From fleece to shawl
CONNOQUENESSING TWP — Each of the six members of the Fabulous Fiber 4-H Club has a position on the team.
Nicole Michel is the designated weaver, who operates the loom; Elsie Schneider, Emmalyn Schaffner and Sarah Bupp work the spinning wheels; and, as the only member of the team who enjoys the task, Reagan Zanaglio cards for the duration of the “match.” They even have an alternate, Elise Richendrfer, who subs in if one of her teammates is sick or unavailable.
Together, the team members combine their efforts to make one shawl out of pounds and pounds of sheep’s wool. It takes the team a little under three hours to complete the job, but they are continuously practicing to improve their speed and craftsmanship, in order to stand a better chance at the Pennsylvania Farm Show fleece to shawl competition in January.
While each practice session is a long few hours of unceasing work, the Fabulous Fiber members, like Santa’s elves, get to whistle while they work, and they have been enjoying the preparation so far.
“You have to sit for two-and-a-half hours,” Nicole said. “The time actually goes kind of fast. You get in a rhythm.”
The Fabulous Fiber 4-H Club is the only 4-H group in Butler County focused on weaving and making fiber products, according to the club’s leader, Melisa Costel.
Costel said Tuesday, Dec. 24, at the Butler Farm Show grounds that the six members of the team learned the craft from the Butler Spinners and Weavers Guild, a group that leads classes at the Butler County Extension Office.
The team has only been together since September, but it has participated in spinning events in Harmony since before officially getting the together.
“We've done Harmony for a couple years now. We wanted to up the challenge,” Nicole said.
Costel said she helped enter the team in the Pennsylvania Farm Show’s fleece to shawl contest for youths under 18 years old. Despite their short time working together, Costel said she thinks the team has a good shot of placing well in the competition, which a handful of teams from across the state participate in each year.
“I guess I felt that they were ready to do the competition,” Costel said. “They have been practicing almost every Friday night since the beginning of October, and we have done two full practice sessions, so we know where they stand on getting it all done on time.”
The team will bring one of the shawls it has already made to the competition, so the judges will have a visual aid to compare against the Fabulous Fiber’s final competition product. The demo shawl the team had at the Butler Farm Show grounds on Dec. 24 had been dyed red following its completion.
Costel said the judges at the state farm show assess each team on a number of criteria, including the team’s costumes.
“Their costumes, they are going with ‘Team Newsies,’” Costel said. “They get points for the best spinner, the fastest spinner, the best weaver, that sort of thing, in addition to getting judged on the final product.”
The fleece starts as a pile of wool. The wool is pre-sheared for the state farm show’s 18 and under division, according to Costel.
The team first has to card the wool by scraping two rakes full of wool against each other to remove any residue and make the material as pure as possible. The wool can then be placed on wheels and the loom, so that each member of the team can start doing their respective duty.
Sarah explained the whole process and said it involves a lot of repetition on everyone’s part.
“For the first 45 minutes, we're all supposed to card, and then Elsie will start spinning and she'll spin some stuff for Nicole to start to weave with,” Sarah said. “After that, me and Emmalyn will start spinning so she can alternate between yarns, and (Reagan) will be our carder.”
The members of the fibers group took on their positions after learning from the Butler Spinners and Weavers, who Reagan said suggested roles based on what the girls excelled at during their teaching sessions.
Reagan also said she is not sure why she enjoys carding more than the average weaver, but it might have to do with the fact that it’s the one task a member of the team can do without sitting down.
“The only bad thing about carding is you have to do this for like three hours,” Reagan said. “You can stand up and walk around while you do it — that's a good thing.”
All of the teams participating in the state farm show’s fleece to shawl event work at the same time, so there is an element of live competition to the contest.
Costel said that while finishing first isn’t the only or the most important metric in the competition, the event can get exciting as the three hours start to tick down and teams get closer and closer to finishing their shawls. She said seeing a pile of wool become a completed shawl is also an exciting aspect of the competition.
“It's live and it's timed, so they only have three hours from start to finish to get that finished and off of the loom,” Costel said.
The Fabulous Fiber 4-H Club will travel to Harrisburg for the fleece to shawl competition on Jan. 8. The youth competition kicks off at 10 a.m. and is scheduled to end at 1 p.m. Costel said the event is expected to be livestreamed through the state farm show, so county residents back in Western Pennsylvania can watch the event.
