in the dumpster along with another rare breed fleece I bought off of EBay that was full of keds (aka sheep ticks).

So, how does someone like me end up with a fleece like that?  Part of it was the rarity of the breed, I was just happy to find it.  The other part was temporary insanity caused by wool fumes.   I might have been tempted to ship it off to a processor, but with it wet I wasn’t going spend time drying the durn thing just to have a processor ship it back to me.

Okay what are my suggestions for finding a good fleece?

Have a friend help you

If you have never bought a raw fleece before and you are at a fiber festival, hook up with someone who has experience buying fleeces.  Seek out recommendations from others if you are mail ordering or bidding on EBay.  Also talk to them about what they expect from fleeces.  They may have very different ideas about what is “clean enough” than you do.

Avoid lots of vegetable matter

Even longwool fleeces can have problems with vegetable matter (vm).  It does not have to be perfectly clean.  Right now I have a fine wool fleece I’m sending off to a specific processor because it full of vm and I know that they do a good job removing it and there is nothing else wrong with the fleece.  I also find that I’m allergic to cedar needles and I avoid any fleece that has cedar needles in it.

Just say no to bugs

If the fleece arrives and it has bugs in it, such as sheep keds or live wool moths.  Quarantine the fleece away from your stash and contact the seller immediately.  Ahem, if I had really looked at that EBay fleece when I got it in the mail I would have found the keds and contacted the seller immediately.  Instead I looked at it and didn’t see anything and put it aside.  Keds can’t live off the the host so should already be dead, but wool moths and carpet beetles can and will munch on your fiber stash.    Keds are a management problem and cause problems beyond ruining the wool and skin of the animal.  Scurf (dandruff) can be a sign of sheep and goat lice and is a royal pain in the rear to get out.  I find it more common in mohair fleeces than others.

What about mud?

Mud most of the time comes out.  Sometimes it can stain though so you will have to consider that on a fleece by fleece basis.  Wash a lock if you can before buying.  Sometimes that moorit looking fleece is actually cream under all that mud!

Skirt liberally

Don’t be afraid of asking for a better skirted fleece.  You don’t need to buy their barnyard.  But be realistic.  If you are getting the fleece for $4 a pound you can afford to skirt that yourself.  If you are paying $20 pound then I would expect a much cleaner fleece to begin with.

Check strength of the fiber

Do a snap test with the fiber to find out if it has a weak place.  If it does pass on it or if you got it through the mail contact the seller.  That should have been disclosed when the fleece was sold.

Don’t be afraid to admit you can’t process it yourself

After buying a fleece and starting to process it you just may realize that you hate processing or that you don’t have time to process the entire 8 pound cormo fleece.  There are many very capable and experienced processors out there happy to turn your fleece into roving or batts.

I hope that this short tutorial will help you this shearing season.  It’s spring in the swamps of NE Illinois, and I need to get back to cleaning my basement and washing those fleeces.

We Came, We Learned, We Shopped

After dealing with insanity all week at work I was more than ready to take Friday off so I could go take my first spinning workshops in over a decade. Its not like I haven’t taken any workshops since then, just none spinning related.

Of course the first challenge was packing….where is this book…should I take this one? Where is that batt? Okay now to get the GPSr ready for the trip and the rest of the stuff I need for geocaching. Oh yeah, I better pack a bag separately for the sleepover! Okay, where is that pair of socks? Which spindles should I bring? And we have to get the dogs ready to go to the kennel. I fell asleep before finishing on Thursday night and never did find that batt (sigh).

Thanks to the late start Friday morning as I scrambled to find those last few things, we only found one geocache (aka cache) on the way there.

But when we arrived I was nervous and excited to meet Abby, and of course Beth and Faina (of lace fame). Little did I know at the time Sharon of Heere Be Dragone fame was also present. But a moment later my eyes espied…

…the wall of fleece. Other than at a fiber festival I have never seen so many different breed fleeces in one place. But I dragged my eyes back to Abby as she was starting her workshop.

I quickly became engrossed in her stories of life in Chinchero as she began her presentation. Weaving and spinning intertwined in the stories and then into the techniques.

True Andean spinning and plying was discussed. How her dad Ed learned the technique that is commonly called “Andean plying” and its publication in Spin-Off. Stupid spindle tricks explained.

We all received spindles and roving to play with. Some took to it with no problem, others added weight until spinning on it was easier. That was the first time in many years I had spun on a bottom whorl spindle without a hook. I did have problems at first, but just out of pure stubbornness that I was going to get the thing to work without adding weight and yes I was eventually successful. Jerry enjoyed the time and and chance to take photos for me. Especially after the workshop of Beth’s shop.

This is just a bit of teaser of what you will find in her shop.

So after the workshop we all milled around a bit. Wine and rootbeer was broken out and Jerry saw his chance to escape before things got too much for him. I shared part of my book collection with Abby, the good, the bad, the unusual. And some of the socks I brought as examples for her to use. I also exposed my problems with knitting gauge for all eyes to see.

Sleep was inevitable and about 2:00 we all started settling down to sleep.

The next morning came way too early for use night owls. Beth went and got coffee and cinnamon rolls for all of us and the sane daytrippers started appearing. I managed to foist off some of my junk on Jerry before he went geocaching, but I still had a substantial amount of junk.

I thought I had warned Beth I didn’t travel light…um…that was an oversight on my part. But I used that junk Beth, well not the Alpaca wheel and its supplies…

Jillian and Carla shows up sparking a whole different atmosphere from the day before.

Beth wears a tiara and Shannah holds down the fort during the workshop.

Late in the day it was becoming obvious that we were being exposed to a lot of material.

And were starting to get an inkling about how much we had trashed Beth’s shop.

Too soon it was over. I knew Jerry would be coming to get me eventually so I got a chance to try our Abby’s Victoria wheel.

And turned around and forgot about Beth wanting to try my Lendrum. Eventually my attention was drawn back to the wall of fleece.

Yes I went shopping, some serious research for us here at Sheepwreck. Some of these fleeces you will see here in the future, I promise! Beth has some pictures of me in the supposed aftermath of my shopping spree, but what she doesn’t tell you is that there were some I only got a pound of that are not put back in the cubes yet.

Jerry ended up meeting us at dinner. He was excited from his day he spent geocaching with the DarrylW4 and Firefly03 of Cache-A-Maniacs as well as muddy and tired. The group eventually ended up back at Beth’s and I was just about to leave when Denny calls and we all continue talking. Eventually Beth, who is in dire need of sleep, kicks us all out and I say goodbye both her and Abby.

The next morning I switch gears and we meet an equally bleary eyed Darryl and Firefly to share stories and trade geocoins (ooh shiny!). Eventually we headed back toward Chicagoland caching at rest areas on the way back and keeping an eye to the weather. Jerry realized that at one of the caches that he had hit 700, luckily it wasn’t a micro.

If you get a chance to take a workshop with Abby by all means go! What you learn from her is something I really can’t explain, but having a chance to talk, ask questions and just watch her made a huge difference. Being able to handle and feel yarn, see the twist, feel the draft of the fibers is nothing like reading about it in a book.