Today is Sheep to Shawl at Estes Park Wool Market. It’s also the first time in three years (this would have been year four) I haven’t been there competing with my team, Team Chutzpah.  There was much gnashing of teeth as the team wasn’t sure if they’d compete this year at all; several people have beyond busy schedules; finding time to get everyone together was impossible (I think they managed it once), and many statements of, "I’m not in charge!"

Last I hear the team got it together and managed to show up; I’m hoping to get pictures from the event soon.  In the meantime, I’ve been spinning at home, trying to support the team from afar.  I’m on bobbin #2 of a shetland yarn, spinning it semi-worsted:

The first bobbin has some pink areas in it. For the 2nd ply I thought I’d make it all blue (but shades of blue) so I selectively picked out chunks of roving that were only blue.  In this it looks like the first bobbin is much lighter, but given how the WooLee winder lays fiber on the bobbin in layers, I might find darker layers underneath.  I don’t think this yarn will stripe - if it does, it will be much more subtle.  I’m excited to see how the finished yarn comes out. Back to the Wheel!!!

We’re getting underway with preparation for Sheep to Shawl. At this point it consists of having woven a sample; and now spinning the warp yarn.  We are using a beautiful grey fleece for the warp. We drum carded it in order to get a more consistent color. Two passes through the drum carder did the trick and gave us batts of about 1 ounce each.  Here you can see us all spread out:

We had separated the fleece by color. Dark (which we didn’t use at all), Medium and Light. We tried to intersperse the light and dark while we were carding.   So far it’s working quite well and the yarn is a nice grey color:

This is just the very start of my bobbin. (The brown peeking through in the middle is my leader). The bobbin is now about half full a few days later. 

It’s very different spinning a recently shorn fine fleece with very little processing versus a prepared roving.  There is so much bounce in the fleece vs the deadness of prepared roving.  Using a carded batt is different too. I spend a bit of time picking out some noils and uncarded bits.  The next fleece I drum card I will pay a bit of attention to how I’m feeding it in to the carder to see if I can avoid those uncarded bits more.

Off to spin some more!

I realize it’s like 2 weeks after the fact; but I finally had time to make a quick posting.

First, the results if you haven’t heard it from a zillion other places.

WE WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here I am basking in the glory:

Quick bunch of random thoughts about the event:
We all arrived with plenty of time to spare. Got setup, and were ready to go when the figurative whistle blew.  There was one other team participating, the team from Wyoming.  We were off to a calm and mellow start - Rebecca had a cold and was on some great cough medicine, I had a lovely case of pink eye, and everyone else was pretty healthy as far as we could tell.

The day started out nice and cool; but it warmed up quickly. Luckily the tent we were in let in the breeze but kept out the sun really well. There was only one point after lunch that I felt like I was going to melt.

I decided to take the Schacht wheel with me. It’s more stable on uneven ground, and I’m used to the way it feels. I think I would have done fine on the Lendrum, but still feel more comfortable with the Schaht. Ingrid was our alternate, and she had taken her Lendrum along just in case someone needed a wheel or we needed her to spin.  (I think she was really relieved when we all showed up to the contest, ready and fairly able)  The other decideding factor was that we were arriving with plenty of time to spare for setup, and we could drive right up to in front of where we were doing the contest. So I didn’t have to carry the big wheel very far.   (We had to move a garbage dumpster because we arrived before they opened the main gate)

The morning went very quickly to those of us spinning our merry way along. There were quite a few people stopping by. (One of the things we are judged on is our interaction with the public. Part of the reason for the contest is to educate and inform the public about fleece, spinning, weaving, etc)  Last year I was the newbie spinner (really really new. I had to have Rebecca start my yarn for me the first two times, I couldn’t get the wheel to draw in) and hid behind a few other people. It was all I could do to concentrate on spinning yarn, nursing Alex (who was all about 6 weeks at the time) every two hours, and feeling like I was contributing something useful. 

