The Independent Stitch

Teaching 2012

In a recent post, I mentioned that I am taking an online class on teaching. That's because I love doing it, but have been an infrequent teacher for the past several decades. I'm looking toward a number of teaching opportunities next year, and I want them to be the best possible experiences for everyone involved.

I so enjoy the people I meet by teaching workshops on topics I'm passionate about. One of my fantasies involves figuring out how to be part of a gathering that lets me introduce to each other the people who came to Scotland, those who were in California, those who found their way to New Hampshire, those who will be making pilgrimages to future workshops. . . .

It was truly a source of joy for me to hear that a group of the people in my workshops at UK Knit Camp last year immediately formed the Blacker and Beyond group on Ravelry to stay in touch with each other, and they are coordinating activities to increase awareness of (and markets for) rare-breed wools. (Ravelry has free memberships. If you're already a member, here's a direct link to Blacker and Beyond. The group is named for Sue Blacker's Blacker Yarns and Blacker Designs, because she generously donated most of the materials for our workshops.)

And now I've learned that twenty folks from the recent SOAR (Spin-Off Autumn Retreat) events have organized a year-long (or more) spin-along experience to take them more deeply into the breeds that I only had time to tantalize them with in our brief time together a few weeks ago.

I get happy chills when I find out about these things. They make what I'm doing worthwhile.

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Here's what I normally look like when teaching:

That was at SOAR a couple of weeks ago. I have a few photos of workshop participants to help myself remember the wonderful vibe in the room, but I don't put pictures of other people out in the wide world without permission, and I'm always so involved with the wool that I forget to ask for permission. Oh, well!

Here's what I looked like for a fancy gig (KDTV taping, with professional television make-up—Note to family: I figured I'd better identify myself so you would know who it was):

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Over the past several months, I've been negotiating agreements and arranging for supplies for next year's teaching. It takes a LOT of advance planning and help to stage the wool-centric workshops that people have been wanting and that I enjoy presenting. Because of the amount of work that happens behind the scenes, the number of presentations I can make is limited, and 2012 is already booked up. (We have several more months of logistics to complete for the workshops already on the calendar.)

I want to make an announcement about next year's teaching here, now, because later this week Spinning Daily (an e-newsletter from Interweave Press) will have a post with information on The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook and it will link to my workshop page. I want the people who read my blog to hear about things first! I've delayed putting this information up because I've been so busy . . . teaching (and getting ready to teach). Funny. Anyway.

The events will vary in the lengths of the workshops (3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours, or more); the topics covered; the number of breeds included; the number of participants; and the teaching/learning environment. Also, of course, in the costs, although I almost never have any control over that piece of the equation of attending. More details on dates and links to the sponsors' websites are on the aforementioned workshop page. If you have questions about a particular event's individual characteristics, feel free to contact me.

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Here's my 2012 teaching overview

February 2012: Madrona Fiber Arts, Tacoma, Washington—I'll be doing a banquet talk on the little project that grew (The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook), workshop sessions on both rare-breed wools and breed-specific yarns for knitters and/or spinners (in other words, some sessions will be fiber-based and some will be yarn-based), a couple of half-day classes on publishing alternatives for fiber folk, and a walk-in fiber clinic. The list of instructors was posted yesterday, and registration opens, I hear with a flurry, some time in November—get on the mailing list for an announcement of when. If you are interested in Madrona, stay on top of the calendar and get up to speed on the registration process before you begin. Keep in mind that some spaces may be available after the initial rush, and cancellations may create openings later.

March 2012: Explore 4 Retreat, Friday Harbor, Washington—A leisurely fibers-for-spinning workshop (more expansive schedule than usual, enjoying a focused selection of fibers) in a relaxed environment. Deposits now will save spaces; full registration is required by the end of January so I can get all the supplies arranged.

May 2012: Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, West Friendship, Maryland—A two-day pre-festival workshop (12 hours) on Thursday and Friday, plus two morning walkabouts in the barns on Saturday and Sunday, visiting with sheep (walkabouts will be the same schedule on both days). (Below: An American Tunis sheep in the Parade of Breeds at Maryland in 2011.)

