Project Date: 2016 - 2022
I had been a member of HGA for a while. This was actually my second stint in membership. Ever since my early introduction to them I had wanted to attend a Convergence Conference. The idea of being surrounded by fiber artist, taking classes, learning, and playing with fiber for multiple days in a row, was like peeking into the gates of heaven. Finally, in 2016 we were in a financial space where that was possible. We were living in St. Louis and the conference was being held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
This class was to make a feast of yarn. It turned out to be incredibly fun. At the beginning, most everybody including myself were dubious of the potential results. The instructor was incredibly funny and quirky which made this day-long class really fun.
The first thing we did was separate into two groups. One group was working with reds and oranges, and the other group would be working with blues and purples. As my results show, I picked the blue and purple group!
Arranged on several tables on our side of the room were many bags of fiber in our color range, plus a lot of other colors and multi-colored. The fiber was all kinds and included locks, batts, roving, and actual yarn. There was wool, silk, synthetics. There was ribbon, metallic angel hair. Our instructions were simple. Pick a small amount of something from a bag. Approach our blank table, which was a large standard conference table about three feet by eight feet, take the small amount of material we hand in our hand, and walk around the table sprinkling the fiber all over the table. The next person would do the same thing. For the yarn and ribbon, we walked around the table and snipped two to four-inch lengths all over the table. We kept doing this for a while until we had built up a layer cake of fiber that almost a foot high. It was quite a site!
The instructor then split up that giant table-sized batt into the number of our team so that we each had a foot-high batt that was about two feet by three feet. We stuffed that gently into a large plastic garbage bag which became our source to spin.
Because we flew to the event, I had opted to rent a spinning wheel which turned out to be problematic . The instructor let me use hers which was the same Lendrum that I owned at home!
We used the jumbo spinning head set and spun up that layer cake of fiber. It was slow going at first. The fiber we were spinning was about four to six wraps per inch. It sometimes fed awkwardly. Ribbons had to be caught into the fiber triangle as it reached the orifice. But after a few trial starts it became fun.
I only spun about a third of my batt by the time the class ended. This then sat in my fiber stash for about six years until just recently in 2022 when I had decided to once in a while but with some consistency, finish projects from my stash. This feast project recently came up in my queue.
I didn’t have a third bobbin so I had to order one. This single was then plied with a second yarn. I chose a purple bumpy yarn that was about 14 wraps per inch.
I ended up with about 164 yards of feast fiber.
My thoughts are to use it as accent yarn in a Woven fabric that will either become a vest or scarf.
Milwaukee is home to a really cool art museum on the lake. The building is very modern. It has grills which cover the windows that at noon raise up into a dramatic seek making it look like wings. That beautiful building, the convergence center, all fed my creative spirit to capture my experience and memories into this feast yarn.
