County Fair Dealings

The county in which I live no longer has a county fair. Nor does the one next to where I live. But three counties down the road they still hold one. There are the typical carnival rides, the same artery clogging food, the tallest corn stalks and the best pickles. They are still trying to have the demonstrations of skills which are, these days, kind of hard to come by.

The lady who usually does the demonstration on spinning (and who works on a wheel) had her rotar cuff repaired recently and has been unable to spin. How dreadful is that!? One of my co-workers is a fair volunteer and found out on Tuesday that I spin. She asked me if I would be willing to come demonstrate and I told her I would.

I wish I had had more time to prepare but I had a lot of folks ask lots of good questions and I felt pretty good about it. Next year I'm going to do something similar to what I did at Hoot-n-Any and prepare a dozen or so small, inexpensive spindles, purchase some easy to use roving and set up times when I actually give classes. I may charge some minimal fee (like $5) to cover expenses and make folks feel like they are learning something of value and offer an hour class. They can take home the spindle and 2 oz of roving.

In any case, during the three evenings I was there I was able to fill two spindles with nicely spun stuff. So, to give myself a time perspective, it took me 9 hours (I spun from 6 until 9 p.m.) to finish 1.5 oz of wool.

On the brick colored roving (that I purchased from a fellow spindler on Friday Sales on the Spindler List), the small skein is 34.5 yards. The "Ugly Yarn" in orange, red, lime green and b&W is around 80 yards.

Soon I will have enough "Ugly Yarn" to make something. I'm thinking about a felted bag of some sort or a vest for one of the granddaughters.

I love the brick colored roving and it spins up beautifully. I'm going to ply it then make mittens with it. I should have enough. If not, I will make a strip in the middle in a complimentary color.

I am still working on the Big Black Sock for the soldiers. I completed the heel and am about an inch into the foot. I have switched over to two circulars as I now have Bordhi's book Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles. I have to find a way to move along faster on these BBS or I will never get them done. Perhaps this will help. I got about four hours of knitting on them yesterday. My hands actually hurt!