Middle Tennessee Sheep, Wool & Fiber Festival - May 23-24, 2008

I attended this festival on Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. A very small festival in comparison to the Maryland festival I'm sure, but it was great fun nonetheless. They had 2 full days of classes but I only attended the Beginning Spinning class on Saturday. It was a large class and thank goodness for the volunteers who happened to stop by and helped those of us who were really spinning challenged.

We had several wheels that we could try and my favorite was the Majacraft that belonged to Leah (spinner extraordinaire). It was deliciously smooth, unfortunately, I didn't complement it's abilities. I think I need a DVD that I could watch over and over to help me out. Leah gave me some excellent advice and fitting for me since I love baseball, she said to quit choking the bat and I totally knew what she meant by that, it helped a lot. Even Erin tried to help me.

However, Kim used it as well and was doing a fabulous job. I did come away with a few purchases that I'm happy about. One of the vendors had some wondeful alpaca from their alpaca farm, New Era Fiber in Gallatin, TN. They have 33 alpacas.

Some of their yarn shown above made their way into my shopping bag: This beautiful red suri alpaca will make a beautiful pair of fingerless mitts.
I plan to make a moebius cowl with this gorgeous granite.

This alpaca is a luscious deep burgundy which will also make a beautiful pair of mitts.
This vendor makes rugs, chair pads, hot pads, etc. from roving that you will never use to spin. The creator of this has a published book called "The Shepherd's Rug" where she explains how to prepare the roving, braid it, wash it then sew the item together. You can get the book here.


I went home with this already made chair pad and I absolutely love it!!!!

I plan to use this nicely priced wool from Turkey to make some sweaters for the Warm Woolies organization.

I also came home with some beautful angora rabbit roving. 25% angora rabbit and 75% wool from Praise Song Farm.

My last prize was this beautiful spindle from Little Barn. It's weight is 34 grams and I've already been practicing with it. I've got a lot of practicing to do before this gets any easier. whew!! I may just have to look at the spindle because to practice spinning takes away from precious and valuable knitting time. With work and commuting, there is not enough knitting time as it is.