Guild Goes to NOFA Summer Conference!

Four of us are off this weekend to give a presentation at the annual Summer Conference, a NOFA sponsored event, at the campus of UMass Amherst. Betsy leads the way with help from Maile, Chris and Lori. From sheep through spinning and dyeing, we'll share our knowledge and passion at the largest venue yet. We've got our fiber map, and a working business card, so things are feeling pretty official. We've all been busy learning and experimenting all summer. Dyeing season is upon us, and new tools have entered the mix. Should be an exciting fall!

Batting Time

Maile, Betsy, Dot, and Chris had a grand time in June playing with Chris' new large drum carder. Can you tell?! Since then, the batts have been flying! Chris is so generous with her new toy, and we all appreciate being able to move our raw fleece from fluffy fiber to beautiful batts, ready to spin into glorious and unique yarns. At our last meeting on July 11th, Lisa brought her awe-inspiring picker, and those of us with dense fleece watched the transformation with amazement. In one end went the locks and such, out the other side came the most delicate, airy clouds of spinnable fiber. Thank you to both women for rocking our fiber processing worlds!

PDF Version of 2010 Fiber Map Arrives!

We've done it! Our Fiber Map project has now expanded to a pdf format, downloadable, printable, and immensely enjoyable (we hope!). Thank you so much to everyone on the Map Project Team: Betsy, Maile, Chris, Elaine, and to our friend Alyson Lee for the glorious graphic design.

While we work on getting it uploaded to this blog, if you would like an emailed version sent to you, contact schafer99@gmail.com.

Mark Your Calendar!

Prepare to meet these two fellows and more cloven hoofed fiber beasts at the 2010 Sheep to Shawl, Llama to Pajama Family Fiber Event slated for Saturday, October 23rd, 12 noon to 4PM at the Green Hill Farm in Green Hill Park, Worcester MA. The event was first held in 2004, then again in 2005. It is being revived under the awesome organizational leadership of a planning committee headed up by Nat and Mihoko of Saori Worcester Freestyle Weaving Studio. Fun fiber-related games, contests, songs and other activities along with plenty of demos by area fiber farmers, spinners, knitters and dyers all to education young and old about how we end up with the clothing on our backs! Should be a fun fall fiber day!

A Book to Recommend . . .

At the library recently I picked up The Natural Knitter, published in 2006. I have a hunch it was shared with the group already (Chris?), but if not, I wanted to be sure to comment about it. What a delightful publication! It really celebrates the joy of working with natural animal and plant fibers, and has gorgeous photographs. This is truly one for our libraries!