If You Have an Opportunity to Learn, Do It!
Due to a friend's generous offer to share her husband's "resource" (something teacher's get as a bonus for teaching at the school) I was able to attend two classes in one year. So I was lucky enough to attend this class and the basket weaving class ( link here for that post) all in the same year.
While I had processed some raw sheep's fleece in the past, this class was going to teach me how to pick a fleece, find specific qualities for different projects, and go through all the steps to have a predictable outcome.
Almost everyone who attended the class had been spinning for at least a year. There was just one new spinner in the bunch, and she was definitely passionate about this class.
Kate Larson was our instructor and she was incredibly knowledgeable about all things fiber related.
At the time of this class there was a big change with the "Spin Off" magazine (the original owners were buying the company that owned that magazine plus "Handwoven" and one more that I cannot remember the name of at the moment) and Kate became the editor of "Spin Off" magazine.
Kate has us all bring in a raw fleece to look at, compare, and learn from the first day of the 5-day workshop.
Kate brought in several fleece filled bags to demonstrate how to assess what type of fleece we have and what to keep and how to divide into subcategories to clean and spin for projects.
As you can imagine there is method to the seeming madness. The inside of the fleece is cleaner, thus the outside of the fleece is facing the floor and is pulled inwards by a third on each side to then roll up like a rug and placed in a bag. Kate is just about to fully open this fleece on a cloth (for easier clean-up later) for us to discuss and learn.
Some fleeces are easier to spot the head and tail and where the belly and neck fleece are located. Sometimes it just looks like a big woolly mess!!
Can you see from the photo above a head and tail of the fleece? Can you guess where the leg fleece is located?
Here's the ball all rolled up and ready to go into a bag once more.
Here's a lock of some gorgeous fleece. It will be washed a little differently due to the fact that we want to keep the curls and crimp. It's a little more work to wash the locks but it is worth it in the end. Before even washing it, this lock shines!
Here we have washed our individual sheep's fleece and are allowing them to dry in the summer sun.
Our teacher was kind enough to ready an indigo dyepot for us to use, so the whole class took advantage of some extra time to dye wool, yarn, and here I am taking some still loved old summer shirts to tie dye.
This is an example of the level of craftsmanship that my teacher has as far as knitting is concerned. Kate is a VERY talented person.
Something that was discussed was keeping a design notebook of everything we do so that we can build and learn by what we have worked on in the past. Kate showed us examples of her book.
The indigo dye pot. It's outside for a reason!
No more dull gray and dull blue!! Now I have these FUN summer shirts to wear and the memories attached to them.
I purchased some hackles on Etsy before I attended this class just so that I could have some instruction on how to use them.
A charkha is used to spin cotton. I love this one because it is portable.
On Friday evening all the classes had a table to display what they had worked on all week. It's fun to see what everyone has been talking about while we eat our meals together. This was an amazing group of ladies and I hope that I am able to attend more classes with them and Kate.
Thanks for stopping by! I plan on making some instructional videos in the near future.
~ all photos are taken by me