Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Part 1: Excellent Classes

I got home late Monday night from my trip to the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival. What a wonderful time I had! I’m going to blog about my Wisconsin adventures over the next three blog entries. Today, I’ll concentrate on classes: Students and Teachers.

I taught all three days of the Festival. All the workshop participants were alert, enthusiastic, ernest, adventurous, appreciative, and just really really pleasant people. That’s the way it has always been at this event. I just love teaching workshops there.

I got a chance to chat with a few of the other instructors at length. Most especially, I got to spend time with Nancy Shroyer of Nancy’s Knit Knacks. She had flown in from North Carolina and was without a car. So I gave her rides to and from the hotel where we were staying. She is a delightful person, as well as an ingenious fiber tool designer and a wonderful teacher.

On Thursday night Nancy and I joined Letty Klein for dinner at Highway Harry’s in Johnson Creek. Letty was scheduled to teach a rug braiding class on Friday, judge the fleece competition on Saturday, and give a presentation on Sunday. I had met her last year when we travelled together to the Northeast Handspinners Association “The Gathering” in Vermont (see my blog entry November 11, 2010). It was very good to see her again. It reminds me that I haven’t started the braided rug that I planned to make from some Shetland roving….

On Friday morning I had breakfast with Cheryl Stegert. I had first met Cheryl in Neenah Wisconsin at Midwest Masters 2010. She often teaches classes at Yarns by Design in Neenah. We chatted about knitting and spinning and weaving. We bumped into each other several times during the Festival, and I “blame” her for some of my purchases (I’ll explain in my next blog entry).

I did stop in on Carol Rhoades’s classroom to say howdy. In past years, we have taught in the same building, but this year we did not, so we didn’t have much time to catch up, but it was nice to see her. Carol is the technical editor for Spin Off magazine, and she helped neaten up my article on my 3X3=10 shawl (Fall 2011 issue). Thanks Carol!!