It is always interesting to see how different events can present themselves from contact made years earlier. This last week I was approached to help on a Sheep to Shawl team.

What is a Sheep to Shawl?

A Sheep to Shawl is an age old competition that I have seen several times at many Fiber Festivals. Each competition has slightly different rules, but only slightly. Essentially it is a team of people (usually seven) that work in a set time limit. In this time limit they prep a sheep fleece, teasing the wool and carding it. They then spin it into “singles”, then ply these “singles” together to create yarn. The yarn is then woven on a loom to create a shawl of set dimensions by the competition.

This is usually entirely completed in 4 hours.

A Virtual event…

With the current situation of the world most Fiber Festivals have been canceled or re-imagined. The Lambtown Festival in Dixon, California has re-imagined this competition in a virtual setting.

Teams are allowed a total of 28 hours to complete this process, but need to provide all these hours on a Zoom presentation. The 28 hours essentially creates this shawl in the same time setting as in-person, as the hours are counted from every participant.

This means that everyone is working quickly, in their own home setting,. Then figuring out how to get need supplies to the next participants to complete the steps. It is an interesting undertaking.

Where I am Invited

So in this new setting a couple of ambitious woman decided to challenge the notion of this being a woven shawl, and see if one can be crocheted instead.  I honestly am not aware of any competition that has ever worked up a crochet shawl, and we are hoping to set a new level of encouragement and interest in crochet.

This is where I was brought in. I learned to spin yarn several years ago, but I haven’t put it to practice much in the last 9 years. So, I dusted off my wheel last weekend and spun up some singles.

Join Us….

My team started out as the Stygn Gold, but with some settling in it has now become “Stitch In Time” (Sponsored by The Sacramento Crochet Guild, a Chapter of the Crochet Guild of America) will be working over the next few weekends to complete our project, and you are welcome to join us. Visit the Lambtown site for our scheduled competition times.

Wish us luck. It will be interesting to see if we can essentially create the yarn and crochet a shawl in a combined effort….