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Spinning and sales in Jordan, MN
Today was Autumn Fare, a small autumn craft-and-fiber fair in Jordan, MN, about 35 minutes’ drive from where I live. The organizer was pushing hard for the Northern Lights Handspinners Guild (one of the two guilds I’m involved with) to have a booth to demonstrate and sell stuff.
As a sales event, it wasn’t a huge success for any of us, but it was a nice day to get together with fiber friends and spend most of the day spinning. There were five or so people selling stuff, knit goods, yarn, roving, fleece, pelts, and miscellaneous other stuff. I sold four skeins. I bought $45 worth of stuff (roving, catnip, and a set of wire mesh shelves), plus I paid $10 to the guild toward the $100 we'd paid for the booth.
One of our group, who’d had a flock of Shetland and Finn sheep, had been downsizing the size of the flock for several years and has now sold off the entire flock. I’ve never bought any of her roving, but I know that when it’s gone, it’s gone, so I bought an 8-oz bump this time. It’s striped brown-and-white Finn, very soft.
I also bought a jar of catnip -- that comes under miscellaneous other stuff, I guess.
I looked at the sale fleeces, because they were very inexpensive -- Finn and Shetland fleeces marked from $5 to $15, but unskirted and with bits of straw and other vegetable matter. I looked at this lovely fawn-colored ram fleece, like you do if you're a fiber-obsessed person like me, and discovered that it didn’t pass a ping test -- if you grasped the two ends and snapped it, it would break in half. We agreed that at $15, it was still okay to sell it, as long as the buyer was made aware of the fault.
I was very good and didn’t buy any of the $5 Finn fleeces -- but then the seller gave me two of them. One is brown-black and fairly heavy (five pounds, maybe?), though there was a chunk of felted fleece at the top of the bag. The other is dark brown lamb, and is about a pound and a half. I’ll have to see if there’s anything salvageable once I skirt them, but the fleece from these sheep is very soft, so anything I can save should be quite nice.
As a sales event, it wasn’t a huge success for any of us, but it was a nice day to get together with fiber friends and spend most of the day spinning. There were five or so people selling stuff, knit goods, yarn, roving, fleece, pelts, and miscellaneous other stuff. I sold four skeins. I bought $45 worth of stuff (roving, catnip, and a set of wire mesh shelves), plus I paid $10 to the guild toward the $100 we'd paid for the booth.
One of our group, who’d had a flock of Shetland and Finn sheep, had been downsizing the size of the flock for several years and has now sold off the entire flock. I’ve never bought any of her roving, but I know that when it’s gone, it’s gone, so I bought an 8-oz bump this time. It’s striped brown-and-white Finn, very soft.
I also bought a jar of catnip -- that comes under miscellaneous other stuff, I guess.
I looked at the sale fleeces, because they were very inexpensive -- Finn and Shetland fleeces marked from $5 to $15, but unskirted and with bits of straw and other vegetable matter. I looked at this lovely fawn-colored ram fleece, like you do if you're a fiber-obsessed person like me, and discovered that it didn’t pass a ping test -- if you grasped the two ends and snapped it, it would break in half. We agreed that at $15, it was still okay to sell it, as long as the buyer was made aware of the fault.
I was very good and didn’t buy any of the $5 Finn fleeces -- but then the seller gave me two of them. One is brown-black and fairly heavy (five pounds, maybe?), though there was a chunk of felted fleece at the top of the bag. The other is dark brown lamb, and is about a pound and a half. I’ll have to see if there’s anything salvageable once I skirt them, but the fleece from these sheep is very soft, so anything I can save should be quite nice.
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Heh. I think she sold off most of them, though at least a couple may have turned into lamb chops.
People ask me from time to time if I get my fleece from my own sheep, and I have to tell them that the suburbs are no place for sheep. I like helping out on shearing day, but I'd just as soon other people cope with the critters the fleeces are attached to.
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Not that I am criticizing. I have a box of free mohair in my garage still waiting to be picked and washed.
My current resolution is only to buy fiber that is in excellent condition. I would rather spend my time spinning than picking out vegetable matter. Actually, I'm focusing on working through my stash. I have no valid reason to buy more fiber for a long time. :)
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I've become more willing to deal with VM-infested fleece (if it's otherwise worthwhile) since I recently discovered how well flicking works. I had some beautifully soft (possibly cria) alpaca that I got in a mystery swap. It was just choked with VM at the tips, and I almost gave up on it. Even combing left too much in. But flicking got it almost all out, and I'm close to done with spinning it from the cloud. I'm really looking forward to seeing what it'll be like once it's plied.
I'm not sure I'd want to deal with the mohair, though. It's harder to get clean, and most of the things I want to do with mohair involve keeping it in lock formation, more or less.
My current project is an attempt -- no, a plan -- to get the stash in my living room organized (that doesn't even touch the significant stash already in the basement). So far, I've filled up four 66-gallon tubs -- one each of dyed braids, roving, batts, and batt ingredients. I still have a couple of tubs' worth of fiber to categorize, mostly natural fiber ready to spin, dyed locks, and undyed fiber that I want to dye and then spin as art yarn or put in batts.