June 2012: Olds College Fiber Week, Olds, Alberta—Although this event's activities haven't been firmed up, workshop organizer Michelle Boyd and I are both operating on the assumption that I'll be there and I'll be teaching something. We've been talking about this for a while, in bits and pieces between our teaching commitments. We thought we might have twenty minutes to visit about details when we were both teaching at SOAR in New Hampshire, but that ended up being a joke. We did get to wave hello as we both went to our classrooms (which were really close to each other). We're continuing the discussion by e-mail.

July 2012: Convergence 2012 (Handweavers Guild of America), Long Beach, California—Two two-day (12-hour) workshops on rare-breed wools. Pick one workshop or the other; HGA has asked me to facilitate the same workshop twice to accommodate the predicted number of registrations.

July 2012: Minnesota Weaving Guild, Minneapolis, Minnesota—An evening guild program plus a three-day (18-hour) workshop on rare-breed wools.

September 2012: The Spinning Loft, Howell, Michigan—Owner Beth Smith and I are still working on what I'll be teaching. I'm expecting that there will be an evening program on Friday night and a two-day workshop on Saturday and Sunday.

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Below: Some of Sue Bundy's Karakul sheep at Maryland (Sue is part of Solitude Wool); a Karakul fleece ready to be shorn before summer arrives; and samples of Karakul yarns from The Fleece & FIber Sourcebook.

For all of my teaching events, basic spinning skills are sufficient: the ability to spin singles and make a two-ply yarn. While most people like to bring their spinning wheels to the workshops, some participants find they prefer to sample with handspindles, and that's fine with me.

Okay, I'd better post this. The day's getting away from me.

Spotlight on four rare breeds of sheep

The November/December 2011 issue of PieceWork magazine has arrived! The issue's focus is wool, and editor Jeane Hutchins and I talked early in the planning process about what I might contribute to it. The result is "On the Edge: How a Handful of People Have Preserved Some Rare, Valuable Sheep and Their Wools," which starts on page 34.

Jeane asked for rare sheep. Then we had to figure out what aspect to focus on. She also was thinking about a related project or projects in addition to an article, and because of PieceWork's readership any hands-on components had to be based on readily available yarn. In other words, we couldn't ask people to start by spinning their own. Materials available by internet were okay—a specification that made the whole endeavor possible, because most people's local stores are unlikely to stock breed-specific, much less rare-breed-specific, yarns.

One thing that has fascinated me in my study of sheep is the pivotal role often played by one or two individuals in a whole breed's survival.

So we came up with the idea of an article about a few breeds of rare sheep

• that are still with us today in large part because of the actions of identifiable individual human beings, and
• whose fiber is available as spun yarn that readers can get their hands on.

Sorting through the possibilities took me a while, and some research on the web to augment what I already knew about yarn suppliers. We ended up with four breeds that fit the criteria we aimed for. In addition,

• two of the breeds originated in the British Isles and two originated in North America (I like that balance), and
• Jeane found four people, each of whom agreed to design an original project using one of the breeds' fiber.

What fun!

And now it's here.

The breeds are Manx Loaghtan and Leicester Longwool (British Isles) and Navajo-Churro and American Tunis (North America). The projects are:

• Manx Loaghtan Boot Socks to Knit, by Ann Budd (with Blacker Yarns Pure Manx Loaghtan, DK weight)
• Leicester Longwool Pillow Cover to Tunisian Crochet, by Carol Huebscher Rhoades (with Row House Farm Leicester Longwool, in two natural colors)
• Navajo-Churro Mittens to Knit, by Alexis Manzanares, working from her grandmother's pattern (with Shepherd's Lamb Certified Organic Churro, blanket, or worsted, weight) (I can't find a web reference for Alexis, but there are a number of links to information on her family's sheep and wool)
• American Tunis Hat to Knit, by Kristi Schueler (with Solitude Wool Tunis, worsted weight)

These are all designs my fingers are itching to knit! What a wonderful way to showcase the fibers. I feel like we've gathered at a party to celebrate the survival of four superb and valuable breeds by using their wools. I'd love to see what other people make with these fibers, whether from these patterns or others.

