Last weekend, I spent a few hours demonstrating spinning at Coverdale Farm Preserve in northern Delaware for their annual Harvest Moon Festival. Coverdale Farm Preserve, which focuses on farm-based education programs and has a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program, and is part of Delaware Nature Society .
Before we go below the orange diddly-do, a word about WAYWO:
WAYWO, What Are You Working On? is for all creative types. No matter what your craft, come talk about it here every Sunday at 7:00 Eastern Time.
So, we arrived at the parking lot, which was approximately 7, 430 miles from the barn where we'd be demonstrating. Here's what the parking lot looked like from the barn. See, it, waaay back on the left there?
Fortunately, the young guy who was directing parking in our section volunteered to drive me and my spinning accoutrements to the barn on his "Gator", a noisy, but pretty comfy piece of farm equipment. Poor DH had to walk, as it was a two-seater. Bye, honey! See you in an hour!
Once at the barn, I helped with a bit of the setup. It was a rainy morning, so not many people were up to our area yet, and our setup stretched into the festival time by a few minutes. We had two looms, plus small cardboard looms set up for the kids to take home, a table of dye information, including samples of dye plants, and a wheel of colors dyed with mushrooms and fungi.
I put my wheel and bag in the spinning corner, nabbed a chair, and started spinning and chatting with the other volunteers of the Greenbank Fiber Guild and Harmony Weavers Guild.
Soon enough, people started wandering through, and stopped to learn a bit about how fabric is made, starting with carding the wool from the animals they'd already seen on the farm. Little kids discovered how fun it is to crank the drum carder!
Look at the licker wheel, feeding in the fiber! Here's how we add different colors.
And the finish batt, ready for spinning.
The spinners were busily spinning, and talking about our wheels. Somehow, there were no good photos taken of the spinners, alas.
The looms, on the other hand, were very photogenic and popular!
Kids and adults alike enjoyed playing with weaving.
Cow milking was from the barn behind us. An enormous, patient cow was the demonstrator. In between demonstrations, she hung out in her stall, taking pets from whoever came by (including me!).
There were, of course, fiber animals:
Dairy animals, as the aforementioned cow, and CHICKENS! I want a little backyard flock, but that's on the back burner.
Here's the blacksmith (not a fiber animal, though I bet he could make spinning-related parts & tools!):
ETA: Many of the photos (all of the ones of the looms and carder) are from a friend and fellow guild member. Thanks, Laurel!!