Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival From the Vendor Side

What a busy and cold, wet spring!  The weather has hampered everything from cleaning the barn to doing field work.  Andy and I have been doing a lot of shop work, turning wool and wood into spinning fiber and tools.  We have a full spring festival season mapped out and need to build inventory so the shelves stay full.

The biggest festival of the season is the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, and Nistock Farms was a vendor there for the first time.  We were accepted into a tent space in the upper gravel lot, but being in a tent gave me pause as I know how wet it can be there.  Setting up on gravel felt as safe as possible though, so off we went with great optimism the first weekend in May!

Julie and I drove on Thursday so that we'd have all day Friday to set up.  New space, new dimensions, uneven floor.... we knew it would take a while.  Here was our home for the next two days.

I was alarmed at the lack of sidewalls, especially since it was raining and foggy, but was assured that the tent company would be back at some point during the day to put them up (and they were) so we forged ahead with unloading.

"Trailer full of heavy stuff?  Sure, no problem!"

Our tent walls were clear, thankfully, and despite not having electricity it was quite bright inside, even on Sunday which was raining and dreary.  With the tent wall pulled up to function as a door we looked inviting with sort of a bedouin flavor.  ;-) 

We are a fiber provider of Cotswold for the Livestock Conservancy's 'Shave 'Em to Save 'Em' program which works to connect fiber artists with the producers of rare sheep breeds' fleece.  We had raw Cotswold available by the pound, prepared roving and Cotswold yarn so we had all angles covered and sent a lot of folks home with wool from a breed they had never sampled.  Awesome program, Livestock Conservancy!

One happy shopped discovered that we had the same taste in colors - I had created roving that matched both her blouse and her shoes!

We made one purchase prior to the festival season and ordered the grid panels and hardware to construct a free standing "H" shaped display.  Andy had cut some nice shelves and it functioned well for small, lightweight items. 

The far wall displayed yarn and our Cotswold blankets and then there were two tables and upright grid wall for Andy's fiber tools.  I spent a fair amount of time demonstrating Oxford rug punching and punch needle embroidery, both of which are easy to do and the Oxford rug punching has the added allure of being able to eat up handspun yarn - a plus for spinners like myself who have totes full of yarn with no specific purpose.

All in all, the tent space worked out well and I've already signed up for next year.  The major downside of being a vendor is that it's tough to get out of your booth and see the festival!  Spinning guild friends stopped by to say hello (don't know where the group hug picture went, darn it) and my only trip to the sheep barn was on a mission to steal some electricity for my phone.  Not ever having dealt with a non-electric booth I didn't think about phone battery life - and one needs it to process credit cards.  Yikes!  Thankfully I was able to park my phone in the sheep show office and bring it back to life.  First purchase upon returning home - a battery pack with USB ports for just such situations.  Apparently the world has been using these for some time and once again I'm firmly behind the technology wave.  :-/

I was really sad that I didn't get a chance to peruse the display of fleece types.  Apparently there was an extensive collection of breed samples including the rare and foreign and I should have found time to see it.  I hope it might come back another year.  One event that I did manage to get to was the Skein and Garment display and that was because the festival committee members were generous enough to keep the building open for one hour after the festival closed so that vendors could enjoy it.

As usual, the talent and artistry was astonishing.  Every entry deserved a photo but I grabbed a few of the items that most caught my eye.

Knitting...

Photography and graphic arts.....

Thecrazysheeplady's wool house image earned a blue!  :-)

Amazingly realistic felting.....

Items that are both artistic and functional......

I don't remember if this was hooked or punched but the design is the artist's original.

And my favorite entry.....

The Travelling Fleece.  A 'handspinner's basket' entry featuring wool spun from Buddy, a sheep from our flock who moved to Equinox Farm at a tender age and lived a long happy life there.  Buddy's sire was British (thank you, artificial insemination technology) so England, New York (our farm), Kentucky (his lifelong home) and Pennsylvania (where the spinner worked her magic on the fleece) are all involved, hence the 'passport'.  How clever is that?? Far beyond what I could have come up with and very worthy of the blue and purple ribbons adorning it.

Having been initiated to the rhythm of being a vendor at such a big show I will be better able next year to plan some time to get out and see more of the events, even if it has to be 'after hours'.  That's one of the fun things about such events - the sheep barns never really close!