Meanwhile, let's get some more pictures into this blog. There are super photos in the article, but the ones of the swatches are nicely decorative (i.e., a little small), and since they're my samples I can supplement by providing them at a bigger size here. I might as well add photos of sheep and of locks of wool, for the spinnerly and otherwise curious among us.

All photos not otherwise credited are mine.

Manx Loaghtan

Here's my swatch, worked in Cable and Band pattern from Barbara Walker's Charted Knitting Designs (Pittsville, WI: Schoolhouse Press, 1998, p. 133). The yarn is Manx Loaghtan from Blacker Yarns, Cornwall, England. (On the Blacker Yarns site, the Manx Loaghtan yarn is listed under "Welsh" breeds because there's only one breed from the Isle of Man, which is its own sovereignty—and the yarn would likely be overlooked if it had its own category.)

Manx Loaghtan locks are all brown, although they come in a variety of shades of mid-brown—as you can see in the yarns below the locks. The lefthand yarn was spun from a darker fleece. Manx Loaghtan fleeces often have light-colored tips, from sun-bleaching, although the tips in my experience so far have not been fragile (as sun-bleached tips sometimes are).

On all of the lock photographs, the inked-in line is 4 inches/10cm long.

And here's a robust Manx Loaghtan ram with a gorgeous set of four horns:

Photo © British Wool Marketing Board. Used by permission.

Check out the Navajo-Churro horns below, too.

Leicester Longwool

This next swatch is Diamond and Rib, also from Barbara Walker's Charted Knitting Designs (p. 22), worked in Leicester Longwool singles yarn from Double J Ranch, Oregon City, Oregon. (There are two Double J Ranches in Oregon. The link goes to the right one.)

The high luster, open crimp, and generous length of the locks are typical of the breed. The lock on top is unwashed, and the one on the bottom is clean. Longwools invite a variety of spinning techniques. Lower left is singles, spun for texture, and lower right is a loosely spun and plied two-ply.

And here's a Leicester Longwool sheep, fairly recently shorn: the breed's fleeces get exquisitely long in a fairly short time. They're often shorn twice a year to keep the fiber to a manageable 5- to 6-inch length (12.5 to 15cm).

Photo © British Wool Marketing Board. Used by permission.

Navajo-Churro

Another swatch in singles yarn, this time Navajo-Churro obtained from Gypsy Wools, Boulder, Colorado. Yet another pattern from Barbara Walker's Charted Knitting Designs (I love all of Barbara Walker's treasuries, but this one just might be my favorite): Waterfall (p. 151).

Here are some of the breed's gorgeous natural colors, these grown by Connie Taylor's sheep in southern Colorado:

Navajo-Churro wool combines softness and durability in a unique way. The rare breeds are delightfully distinctive. That's to their benefit, in the realm of genetic variety and delight for us, but it's a negative attribute in an industrial world that prefers its fibers anonymous.

Here's a Navajo-Churro ram: he's got a superior set of four horns, too. Not many breeds of sheep are polycerate, or capable of producing horns in multiples. The fact that we're seeing two such rams on this page is because we're in rare-breed territory. These guys are remarkable even in that realm.

Photo © Tanya Carte and Greg Shore/McKenzie Creek Ranch in California. Used by permission.

American Tunis

Changing books to Hitomi Shida's 250 Japanese Knitting Patterns (Tokyo: Nihon Vogue, 2005), this is pattern #132, worked in American Tunis yarn from Solitude Wool, Round Hill, Virginia.

Tunis locks have a lovely open quality to them (except the tips, which often need a little gentle opening). They spin up into a versatile yarn that works well for color definition and (as you can see above) good body in texture patterns. It's darn sweet.

