Fall Wool Gathering Day 1

This year, the Shaniko Wool Gathering parted ways with the town of Shaniko (long story), and became the Fall Wool Gathering held at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds in Madras.

I decided not to get a booth space for various reasons, but went up for a "few hours", which ended up being all day. I took my Mom's Ashford wheel, which after being torn apart and put back together was working well enough to appear in public. I also took some fiber, but as I picked up some roving that I had dropped off earlier from Creekside Fiber Mill, I decided to play with some of the new stuff! I'm not ADD or anything...

So after assessing my choices, and with the knowledge that I need to knit a hat to go with my first pattern up on Ravelry (yay!), I decided on a shetland roving, from Limerick, one of Mim's ewes. We used to call Limerick, the Brillo Pad. Let me tell you that she is decidedly not brillo-like. At nine years old, she's gotten very soft and silky. I started out with a full box:

The  wool wanted to be yarn, and I was quickly making a lot...

 I had some technical difficulties along the way, however. one of the nuts holding the footman on came off - fortunately I saw it. I put it back on, but it wasn't right, and the whole bold/nut assembly started tightening up on the footman so hard that, a) it was really hard to spin, and b) it was cracking the wood of the footman. I found Curt Fricke (of Fricke Enterprises) there, who had a tool kit, and between us, we got it working again. With the wheel back in action, I was able to ply off what I spun:

There are 3.45 ounces. I made a huge dent in the box:

The reason I knew that Curt had a tool box is this:

I am getting ready to do a production dye run in advance of Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival. My little ball winder isn't up to the task of winding 8 oz. skeins into balls for me to breakdown into 4 oz. skeins. He had a number of ball winders in his booth, but this was purple heart - how could it not be mine!

I'm returning to the Fall Wool Gathering today. I helped my friend, Barb, with her Kool-aid dyeing demo yesterday, and it was such a success that she's going to do it again today. But, she's never overdyed moorit/brown before. So I spun of 3 skeins of moorit shetland from the embarrassingly large stash, and we'll do those today, along with her white and gray.

More pictures to come!