SHEEP THRILLS, SPIN-INS, TALES FROM THE ARIZONA SONORAN DESERT AND CATALINA MOUNTAIN FOOTHILLS, PENNSYLVANIA SHEEP TO SHAWL, AND OTHER RAMBLINGS….OR… THE BAD BLOGGER FINALLY UPDATES HER BLOG!

No..I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth – I just have been too busy to sit long enough to type! 2006 started off with a bang with preparations for the Washington DC region SCCA awards banquet and dinner. I am the trophy chairman for the region's MARRS series, so there were a number of road trips to retrieve perpetual trophies from last year’s winners as well as numerous trips to the various trophy houses that handle our account. I also spent the first 3 weeks of January completing and putting the final touches on the banquet's music videos reflective of the region’s past season. We won’t talk about how many hours during and post season go into putting this together, but I have fun doing it. This year, my health prevented me from gathering as much footage as I would have liked, and I got behind schedule on production work, so I ended up going to the Banquet with a fever of almost 104! I got there with banquet “hair and make-up” and within an hour looked like I had jumped into a swimming pool! So much for fever reducers and antibiotics! LOL After the banquet was done and put to bed for the year, I was able to get back to all kinds of fun fiber-related activities, so pull up a chair and I will fill you in!

The first fiber play-date came when my dear friend, Elaine Harvey of CCR Rabbitry, came down to evaluate some stunning alpaca fleeces belonging to some up and coming breeders who live in Garret Park, MD. My mother lives in Bethesda less than 5 minutes away, so of course Stephen went to play at her house for a little while and Elaine and I went to look at the this season’s show fleeces. Mary and Barry Clark of Peaceful Hollow Farm started in Alpacas about 2 years ago with tremendous success, and the fleece I ended up buying (Klondike) won multiple blue ribbons and Best in Show awards for its fabulous qualities. For those fiber addicts within driving distance of the Bethesda, MD area, I highly recommend giving them a call if you want some truly decadent Huacaya Alpaca - either in raw fleece or finished yarn skeins. Elaine is a well-known and respected Alpaca fleece evaluator, so she was able to guide the Clarks on how each fleece should be processed at the fiber mill and for which fiber activity – spinning, weaving, etc- each fleece was best suited. Of course, I grabbed the nicest fleece, so niah niah – too bad so sad for those of you thinking about snatching up the prime fleece! Elaine did me a GREAT favor driving down from PA to evaluate these fleeces, so I took her out to lunch at a great little place in the heart of Garret Park reknown for catering to “ladies who lunch” and we had a fabulous lunch after which we rolled ourselves out the door and promised whole-heartedly to get on the treadmill as soon as we got home! Yeah right!

The next fiber escapade also involved Elaine, who is the media rep for the Pennsylvania Farm Show’s very prestigious Sheep to Shawl competition. A week before the event, she called me up and asked me if I wanted to be the timekeeper for the event. Of course, I jumped at the chance to spend some time at the Farm Show, so Stephen went to Grandma’s house for the day again, and I took off in pouring, torrential rain for Harrisburg! For those of you who have no idea what Sheep to Shawl is, the link above is a great way to get a taste of what these competitions are all about. In a nutshell, a team includes a shearer, a weaver, a carder and handspinners for a total of 6 people per team. The teams are judged on how quickly they are able to shear the sheep that they have chosen to bring, card and spin the wool, and weave it into a shawl of specific dimensions and requirements. The teams are judged not only on the quality of the work, how quickly they complete the shawl, etc, they are also judged on team costume and set up, work area presentation, etc. There were 8 teams competing this year and it definitely was a challenge to pick a favorite shawl from among the finished products! Elaine did a great job handling the local media. My other dear friend, Tom Knisely – weaving instructor extrordinaire from The Mannings, is one of the coordinators of the event and also is one of the media commentators reporting for the Pennsylvania Cable Network which covered the event live (yes I wore black in a desperate attempt to avoid the extra 10 pounds the camera adds – haha – for those of you who know me, you know it takes a LOT of food to maintain a body like this –LOL). Anyway, I had a great time, am planning on timekeeping again next year, and got a lot of great pictures! Of course, I had to shop while I was there, and following the auctioning off of the shawls, the Fleece Auction began. I was able to land the Reserve Grand Champion fleece for the entire Farm Show Fleece Competition for this year, and I was tickled with the quality of the beautiful Romney fleece I won. The crimp and length is gorgeous, and the young teen who raised the lamb had sheared it herself – her first time. She did a great job and I have yet to find any second cuts! I also won another beautiful colored fleece – a pale silver gray that I am fairly sure is a Columbia cross. Needless to say, I went home happy!

Okay – so I now have a 5 pound Alpaca fleece and two 6 pound sheep fleeces in the space of less than 10 days! Add this to the wool I have harvested from the bunnies over the last 6 months, and I SHOULD be happy and content for at least the next 2 years, right? Of course not! I had a playdate at a local Cormo breeder’s farm today to go pick out some nice covered fleeces that were shorn just a few days ago. I will comment on that in a separate post because I had such a great time and the fleeces were so amazing! I also have a few Shetland fleeces lined up from a breeder in PA. Sigh – something tells me that I won’t be scouring all this stuff myself and that I might even send in some of the Romney and Shetland to the fiber mill to be blended with some of my Angora and made into roving so I have more time to spin.