The lambs are born cinnamon-red, and they lighten up as they mature to a creamy-white color, although they retain the warm tones on their faces and legs.

Photo © SVF Foundation. Used by permission.

In conclusion

Here are locks of the four breeds, all together:

Left to right: Navajo Churro, American Tunis, Leicester Longwool, and Manx Loaghtan.

Aren't they pretty? All the things we can make with these splendid, renewable fibers—!

Check out the new PieceWork. There are a lot of other great articles about wool in it, including Charlotte Booth's exploration of ancient Coptic socks, Lithuanian beaded wrist warmers by Donna Druchunas, a section by Evelyn Clark featuring Icelandic wool, and more. I just need more knitting (and spinning) time.

For more rare breeds (and not-so-rare), there is, of course, The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook.

Yesterday and today

It's been quiet around here for many reasons, including travel, planning and contract negotiations for next year's teaching, and . . . an online course I'm taking called Teach Now, coordinated by Jennifer Louden and Michele Lisenbury Christensen.

Wow! The course is as laid-back or intense as each participant chooses to make it. Of course, I've jumped in with both feet. Although I have taught classes and workshops and given occasional keynote addresses for more than thirty-five years, teaching has always been a once-in-a-while event. Next year, I'll be teaching as much as I have time to (my 2012 calendar is full) and I want to make sure I'm doing it as well as I can. I took a gamble on this course and it's been very worthwhile. It looks at teaching as a multidimensional activity, one that every teacher undertakes from a position of both knowing and not-knowing, that is both more valuable (and demanding) than we often recognize it to be, and that deserves attention in ways that will make it sustainable for the teacher to continue doing.

Jennifer and Michele provide lots of audio resources (a focus recording for each week plus interviews with master teachers), homework with deadlines, and conference calls in which we can all work through sticky spots or examine questions that have come up. There's also a private Facebook group for conversations between participants that is a delight. It's taking a lot of time, and it's also paying off in giving me more confidence in teaching (which I love) and ideas for different ways to teach. It's also helping me feel like it's okay that I have way more questions about the topics I'm teaching than I do answers! I know that I know a lot. (Putting together a course is no problem, as soon as I identify the topic. My biggest challenges then are how to focus and trim the material so it makes sense as a whole and can be fitted into the available time.) I'm always significantly MORE aware of what I want to learn about next—what I don't know yet!

One of the things I don't know is when Jennifer and Michele will be offering the course again. To find out, get on their non-bothersome mailing list. I recommend the course strongly to anyone who is teaching any topic at any level. It's best if you can clear enough of your schedule to take advantage of all the opportunities (in my case, drastic measures have been required), but it's also valuable if you can just sip from the fire hose, so to speak. I'm also reading Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life, which Jennifer and Michele recommend highly (with good reason), even though it's not a specific part of the course. (An interview with Parker Palmer is included in the course materials.) There are both independent and facilitated versions of Teach Now. The facilitated option is amazing.

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Meanwhile . . . we have had one of Colorado's weather shifts in the past 18 hours.

I've also been appreciating our neighborhood, which is generally somewhat boring. Houses all built to the same handful of plans, too many of which are painted in shades of beige. Privacy fences made of cedar boards, arranged vertically, six feet high. Grass. A few trees. Not much individuality. Except. . . .

One of our neighbors has recently painted her fence! We're THRILLED! (And we told her so.)

Yesterday

Today

Her mural looks super whatever the weather. Note, though, how there are no tree limbs hanging in front of it in the first picture and there are several in the second.

I seriously wanted to bike to the coffeehouse last night for my evening work session, but it was spitting rain-snow at 5, and by the time I was getting ready to leave at 5:30 the back deck was completely wet. Worse, the forecast indicated that we would likely get several inches of snow and a significant portion might have fallen by 9 p.m. I usually work at the coffeehouse until they close at 10. Sigh. I took the car, even though I knew today would likely not be great for biking and thus I'd be losing my last opportunity for a while.

