Two days, six sheep breeds, twelve preparations, all local: Here’s a spinning workshop about the woolly wonders to be found nearby.
Our part of the Pacific Northwest suits a wide range of sheep types, so the fibers will be diverse and appealing—and a number of them will be rare breeds. Within a context of hands-on experience, participants will learn about the historical and cultural backgrounds of the featured sheep, as well as their present-day situations.
Fully rooted in place, this workshop comes about as a collaboration between Twisted Strait Fibers, a local community organizing a cooperatively-owned fiber processing mill on the North Olympic Peninsula, and the Fiber Studio at BARN. It will be facilitated by Deborah Robson, fiber author of The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook and The Field Guide to Fleece (and UW graduate).
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Instructor Bio: Deborah Robson is a fiber generalist who specializes in spinning, knitting, and weaving, although she experiments with all aspects of textiles. She is the fiber author of The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook and The Field Guide to Fleece, in collaboration with livestock expert Carol Ekarius. For fourteen years she served as an editor at Interweave Press, including twelve years as editor-in-chief of Spin-Off: The Magazine for Handspinners. At Interweave she initiated the Save the Sheep project and the book Handspun Treasures from Rare Wools. She also edited Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot, has worked in trade, literary, and scholarly publishing, and has written for many publications, including PieceWork, Interweave Knits, Spin-Off,and The Journal for Weavers, Spinners and Dyers, as well as several fiber-related anthologies. Her textile designs have appeared in several magazines and collections.
She is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and of the Colorado Authors’ League, and served two terms on the board of directors of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (now The Livestock Conservancy). Her current research focuses on the millennia of alliances between sheep and humans, emphasizing the fiber perspective and using Shetland sheep as an example of how the relationships have evolved, and she is publishing monographs on fiber-related topics. Websites related to her work are at independentstitch.com, www.DreamingofShetland.com (a site maintained by friends), www.DRobson.info, and www.FleeceandFiber.com.