Preparation – the Second

So the wool got washed and a few days ago I was sure i had all of my fibers but I needed to assemble the fibers for each class to make sure.

This is my starting pile:

That hip high pile is all of the washed fleece. I ad my list of what wool i needed for which class and got down to weighing. I do one class at a time. Each class has it’s own bag containing the smaller bags of the fibers for that class. it looks something like this.

Those two bags contain the fibers for the American Breeds class and the Fine Yarns class at Rhinebeck. I have seven classes at the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival and so there will be seven bags in the end.

This weighing and digging and rearranging took about 4 hours all together because I also got my fibers ready for the 2 day breeds study I am doing for the Black Sheep Guild in Ithaca New York in early November.

Here’s what the space where the pile was looks like now.

Now I need to just go through that box of filing that is waiting to be done…

Anyway, I’ll think about that later.

Here is all of the fiber – almost ready.

So, what’s left to do? See the box with the red, blue and yellow? That’s for my Color Wheel Carding class. I need to make little kits from that. i estimate that will take about 2 hours. I also need a detailed list of the things that I need to take in addition to the fiber. It will include the bog things like a spinning wheel and lazy kate as well as the little things like extra handcards, combs and flicks to share in class, hole punches, blank tags and my collection of dizs (dizes. diz’s? I don’t know how to make diz plural)

For my breeds classes I also provide little cards that have the name of each breed already printed on them. This helps with the organization of the students’ samples. Don’t you hate it when you go home from a class and forget how you made the samples? I try to help with that. So there are also little plastic bags and sometimes even stickers for labeling the bags. It all depends on the class.

In addition, I need to print class outlines for each student. Before I do that I have to make sure that the outline is correct and up to date with the correct information and fiber. And finally, I need detailed outlines for me with little facts and tidbits that I don’t want to forget to go over during class.

All together I would say that I have at least another 8 or 10 hours of work to do before I can say that I am truly ready to leave for Rhinebeck. But I’m making progress.

Also, it’s a good thing I assembled the fibers so early because I found out that I need to wash another 4 pounds of Jacob! I’d better get on that so the wool will be dry in time!