It turned out I wasn't just being a wuss. By the time I headed home, I had to scrape a couple of inches of snow from the car and free it from some limbs that were overhanging its roof.

Yesterday, briefly revisited

Here's more of yesterday:

Those are likely violas—maybe actual violets, although the blossoms are bigger than those of the midwestern violets I grew up with—that we've been enjoying all summer. They've grown through the street's asphalt. The truck parked behind them hasn't pulled forward over them, a fact for which we've been grateful every day when we've checked on them. The leaf blanket has been a new addition to the scene.

Today, again

This morning, our walking landscape looked entirely different and the flowers have yet another layer over them, this time white and puffy.

About seven inches (18cm) of snow lie everywhere. You can't tell we got that much snow from the street view, because it's a wet, heavy storm and the snow is melting quickly where it's warmed by the combined heat of the sun and of the dark roadway. The fact that our crew is walking in the street is a giveaway, though, of how much snow there is elsewhere. We're sidewalk folks. The sidewalks were either not cleared yet or were covered with backed-up, cold, wet, boot-invading slush. My daughter and our two dogs are turning a corner toward the house with the new mural.

Just behind her is another house that enlivens our walks, although we'll enjoy less of its pleasures for the winter. It has a spinet piano in the garage (in the GARAGE?) and the young man who plays it never seems to miss a note. When he learns a new piece, all the notes are in the right places but they don't come in as quick succession as they do when he's got the composition down. When he masters a work, it's hard to listen as fast as he plays, so we don't try. We just let the music swirl around us. It's such a nice experience and lasts for about a half-block in each direction (just past where the mural now is).

We're grateful for all the moisture of this snow, although it comes at a cost.

We've seen other trees that have experienced this sort of snow-induced split go back to growing just fine. I hope this one will. It was obviously pruned to take off some extra branches not long ago, so it was less vulnerable than it could have been.

Our neighbors, who just had the pruners out last week, lost part of their remaining big tree.

And another piece fell on their fresh paint job and new roof, although I don't think it did structural damage. I hope not.

So yes, I was out front at our house in my pajamas this morning, first thing, poking a shovel at the branches of the crabapple and bouncing them to get off as much snow as I could (and trying no to get it all over me). I think that tree is basically okay. The lilacs are also spreadeagled, but they tend to be resilient.

Lots and lots of neighborhood trees were less fortunate. Some people's lawns and porches were covered with broken limbs, and in other places drivers had to drag parts of trees out of the road to get to work.

Yet the storm also left some lovely sights in its wake:

It's supposed to clear up late this evening, and tomorrow's low is predicted to be 11°F (-11°C). I'm glad I located my winter coat and my boots today. I think before I get back to work in a few minutes I'll block the sweater I finished knitting on Monday night (photos to come).

The after-SOAR parade

On Sunday afternoon, as mentors and participants piled their luggage in the lobby, then onto carts, then into shuttles or car trunks, I finally ventured out of the hotel in Manchester, New Hampshire, to see where I was. I'd been out once previously, seeking dinner, but that was a directed venture and Gwen Steege, my editor at Storey Publishing, and I were talking, so I only got a rough idea of the streets we walked along.

This post-SOAR Sunday accommodated an exploration because my flight went out late in the afternoon. I did have a goal in mind: food. The restaurant at the hotel did have a good vegetarian option, but I wanted something different and with more protein. On the evening that I'd arrived, my daughter (with more energy than I could muster after travel) had done some internet searches on my behalf for places to eat (all turned out to be closed by then), so I had a place in mind. It was on the same street as the hotel. I began by walking in the wrong direction, which isn't typical for me and is one of many indicators I've had in the past week that my reserves have been a bit extra-depleted after the week of teaching: notes to self—eat well; sleep as much as you can; yes, you have to work, but go at it slowly and deliberately and do the things that come most easily.

After a couple of blocks, when I figured out that the street numbers were going down, rather than up, and that the neighborhood was looking less like a place that would have a restaurant in it (although you never know), I turned around and headed back toward, and past, the hotel. Odd: The street was blocked off with barricades, and there was a police car at the intersection by the park, with its lights flashing.

