The West Virginia Fiber Festival was held at the Monongalia County Center this weekend, featuring vendors selling homemade wool products, lectures on sheep care and a mixer event Friday evening.
At their festival booth, vendors Amanda Stewart and Sarah Beamer sold wool, finished knitted products and showcased the tools used to prepare wool for yarn. Stewart owns Stewart Highland Farm, where they have “everything but pigs.”
“We have a spinner flock– so I’m a hand spinner, I have a variety of sheep with a variety of breeds and crossbreeds, but my primary breed is an East Frisian, which is a dairy sheep,” Stewart said. “We actually milk our sheep and use the milk in the home.”
Wool production begins with shearing the sheep. The fleece is then washed multiple times before being left to dry.
The fleece is then “picked” to open up the locks and remove any lingering debris. Next, the fleece can be carded or combed to align the fibers before it can be spun into yarn, which Stewart does with a spinning wheel.
“After it’s spun, we can make something with it,” she said.
Beamer said that when it comes to dyeing the wool, she uses both commercial and natural dyes.
“We use a big kettle over fire and use marigolds, or goldenrod, or ironweed, or onion skins, different plant products to make a dye, then simmer the wool that has been mordant in alum,” Beamer said. “You simmer that for about an hour.”
Beamer said some colors are harder to find in nature, such as true blues and reds. This is where commercial dye comes in handy for her.
Stewart and Beamer hope that this event will become a yearly event since it is closer to their home in Preston County than other festivals.
Lindsey Sherman, a knitting hobbyist, said she was excited to visit the festival because she enjoys making items with real, home-spun wool.
“I am a knitter from a very young age and got ever consumed into the yarn world,” she said. “Then, you want to make your own yarn, and it's really a snowball effect from there.”
Sherman said she enjoys the fact that each piece of fleece behaves differently, even when it is from the same breed of sheep.
“Socks are my favorite in terms of spinning and then putting it to a product through knitting,” she said. “But, I recently got really heavy into floor looms just to use up my handspun, and I've officially made a Civil War reenactment blanket out of 100% wool.”
Sherman, like Stewart and Beamer, was excited about the festival being so close to home, and said making yarn and engaging in the sustainable practices of homesteading should be more common.
“It's just not a big thing around here, or not as big as it should be,” Sherman said. “The fact that we have our own spinners guild in the area, Loose End Fiber Addicts, that I've been to and graphed in several times, and it's something close to home.”
Sherman hopes that more people can get involved in hand spinning wool and knitting to share her hobby, noting that this event could be the gateway.
“I could bring other people with me and say, this is why I like what I do,” she said. “ I have so many people ask about the spinning, but they have no idea of the process because it's kind of a, I don't want to say a forgotten art because people still obviously do it, but it's just not out there as much as it could be.”