spinning,

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Here is a finished 12 round square. It is the center block of Babette. The pattern calls for a few of these bigger squares. I finished this one at the Spinning Guild meeting last night.

Our meeting was a covered dish dinner along with an auction. Everyone brought in items for donation (I took the opportunity to de-stash – God did that feel good!) But I did not come home empty handed – check out my loot:

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These beauties were spun by another guild member, Gunther. He has won first place prizes at MSWF for his spinning. There are a couple of skeins of each. Do you remember the fabulous grab bag present I scored at the Guild’s holiday party? Well, Emma is Gunther’s granddaughter. There must be a spinning gene in that family! I am thinking of combining Gunther’s and Emma’s into a Hap Shawl, wouldn’t that be cool?

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and this little cutie was donated by Sharon. She found him at a garage sale. I am going to fill him with knitting and spinning necessities and keep him close by.

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Tonight is the monthly Spinning Guild meeting! One of our members owns a livestock company and she specializes in alpacas and llamas. She is also a professional shearer and will be demonstrating for us. It should be very interesting and fun to see the animals up close. Ever since that goat workshop, I have been fantisizing about having some livestock of my own ……. of course I have not included the care and cleaning of such livestock in my delusions visions.

a stack of old family bibles seemed the perfect place for these guys ……

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and she’s cl-i-m-bing a st-ai-r-way to heav-en

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I did not realize the implications of a goat fiber workshop.

If I did, my last entry would have included far more exclamation points. Sure, if you asked me where cashmere came from, I would have said goats. But I never made the leap. goat fiber workshop = learning about and spinning cashmere!!!!!!!!!

I would like to say from the start that by far, this was the most organized workshop I have ever attended. Robin Russo is a fantastic teacher and if you ever have the opportunity to take one of her classes, do. Just look at the notebooks she handed to each of us at the beginning of the class. She covered everything in depth, answered all questions, gave us all equal amounts of time and was thoroughly prepared. We learned about the micrometer scale of fibers (human hair = 60 cashmere < 18), how it all came about, how the opening of trade with China has affected the cashmere market, preparation of/spinning of. We also covered mohair and angora, although I had to miss most of that section since I had to leave the workshop a bit early to drive D#2 around town. Usually the workshops are mostly winding down in the last 45 minutes and I didn’t think leaving would be a problem, so I told D#2 it would be no problem to drive her places. argh!

anyway, the workshop was fabulous and I learned that my two favorite things to spin were the 15 micron carded cashmere and carded cashgora. To quote the workbook, “Cashgora is a fiber with a micron count higher than 19 – it is produced by crossing a down bearing goat with a mohair goat”

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Did I mention that I fell in love with Robin’s wheel? That her husband makes them by hand? That they are very, very reasonably priced? That they will be in Maryland?

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