This in itself wasn't so unusual. The hotel room that Stephenie Gaustad and I shared had been on the eighth floor and at the front of the building. It was a nice view, and at almost any time of the night (we were teaching during the days), emergency lights flashed blue or red somewhere on the streets below. It was hard to tell whether they were responding to calls or just controlling traffic—for example, for the International Chili Society's World Championship Chili Cook-off, which happened in the park directly under our window on both days of the SOAR-prep weekend. (On that first Sunday, some SOAR-ready folks got out of the hotel to try a variety of chilis. I was sorting wool. I did chat in the elevators with several chili-cooking teams, and I also watched the uniformed teams march into the competition area on Sunday morning. LOTS of work for them that weekend, and it sounded like fun. Also very high-energy and a bit stressful.)

But back to the flashing lights on the following Sunday. As I walked farther down Elm Street, I noticed that people were standing along the curbs on both sides, as if they might be expecting . . . a parade. And then I heard sirens and saw more flashing lights on a police car coming toward me, lights ablaze. Oh, Columbus Day! And they must have a parade here! (Sometimes New England is just wonderful that way.)

I was definitely heading in the right direction for the restaurant my daughter had spotted online, and worried a bit that it would be swamped because of the parade, but decided that a parade was exactly what I needed just then.

I walked down Elm Street and found the restaurant, thinking I'd watch the parade from right out front and then retreat inside for some lunch. Plenty of people had shown up to view the procession, but there was lots of room along the sidewalks.

As it turned out, the parade consisted of high school marching bands (all very good) and FIRE TRUCKS! Fire trucks not only from New Hampshire but all several nearby states: I know I saw Maine and Massachusetts, am pretty sure about Vermont, and think there were some Connecticut and New York as well. Checking my photos doesn't help. Many engines have large labels for their towns, but their state identity was only readily visible on license plates (not so clear in the pictures).

Here are a couple of marching bands:

Some of the bands had people with cool-down equipment, watching carefully for signs of stress in the musicians.

The bands were all separated from each other by lots of fire trucks, with people of all ages riding in the trucks.

Some of the fire equipment was about the same age as I am:

And some was a good deal older:

That's 1852 fire equipment from Marblehead, Mass.

I grew up in an era of hood ornaments, and in a family where being able to recognize makes and models of cars and trucks was a plus, so it was fun to get a good shot of a nice Mack bulldog:

I have lots more photos of fire equipment. Only two of the pictures I took ended up out of focus. Two little boys near where I was standing were jumping up and down with excitement for the whole forty minutes it took the parade to pass. Everything that had a siren was blasting it (I had to put my fingers in my ears for part of the time), and there were friendly folk waving from the driver's and riders' seats.

The last truck in the line appeared to be driven by a dalmatian.

There was a real dog in the parade, too, up at the front.

Lunch at Republic? Flavorful, local, leisurely, and relatively quiet. Despite the potential collision of seasonings, I had North African spiced pickled vegetables (which woke up my taste buds effectively) and field mushroom bolognese (vegetarian style) with grilled polenta and whipped ricotta, plus some iced tea to temper the transition. Aahhh.

And then I went back to the Radisson lobby, so well sound-insulated that the people hanging out there hadn't even known there had been a siren- and marching-band parade that ended half a block away, and spent a relaxed two hours spinning, visiting, and waiting for the shuttle to the airport. Wind-down time.

Teaching at the Spin-Off Autumn Retreat (SOAR)

Sunday night at about 1:30 a.m. Eastern time (the time zone I woke up in) or 11:30 p.m. Mountain time (the one I'm readjusting to), I arrived home from teaching at the Spin-Off Autumn Retreat, or SOAR, the spinning-focus conference sponsored by Interweave Press that was held this year in Manchester, New Hampshire. I've been part of thirteen previous SOAR gatherings, between 1987 and 1999 . . . but had not been to one for the past eleven years.