This year I sat right on the edge, and really had a fun time explaining what I was doing to people.  We end up repeating the same phrases over and over, but it’s still fun.  Some people are quite amazed that "people still do that stuff". We didn’t have any rude comments (nobody asked us why we didn’t just go buy a shawl at the local Walmart), and everyone was really nice.

After lunch, we started spinning a bit more frantically.  We realize the deadline is drawing near; and spin faster to compensate.  We managed to actually finish the shawl with time to spare. We spent quite a bit of time washing, drying and then trimming ends. We rewove two skips that we found, inspected it closely to make sure there were no others.  It got a quick trim on the fringe to make all the ends even (all the practice I’ve had trimming my kids’ hair lately came in handy.  Special bonus that the shawl doesn’t wiggle when it sees the scissors coming!)

We proudly turned it in to the judge, and then ran off to the market to SHOP!

Some other thoughts on winning
When we turned the shawl in, we knew the other team wasn’t going to finish in time. While it was great knowing that we were the defacto first place winners - we would have loved to see how we stacked up against the competition if they had finished in time.  (Personally I think we would have won, but I am a bit biased). Their idea (two triangles, one small, one big, woven in plain weave with some color changes for the pattern) was really a great one. I was really worried when we realized what they were doing.  They also seemed to get started much much faster than we did.  They essentially had to warp the loom (a fixed size triangle loom for each piece, using nails to hold the yarn) as they went.

When the judge gave comments, she really went on about how the other team had alot of guts to do something so creative.  She mentioned how she felt we weren’t as creative because all our patterning was in the threading on the loom (she said this in a very nice way); and our weaver was doing plain weave most of the time.  We did lose 2 points on that category on our judging sheet.  While she is the judge, and I respect her opinion, I think that we were really smart to do what we did.  We had a simple yet elegant pattern (window panes with Huck Lace), that was simple to weave given the time constraints.  The other team not being able to finish in the time allotted clearly points out that while they had a great idea - it wasn’t the right idea for the time constraints.

So really, the judge was full of compliments for both teams.  Team Chutzpah feels it executed the whole deal really flawlessly; and we had a ton of fun doing it (Rebecca’s illness and my pink eye not holding us back).  Our goal every year is to above all HAVE FUN.  The competition merely places some boundries on what we do in that time frame.  I know if we hadn’t won, I’d be slightly dissappointed, but overall would have felt it was worth it either way.

Some stats on our various shawls.
Ours:  Warp & Weft were a three ply (Navajo plied). Pattern was a basic window pane using white as the alternate color.  Huck Lace was put on every other row, every other column (spaced out).  Fringe of 7" long (can you tell I was the one who cut the fringe? heh)

Theirs: Triangle shaped shawl, woven on two fixed size looms. One small, one large. They did a two ply yarn, and used the color of the yarn to create some pattern in the shawl. They did a nice job echoing the pattern in the hood/collar part.  They also had fringe, don’t know the length :)

My sheep to shawl team signed up to do a demo for our local handweaver’s guild this weekend.  We decided to do a "Sheep to Scarf" trial run.  A scarf so that we didn’t have to spin or weave as frantically, but it’s big enough we’ll get a good idea of how the contest will go for us.

It was a not so great day for being outside and spinning/weaving. Luckly we had a tent - albiet a small one.  There 7 of us crammed into a tiny 10×10 space, and it was cooooold!  You can see Debbie on the left weaving (and talking on the phone to Mr. Debbie), then Judy, Di, a person who came by and Ingrid was showing how to use the spinning wheel, Ingrid, Rebecca, my empty chair (that’s my new Lendrum in the front), & Sue.

I totally forgot to snap any shots of the scarf as it was being woven! Hopefully Debbie has a shot of it on her blog, Divergent Threads.

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.

As I promised, I’m sharing some pictures my friend Rebecca took. (or actually her camera took - I’m not sure who the actual photographer was)

The winning shawl & team:

Me spinning, Alex behind me held by my nanny (aka Katie):

One of my favorite pictures, Rebecca doing the ‘vamp’ pose with our shawl: