Then we made a plan, invited Beth our friend and inside person with the Orono Fair committee., and Orono Sheep to Shawl was born,
Beth asked the board if we could use the empty space in the Poultry Barn on the Sunday of the Orono Fair and she contacted Mitch and Naomi to see if we could get a fleece when the sheared their flock in April. Everyone said yes, people don’t say no to Beth!
Emails back and forth, we put together the loom that was in pieces in Marg’s basement, that was a huge learning curve. Fortunately I have the bigger version of the same one at home.
Volunteers came willing, we expected them to take 2 hours shifts, they stayed all day! All the right people were there!
The loom was moved into place a few days ahead of the event. It proved a bit difficult as we only had time to warp the loom. Sue rescued the threading error and ‘The Boy’ fixed some the of engineering issues.
The response from the Fair visitors was positive, they asked great questions and everyone had a great day!
Thanks to Marg and Beth for helping to arrange all this and also to Gwen, Regan, Terry, Karen, Frances and Sue for making it a perfect day!
If you have never seen the work of tireless volunteers at a local fair, you really would never appreciate how much happens behind the scenes.
The shawl is still on the loom as we ran out of steam about 4 pm. It will be finished soon. There are ideas of what to do with it, but we need to assess its quality first. It was a demonstration, we just wanted to show how the process was done, I think we accomplished that!
There is a Facebook group for our event: Orono Sheep to Shawl.
