We had a fantastic weekend at the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival in Jefferson, WI! Check out some pictures:
So much shopping.
My mother checks out kits for felted bird yurts.
I admire some roving with coffee in hand.
I love the roving SO MUCH!!!
One building full of vendors, including such products as roving, weaving supplies, yarns, books, etc.
The other building full of vendors. One vendor even had angora rabbits for sale, and they were all sold out by Saturday morning!
Seedorff Family Farms business partner and best friend Xa took a class about weaving diamonds using a diamond loom. Here she is exercising what she learned:
Look at those cute little diamonds!
We wanted to be sure to get a picture in front of the sign, but we didn't get around to it until Saturday evening, so I apologize for the quality of the picture. My mother and I are joined by our dogs.
For the angora spinning class that my mother and I took we needed to have a skein of wool to use for plying, so I spent all Saturday night finishing up a skein of Corriedale that I started back in June. Isn't it beautiful?
Sunday morning we headed over to our class in the "Wonders of Wool" Building 1. We got there a little early and took the opportunity to get some pictures:
Mom and me
Bill and Nancy Barnett. Nancy taught our class "Spin Some Bunny".
Nancy shows off one of her rabbits.
Once the class started there were photo ops constantly! There are many more pictures than I can possibly put on here, but I went through and picked out the best ones, plus a video!
Mom feels some 100% Angora yarn that Nancy spun.
Nancy shows us how to get German Angora spun on her drop spindle.
Here I go! German Angora fiber to yarn, woo!
And spinning, and spinning....
Most of the class had wheels, but I wasn't at a disadvantage at all.
Nancy shows us how to harvest fleece from a French Angora. She gave this little guy away at her afternoon class. We couldn't stay for it. :-(
Nancy uses my mother's wheel to spin right off the rabbit.
Nancy spins off the rabbit, using my mother's Louet wheel.
Now my mother gives it a try.
We learned SO much!! The class was a great experience, and I would recommend Nancy Barnett's classes to anyone! She was very helpful and was willing to change up her plans to help us with what we wanted to know. My mother and I walked away from the building feeling like we were on top of the world. Why, oh why, didn't we bring any of our own Angora with us so we could spin more RIGHT NOW??!! :-)
On the way back to the camper I snapped a couple photos:
The sign in front of our class building.
The grounds. So many buildings full of fun things!
And once we got back to the camper:
My yarn!! This is all yarn that I created at my class. The lighter skein is Angora plied with Corriedale, and the Angora is progressive, starting with white German, gray French, buff English, and brown Satin. The darker skein is French Angora carded with Shetland, then spun and Andean plied. Both yarns were made using my Purple Heart drop spindle I purchased at the Iowa Sheep and Wool Festival!
It was a fantastic weekend and I'm so glad that we went! The class was so worth the travel time and expense. I also purchased many beautiful things while I was there! I will have to include those in a later post when I have time to lay everything out and get some nice pictures.
So, angora yarn, anyone? I'm going to start cranking it out!! Please contact us if you are interested! Comment on this post or email seedorff.family.farms@gmail.com for more information. We also have black, tort, and broken tort angora fiber for sale!
