Persistent Knitter

I know I’ve been babbling on about preparing for sheep to shawl - and if you go back far enough you’ll see some pictures from last year.. But just what is it?

If you think about the name "Sheep to Shawl" you might assume you start with a Sheep.  Well, that’s pretty darn close.

The premise of the contest is that you have a limited amount of time (5 hours) to take a fleece, spin & weave it into a finished shawl.  The Loom is warped ahead of time with handspun yarn, but all the weft and finishing details including fringe & washing are done during the contest time.

The contest I’ll be in again this summer, at Estes Wool Market, gives you 5 hours total. You have 5 active participants: 1 weaver and 4 spinners.  Any number of your friends can be there to bring you food, do your shopping and generally cheer you on.   You cannot spin any of the weft yarn ahead of time, and the only prep the fleece can go through is to be washed.  The fleece also must be local to your state.  For me that would mean all the fleece we use in the shawl needs to be from Colorado Sheep.  A team that enters from Wyoming would use Wyoming sheep.

There are different variations on the Sheep to Shawl idea.  One that’s held out East says "bring your own sheep and shear it as the first part of the contest".  That’s a much truer form of a Sheep to Shawl contest, but one I’m glad I’m not doing.  They only get three hours to shear, spin and weave their shawl.

Planning: Before the Contest

So the premise is simple - but in reality, being able to make the best use of those 5 requires a lot of planning ahead of time.  First you have to decide what pattern you’re going to weave. How many different colors? (All the wool used must be natural, but you can add up to a certain percent of "other" fibers).  What type of wool?   I didn’t realize until I learned how to spin, but there are quite a few different types of sheep!  A long, lustrous wool? A short durable wool? Medium fine wool? All of these factors will affect what you spin, how long it takes to spin - and eventually the final product - the shawl!

Once you have an idea of the kind of fleece you’re looking for, you have to find it! This generally means a trip to a sheep farm, where you can look at a wide variety of already shorn fleeces in bags, and decide if what they have is what you need.  Usually our whole team goes on this adventure, and it can take forever as we all oooh and ahh over all the different fleeces available.  Typically we choose the fleece to use for the contest fairly quickly and the next two hours is spent deciding who is buying what for their own personal fleece stash :)

So now you have your fleece - someone has to wash it, and then it’s time to decide how to prepare the fleece (carding? Combing?) spin and weave some samples.  Generally we have a good idea of what kind of yarn we want; but once you have the fleece you need to actually spin some yarn and then hopefully weave some samples to see if the pattern you have chosen will work.  The truly daring will skip the weaving sample step - but luckily we’ve got a very prolific weaver on our team who is great at making samples.

Assuming all has gone well , now to Spin the warp. We split this duty up amongst our spinners - so that we can all practice working with the real wool.   It’s important for all of us to spin our yarn the same - so that when it’s woven up you won’t be able to tell the difference between who wove what.

We hand the warp yarn over to the weaver, who warps the loom ahead of time.  Now to wait for the contest!  Load up your loom, wheel, spinning tools, snacks, etc and off we go.