Previously, when I worked at Interweave, I was part of the staff, making sure both mentors and participants had what they needed to enjoy and benefit from the event. (Examples: Filling goodie bags. Running to town for carrots and nuts to feed an unannounced vegan. Distributing air fresheners to cabins that were stale-smelling. Finding electrical cords. Locating boxes of fibers. Hauling, stacking, and shipping cartons on Sunday afternoon before catching a flight back home with the rest of the generally slap-happily exhausted crew.) I also, of course, did lots of things that related to my position as book editor and/or editor of Spin-Off magazine: talking with people about book ideas, hanging the gallery, uninstalling the gallery, being the announcer for the fashion show, and cruising the whole rich environment for ideas to feature in the magazine.

So this was my first time in another role: mentor, or instructor. Because it had been so long since I was part of a SOAR, I knew the event would have changed. For one thing, there are a lot more people. (In 1987, for the tenth anniversary, we had 300 people and the first marketplace. In general, there were between 125 and 150 attendees. I heard rumors this time about 400 participants. I didn't count.) For another, we were in a hotel, rather than one of the environments that both required us to cope with weather (rain, snow, mud) and gave us the opportunity to experience different settings outside of hotel-neutrality (North Carolina, Vermont, Oregon, Missouri, California, and so on). For many reasons, then, I went into this experience expecting some continuity but also prepared to have the event be entirely different than I remembered.

This will not be a tremendously coherent post. I had a great time. I loved meeting the people who were in my classes and the other folks whom I chatted with elsewhere around the hotel. Yet the SOAR schedule doesn't leave a lot of time to refill the well from which buckets of energy are constantly being drawn! I missed talking with a lot of both mentors and participants whom I saw from a distance. (I would have loved to have taken D. Y. Begay's sessions, and could happily have learned lots from every mentor on the program.)

I love to travel light. That wasn't a possibility for SOAR.

Here are my suitcases, packed and ready to be loaded onto the shuttle to the airport:

The two on the left contain class materials. The second-from-right contains my personal basics. The small gray backpack on the far right holds my computer and its cords and accessories, a water bottle, travel food, my iPod Touch, two books, and a couple of magazines.

On Saturday a week ago, I flew from Denver to Chicago to Manchester, New Hampshire. The Chicago flight arrived six minutes before the Manchester one was due to depart. Southwest kindly held the plane a few minutes for the handful of us who were making that connection, the last flight of the day. There obviously wasn't enough time to stop and pick up a salad. It's a good thing I had packed enough trail mix, apples, and almonds to get me through. I boarded the 737 in time to get one of the few remaining seats.

Night fell as I traveled 2,000 miles east, arriving at, oh, some time when the restaurants in the area had closed down and I was too tired to cope with finding, ordering, and eating dinner anyway. The bartender at JD's Tavern in the Radisson Hotel, where SOAR was being held, kindly sold me a to-go glass of milk and I enjoyed granola in my room. About an hour after I got there, my roommate, Stephenie Gaustad, arrived, and we did chat a bit before shutting down for the night, or, to be more accurate, early the next day.

Sunday morning, thanks to Twitter, several mentors and early-arrival participants managed to coordinate gathering for breakfast in the hotel's cafe. I snapped a picture of Stephenie (in green), who taught cotton spinning and spinning on the tahkli, and Beth Smith, who taught classes on breed-specific wools (in pink and orange).

The rest of the day was dedicated to finding the rooms we would be teaching in, retrieving the supplies that had been shipped in, and setting up to teach.

I had hoped to have photos of all the materials for my classes, but I got so involved with unpacking and sorting that I only got an approximate record. There were the suitcases, shown above. There were also three boxes that Beth Smith packed and sent from The Spinning Loft (the brown ones), the box of record sheets I'd shipped (the little blue one that weighed 22 pounds [10kg]), and the handouts Interweave had copied and sent ahead (the white box). The third photo in this series explicates the numbers on the packages—i.e., shows what was in each container.

Around supper time I connected with Jennifer Heverly of Spirit Trail Fiberworks, who had brought nine (I think) big black bags of wool in her van. I missed getting a photo of those packages in all their puffy, space-consuming glory. Piled into one of those hotel luggage carts, they left no room for anything else. Here are the mostly deflated bags after I did the initial unpacking:

Those items expanded to these types of materials:

1 = handouts

2 = record cards

3 = fiber samples

There were 33 pounds of wool (acquired, washed, divided, and labeled) to provide 1,004 fiber samples, representing 19 rare breeds of sheep, ready for 106 participants in three groups: a three-day workshop, a one-day workshop, and four half-day retreat sessions. The specific rare breeds presented to at least one of the groups, and sometimes all of them, were:

1. Black Welsh Mountain
2. Clun Forest
3. Dorset Horn
4. Gulf Coast Native
5. Hog Island
6. Jacob, American
7. Karakul, American
8. Lincoln Longwool
9. Manx Loaghtan
10. Navajo-Churro
11. North Ronaldsay
12. Portland
13. Romeldale / California Variegated Mutant (CVM)
14. Santa Cruz (tiny bonus samples, thanks to a participant, whom I'm happy to credit if she wants the public notice!)
15. Shetland (also here and here and here)
16. Soay
17. Southdown
18. Tunis, American
19. Wensleydale

My prep work included sorting the fibers by workshop type (right number and right fiber amounts for each), making lists of which breeds were actually present so I could put together the final versions of my slides, making sure the Interweave projector worked with my computer, counting out record cards in groups that would be quick to distribute, and so on.

Also setting up the chairs so the correct number fit into the teaching configuration I prefer, with room for spinning wheels and for people to get in and out of the room.

The carpet made an interesting backdrop for spinning. Whatever color wool we were working with, it couldn't be clearly seen against that pattern! Fortunately, most people had spinning cloths with them to provide light or dark contrast. Me, I used my jeans. I'd remembered to bring a spinning apron but was too busy to put it on.

When I'm teaching, I'm teaching—so I don't have photos of any class in progress to share. I have fiber, though!

Those are North Ronaldsay locks and North Ronaldsay yarns. Yes, there are reasons that the different colors have different staple lengths and fiber composition, and therefore produce different yarns. I learned more about why that occurs from conversations at SOAR. I love meeting up with other folks who care about this stuff as much as I do.

On two occasions, I got to the market for quick browse-throughs. On one of those, I visited with Richard Ashford, whom I hadn't seen in quite a few years. We first met in the 1980s.

I also got to catch up briefly with Gord Lendrum and Barry Schacht and Chris and Phil Switzer and Florence Feldman-Wood, who had brought a super selection of old spinning wheels to display (not sell!).

I met folks I've heard about or communicated with on Ravelry, and through this blog. That was all lovely. And on Sunday, after it was all over, I even got to sit and spin and visit with a handful of late-departing participants in the hotel lobby, after we'd all checked out.

During the week, I got out of the building once, when I skipped the usual buffet and went out to dinner with Gwen Steege, the editor I worked with most closely at Storey Publishing on The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook. Gwen has a new book herself! It's called The Knitter's Life List.

As we walked out that evening, this one of a pair of dog statues in the park in front of the hotel looked like it was wearing a wig or had been yarn-bombed. Turned out there was a squirrel sitting on its head. I didn't have my camera, and wouldn't have been fast enough if I had been able to pull it out of my bag.

On Sunday afternoon, I went for a walk down Elm Street in Manchester. I finally got a picture of the dog, squirrel-less. I came across something else during my Sunday walk, but that's a subject for another post.

I'm home now. I hope to get my suitcases unpacked within the next few days. I've ignored them so far, while catching up with all the things that were awaiting my immediate attention when I got back.

Thanks to everyone who came to the workshops for sharing your interest and questions and willingness to try new things. Regardless of the surroundings and circumstances, so different than in the past, you brought to life in this new place the heart of SOAR. And I'm glad that hasn't changed.