December: The Month of More, Part 2

December also features a couple of notable fiber-oriented gatherings for me.

First is Christmas On The Farm - a cozy group of vendors who kick off the holiday craft festival season at Stone Edge Fibers in Phelps, NY.  Fibergoddess Amy (and DH Fred) clear their garage to make a lovely venue for herself and five other vendors to offer goods to early Christmas shoppers. 

I made up more beginner drop spindle kits and packaged some yummy alpaca/silk, camel/silk and dyed waste silk roving.

Besides Amy's and my fiber and yarn (and Andy's fiber tools and 'gift items' like cutting boards), there are vendors with amazing soap and lotions, jewelry, turned wooden bowls, holiday decorations and jams.

 

Don't you love this sweater? I asked the lady if she had made it.  She did not, but I think it could be done reasonably simply by embroidering those flowers on a plain sweater with yarn.  Done by someone... probably not me.  Sigh.

Also at this event was a Guiding Eyes pup in training and an information booth about the organization which was selling baked goods and hot cider as a fundraiser. 

This is Vanguard.  He's actually a 'loner' pup from another family as a female pup in his household was coming into heat and the policy is to remove males from that distraction until it passes.  He was a very good boy and worked very hard at ignoring people and tempting items on the floor during his lessons and concentrated only on his handler.

But don't worry, he eventually went off duty and we all got to pet him and he had a good nap too.

The other fun gathering was my spinning guild's December meeting.  It features Christmas cookies and a 'secret Santa' style fiber gift exchange.  Participation is not mandatory but many people choose to join in. 

The cookie table (more came in later, too).

Look at these!  Almost too cute to eat!  (Almost).

And the table of gifts was full to overflowing.  Anne Marie presided over the drawing of names and gift choosing.

My name came up second!  I took one look at the box with this little guy on top and grabbed him up.  It's Dominic the Donkey!!

Alas, I didn't get to keep him very long as 'stealing' was allowed during the course of the gift game and he changed hands many times.

It's been such a busy month I didn't get a chance to give the crazy guild challenge roving much thought but I figured I better jump in and decide how to handle it.  I laid it out and stewed on the colors a while.  I could make them harmonize fairly well except for that white - it stuck out like a sore thumb to me.  I finally settled on laying them out in a dark/light/dark/light sequence and hoped it was random enough that the white would be spread out and quieted down when the finished yarn was eventually plied back on itself.

I started from the left, rolling the roving like a cinnamon bun and adding each length of roving in turn as I had laid it out.  I also sprinkled some Forest Blaze angelina on the roving as I rolled it up.  In for a penny, in for a pound.  It ended up looking rather appealing and I was eager to spin it.

I had to spin it a little chunkier than I had wanted.  Since the fiber came from lots of different sources the preparation varied a lot.  Some colors spun easily, some seemed to have been around the block a few times and were almost felted and didn't draft well.  All in all, it didn't turn out too badly.

Next was plying.  And measuring.  The plying went well in that the colors blended quite nicely and the only color that matched up to itself in one place was the white.  Wouldn't you know.  Happily it was only a few yards.  Then I measured it.  Ninety-nine yards.  In the immortal words of Scooby Doo... "Ruuh-rooh!"  The pattern we're to use calls for a minimum of over 200 yards.  It's adjustable in that you can make it shorter or narrower but I have a sneaking suspicion that to avoid looking like a choker I'm going to need more yarn.  At this point I turn to the vast stash of handspun samples I have from roving colors that are long gone.  I'm thinking I can alternate a few rows of the challenge yarn with something from the stash to stretch the total yardage.

I hemmed and hawed and held everything to the light of day and finally decided on using the mocha (moorit) in the middle.  At least, that's the thought right now.  I know I don't have time to get started until after Christmas so I'll look at it again then with fresh eyes.  So it's decided......kinda.

Mischief Managed

We managed to get one large job finished this week.  It took a few sessions but we finally got the ewe flock coated.  It's a big job that takes more time than you'd think it would.  We've gotten quite good at estimating which size coat will fit a ewe but when it's actually on them, before you lift hind legs to slip into the straps..... sometimes you see it's going to be too long or too short and you pull it off and reach for the next size.  Lots of bending over.  It's really nice to see them all jacketed and know their fleeces are safe from the dreaded VM.

They will pick up some chaff from the floor on the area we call "the butt poof" and some on the back of the neck.  Our feeders are really good but there's no way to protect that area other than put a show hood over their heads and that's unnecessarily extreme.  Only the locks on the back of their necks suffer some - what's under their throat is often clean and lovely.

Now that everyone is safe from contamination we started feeding out in the 'picnic area' again - that's the hay feeder Andy constructed in the old feed bunk.  Some of the young, athletic ewes jump up from the backside and eat out of the manger.

This eases any congestion in the barn proper and no one is crowded - unless they want to be.

Some of the geriatric girls and the rams are still without coats.  The ewes I had to order a few more of certain sizes for.  The rams are still enjoying going outside for a morning apple party followed by grazing so I don't want to coat them until they are solely "barned up" and on hay.

Another item ticked off the list is the Oxford rug punching kit I learned on when I went to the school earlier this month. I finished it and am think it's a decent first effort.

I'm pleased with how it came out. Despite how simple it looks the pattern teaches you borders, shapes, curves, filling in areas, the stitch gauge you should try to attain in various areas, how to make dots..... and how to stray off the instructions.  I didn't care for the navy and white marbled yarn they included for the sheep so I substituted some of my gray handspun which was languishing without purpose in a bin.  I also wasn't jazzed with the random squiggles all over the sheep so I reduced it to just a few along the back.  If anyone is inclined to try an Oxford kit you will get the foundation fabric with pattern drawn on (they have hundreds), yarn in very generous quantities, and a boxed punch tool with a stitch gauge and small (20+ pages) instruction book.  The bigger book on the left I purchased on Ebay and it's really super.  You can easily get by with the small pamphlet that comes with the punch needle but the bigger book is so pretty and full of pictures and information that you should get a copy if you can.

The next project that needs attention is a guild spin-and-knit along.  For this one, those members who want to participate brought in 4 ounces of ready to spin wool - roving or batts were OK as long as the fiber was clean and carded in some manner.  The fiber was sorted by the project organizers and put into piles and then randomly creatively reassembled into 4 ounce lots of mixed colors.  All included one neutral (mine's white) and the rest is colored.

Alrighty, then.  We are to spin yarn by combining these rovings in any way we choose and then knit something using That Nice Stitch.  Hmmm.  Put opposites against each other so they all pop?  Try to blend those in the same color family?  If my goal is to keep the colors unadulterated I should chain ply.... which I don't usually like the feel of.....but if I spin and ply the yarn back on itself I will totally randomize the colors which might not be too bad although I don't usually like striped yarns.  I do like all the colors.... by themselves.   This will take some thought.  The project is due in May so I can't dither too long.

Holly says,

"When the sun comes out in late November you should stop, drop and enjoy it.  You can think about stuff later."

What a smart dog!

August In A Nutshell

The days of August have gone too quickly.  This month is like the Sunday night of summer - September is the mental break between summer and fall seasons.  The weather may stay just as warm (for a while) but all those years of going to school has branded my brain with the thought that summer's over on September first.

So what was the bulk of August like?

We had drought that made us bring the sheep in off pasture for four weeks.  They complained but did well on the hay and small grain ration we gave them.  The weather threatened many times but it was just so dry the storms couldn't form.  We had lots of interesting skies.

There's a tiny bit of rainbow near the horizon.

Ominous, no?  But we barely got a sprinkle out of it.

Rain finally did begin to fall and the landscape became green again.  It was startling after so much brown and tan.  Today we just started turning the flock out for a short period.  We'll have to be careful not to let them overdo.  The grass is as lush and tender as it ever is in May.  Just like having a second spring!

The personnel from the Ag building at the county fair asked me to demo spinning again so I had a pleasant four-hour shift actually spinning something for the fun of it.  I had another rainbow batt from a guild project in the stash and I didn't weigh it before starting but I did just nicely finish it in the four hours.  I already have a skein of this that I plied with a silver thread for a slightly sparkly yarn that preserves the color shift.  I now have this one and I think one more bobbin like that which will need plying the same way.  I have no clue what I'm going to do with it but I'll have enough!

While I was spinning I enjoyed watching what other people were doing in the building.  This man had lots of different 'pioneer' type items and demonstrated flint knapping (note to self - learn to do this.  Might be handy in the zombie apocalypse and it does have a certain 'gee whiz' factor to it) and making turkey calls using turkey leg bones.  He had a whole bunch of them and was teaching kids how to produce the call.

 This boy caught onto it pretty fast and practiced a long time, then went and signed up at the DEC booth for the Turkey Calling Contest.  You can't get much more rural than that.

There is a display of glass milk bottles from local dairies, now all long gone.  They represent a lot of people making a living.  I dimly remember our family getting milk delivered to the door when I was very small.  The milkman always came very early and put the bottles in the small metal cooler at the front door.  The paper caps were yellow around the rim and white in the center with writing but I don't remember the name and was too young to read anyway.

After spinning I always go and get a root beer float and then walk around some.  Most buildings don't want food or drink brought inside so I wander the blacksmith area and antique tractor display.  This machine caught my eye.  Guesses?  The shovel shaped part slides under the soil and lifts the crop up to where the spinning tines can separate it from the dirt.  OK, that pretty much gives it away.

A horse drawn potato digger.  Apparently Corning had a functioning foundry.  A google search shows the digger advertised in The Rural New Yorker in 1910.

I like the simple but efficient design.  You can't feed the country's population with such equipment now but at the time I'm sure the purchaser was thrilled with such a sturdy labor saving device.

I have done a little bit more spinning.  This small skein was spun from a demo batt I made on a blending board.  The batt was pretty wild looking but the skein is more domesticated. 

And I spun up a sample skein of a new colorway that will be making its debut at the Finger Lakes Fiber Festival - "Autumn Blaze".  It's a hotter color than the picture suggests - more orange and yellow.

The power company, NYSEG (New York State Electric and Gas), came through doing a yearly check of the electric poles and discovered some alarming posts in the sheep pasture.

Yikes.  These are slated to be replaced, perhaps this week.  Amazingly, they are the original poles which were placed when electricity reached the farm - in 1946. They have served their purpose well and deserve retirement.  The cross arms all rotted off in the 1980s and the wires were then attached directly to the poles but the wires and poles themselves never failed, even in the big ice storm of 1993.  NYSEG would have liked to relocate the power line to the roadside.  We gave it considerable thought and decided we wanted them left down in the field.  Andy already has to work around a few poles and guy wires up the road and they are a huge annoyance.  Also, the distance between poles will be shorter due to new regulations (never mind that the current spacing seems to have worked well here since 1946) and a pole would have had to be placed essentially at the road in front of the sawmill/tractor shed plus the wires would stretch over the front lawn and become a focal point no matter how you tried to ignore them.  Of all the many many times the power has gone out here it's never been because of a problem with 'our' poles - it's been up the road where the poles are by the road and scrub trees grow up and cause problems.  That will never happen here as long as we're around.  I'll give the company credit for being very nice and polite about us not wanting them moved.  They said it was our choice and they never gave us any argument when we said we wanted them left in the field.

Any ornithologists out there?  We've been having a nocturnal bird of some kind calling off and on for a couple of weeks.  Here's a recording of it taken a few nights ago while he was likely sitting on the electric pole in the yard.  You might need to turn up the sound a little.  Ignore the video - I was trying to hold the phone down so the camera light wouldn't scare it off while I recorded.  I wish 'audio only' was a setting in the camera function.  Oh well. 

I'm guessing it's a juvenile owl of some variety but don't know for sure. I recognize most of the owl species' adult calls - the cadence of their hoots is distinctive - but this is a squawk.  I consulted my trusty Roger Tory Peterson field guide but didn't find any mention of squawking.  I did like the description of a short eared owl's call - an emphatic sneezy bark - and I thought our bird might be that but then I found the Macaulay Library of bird calls and their short eared owl doesn't sound like our bird.  I had plenty of opportunity to memorize this call.  The stupid freaking bird majestic creature was as regular as a metronome, calling every 8 to 12 seconds from about 1:30 AM to 3:00 AM.

I shouldn't complain - it's better than gunfire, car alarms, music from the neighbors, heavy traffic and lots of other sounds people have to deal with when they're trying to sleep.