Middle Tennessee Fiber Festival Fun
Last Saturday’s excursion to the Middle Tennessee Fiber Festival went better than I expected and I came home with 13 new fleeces (10 Shetland, 2 American Tunis, 1 Merino). My friend Ellen (The Chilly Dog), who I rode with to the festival, graciously allowed me to fill her trunk and back seat with aromatic fleeces for the drive home.
Should I have bought more fleeces? Of course not…but who cares at this point? I’m just happy to be excited about wool again. Normally, fleeces are too expensive for my budget at fiber festivals (and some of the fleeces I saw were definitely overpriced), but the ones I bought were just at the right price point for my purposes, so I couldn’t pass them up.
I do have a purpose for all those new fleeces, however, and used my purchase as the deciding factor for vending at a fiber festival in November. I’ve applied to vend at the Alabama Fiber Festival, but I haven’t heard if my application has been accepted yet since vendor applications just opened. In the meantime, I’ll wash and process fleeces either way.
Two of the fleeces (the American Tunis wool) were an impromptu buy out of the back of someone’s truck in the parking lot of the fiber festival. The farmers (Baa Baa Blacksmith Farm & Forge) who brought them had met me while I was buying Shetland fleeces and asked if I might be interested. The fleeces were pretty rough looking, but I like a good challenge, so I took them both home and sampled one that evening. While the small vegetable matter will be a challenge to get out, the wool itself is really nice and I’m looking forward to visiting the farm and possibly getting a fresh fleece after they shear this May.
I also sampled the merino fleece (labeled a “project” fleece) that I bought from Mefford Meadows Farm in Tennessee. The 1.5 ounces that I sampled has been amazingly soft and I’m not sure why it was labeled a “project” fleece at all. I’ll card and spin it this weekend.
I’m off work this Friday for the holiday, so I plan to wash fleece all day and probably throughout the weekend–with the exception of Easter Sunday when I’ll be with family. The temps are supposed to be in the 80s over the weekend, so it’s perfect fleece washing weather.