Sheep Shearing Days

Over the last 3 Fridays Karin and I were at the Museum of Appalachia for Sheep Shearing Days. We were joined by our friend Darlene and also Mark and Judith were able to join us for one of the days. One of the pieces of equipment that Karin and I like to have on hand is an ancient drumcarder that lives either at one of our homes or at the Center in our weaving supply anexx. We had a problem with it the first Friday (loose screws) and Karin took it home for her Hubby to take a look at and fix if it could be done.

More on the drum carder later. The first Friday was really rainy and that meant that some of the school busses didn't make the trip and we got a little bit cold and wet. The second Friday they gave us some inside space and some outside space so we could dodge the rain if it got too wet. The last Friday was lovely weather and we were able to explain the process from shearing sheep to finished object. I demonstrated how I wash wool, and some fiber combing and carding as well as spindle spinning. Karin brought her spinning wheel so we were able to show the kids a bit of the progression in the world of yarn making. Mark and Judith demonstrated the craft of weaving for us, it was so nice to have someone do that since that was a job that LouAnn usually did for us.

Now back to the drumcarder. It looked good when Karin put it on the table and we couldn't wait to start adding fiber to it however, something wasn't quite right and it took me a minute to figure out what was going on. Turns out the licker in drum was turned around the wrong way and it wouldn't feed the wool onto the large drum! Karin had a tool kit in her bag, but it didn't have quite the pieces we needed to fix the problem. We finally decided to use our handcards and take the drum carder back to the shop.

We had a wonderfull 3 days teaching and demonstrating the crafts that we love so well to hundreds of students and the adults that came with them. Until Tuesday, this it Tina for the Museum crew