Okay – back to the update. February was spent trying to get Stephen and me over the nastiest rounds of flu, sinus and lung infections, etc that I have experienced in YEARS. Of course, Ironman – aka my husband, Ken, never had a sniffle, cough or anything else. He NEVER gets sick, and couldn’t believe how the rest of us could be so miserable. SO…..he surprised us with tickets out to Arizona to go out and visit his mom and stepdad in Oro Valley outside Tucson and his sister and her family in Phoenix. I was very lucky that a good sheltie breeder friend was able to stay here at our house while we were away and take care of my crew of shelties and the herd of bunnies. Of course, 2 days after we arrived, Stephen spiked a fever of 104.1 (let’s hear it for the central air recycling of germs on the plane!). I ended up staying in the house round the clock with him for almost 3 days while Ken ran up to Phoenix to visit his sister and got to do stuff outside the house. Being housebound wasn’t so bad – Ken’s mom and her husband own a GORGEOUS mediteranean style house in Oro Valley complete with a beautiful outdoor living area, pool, etc that is too sumptious for words. House arrest was very relaxing in that environment, although I am a cold-weather person who really can’t stand anything over 30-35 degrees, so the 70-80 degree temperature while we were out there was wonderful for everyone else while I pined for the snow we left behind in the Washington DC area – sick but true!

The day before Stephen got sick, we were able to get him out to visit the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum just outside Tucson. What a great and unusual place. For those of you who have never visited the Sonoran Desert, the Suguaro (pronounced “Sue-ah-row”) cactus is indigenous ONLY to this area of the Southwest and is the great pride of those living in the area. They grow by the thousands in the canyon surrounding the desert as well as all over the Tucson area, and Stephen became enamored of them. We obviously have taken him to Arizona before, but this was the first trip where he was old enough to understand what he was seeing. By the end of the trip, he was calling pickles little Suguaros! The trip to the desert museum was great, we saw lots of interesting animals and plants, and a small desert mouse even ran across my foot and got its foot stuck in my clog! What a hoot to watch my mother-in-law, the coolest lady I have ever met – let out the most piercing scream ever heard in the Sonoran Desert! LOL

On the last day of our stay, Ken treated me to a much needed and appreciated Spa Day at the exclusive and world-reknown Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spa at the Westin La Paloma Resort and Spa in Tucson, AZ. For those of you who have never been to one of these spas, they are just wonderful. Those of you in the Tucson area should request Michelle, my massage therapist, who hands-down gives the best deep-tissue massages I have ever experienced! Her great personality is a breath of fresh air in an environment stereotypically strewn with haughty women lounging about in plush robes and sandles congratulating themselves on being in the social position to enjoy this type of luxury - GAG!!!!! (this comment actually was made to my mother-in-law the last time she was there – we couldn’t believe it!). I had previously staked out the Local Yarn Shop, so after leaving the Spa I did a little shopping before heading back to the house. All in all, a great vacation.

So…we arrived back to reality this past Wednesday. Thursday I went up to The Mannings to buy my long-awaited travel spinning wheel, the Ashford Joy! Ken really has spoiled me this month – Valentine’s Day turned into Valentine’s Month! I could hardly wait to get back home to try it out and spent Friday playing around with it. Yesterday I took it to the bi-annual legendary Spin-In at Lissa and I got to catch up with each other too after way too long, and I am hoping to get her out to the track this year to watch Ken race (plus I won’t look so out-of-place in our paddock area when I pull out the spinning wheel during down time!). The shopping spree continued at Susan’s house with Elaine buying a Majacraft Little Gem with Woolee Winder and me buying a beautiful Bosworth Attache Charkha from Susan. The charkha barely has been used for more than hour total by the original owner from whom Susan had bought an entire lot of weaving and spinning equipment. Apparently the original owner developed Fibro Myalgia and couldn’t use the charkha after she bought it, so I was the lucky spinner who was first in line at Susan’s house to buy it! SOOO…two new toys in two days – I have been thoroughly spoiled this month by my awesome hubby!

The night ended with an after-dark caravan of cars and vans down to the farm where Susan keeps her flock of Border Leicester Sheep. Her favorite ewe, Snow, who was one of the original 6 sheep that Susan bought, had given birth to twins 2 nights earlier. The babies had been sired by the Reserve Champion Ram lamb that Susan had bought at Maryland Sheep and Wool last year – a beautiful black boy with a really nice fleece, body and personality. Snow’s twins are the first to be born this season, and the first BLACK lambs produced in Susan’s breeding program. Susan tells us that she was jumping up and down ecstatically on the cell phone to her daughter, Heather, as the babies were being born – a little boy followed by a little girl! Of course, those of us who went traipsing out through the pasture to the barn in the dark absolutely were delighted by the babies and didn’t want to leave! The little coats on the babies are called Woolovers and were developed by a breeder in Australia to help the little newborns withstand frigid weather. They are now used all over the world in other breeds such as horses and cattle as well. Snow wasn’t so sure she liked the little coats and the perplexed look on her face after we put the babies back down for her to inspect was hilarious! Heather, Susan’s daughter, was great holding the babies so we could get some nice pictures for the baby book. In these pics, the twins are just barely 3 days old! Happy Birthday little guys!