Sheep Dog Trials

Sheep – yes, but dogs you say? Yes, this was my third or fourth year at the Sheep Dog Trials at Grass Creek Park just east of Kingston Ontario. My Mum used to spin and weave so was invlolved in the Sheep to Shawl event there and elsewhere and kept saying I should take a table in the craft tent…… well who listens to their mother?

Amanda Milliken who runs the shebang (sheepbang?) is a client of mine and asked me as well so I finally gave in! Why didn’t I do this before?! I have such a blast there, it’s and easy show to do and I get to net work with other woolly folk.

Above I am fanning myself next to display (it was really hot this year) with my new custom hat over my buzz cut.

Here is Anne from our local Wool-Tyme store, a wonderful store, and we spent some time looking at a cool knit hat in the latest Vogue Knitting that I can wear when this Winter when I still won’t have much hair. I knit some swatches and ran them by Ann. I’m a fine machine knitter and can think off th top of my head about gauges and necessary yarns and such but I go to Ann when it comes to boning up on hand knitting.

Also making it a fun weekend was the close proximity of my great friend Georgia and here work from Beeks Lane Studio.

As there are functions in the tent in the evening you move your booth about a bit each of the three days which made for interest. I moved the second day to make room for the four teams in the Sheep to Shawl event. Each team of women have four hours to comb and card the wool from the fleece they have chosen… fresh from the sheep, spin and ply the weave a shawl to particular dimensions. The weaver arrives with her loom already warped (if that’s what it’s called… I’m not a weavar) and ready to go as soon as there is plyed wool to go.

They are judged on time (points lost for going over) the weave, accomplishing the correct size i think it was 20″ by 72″ or thereabouts, and the winning team is announced. The shawls are taken home by one person, to be washed (they are still full of oils) and dried and are brought back the next day to be auctioned off.

I love this event, something going from the back of an animal to the back of a human and no one gets hurt!