Back to Back Wool Challenge

Oh. My. Goodness!

Saturday was an exhausting day...but exciting and a lot of fun!

The day started off with everyone arriving for the 13th Annual Back to Back Wool Challenge. You could just feel the excitement in the air -- it was electric -- as we all waited in anticipation to begin. What am I even talking about? Let me start at the beginning...

The Spinner's Guild I belong to decided to enter an international spinning competition. The challenge is this: you have a team of 8 people -- one shearer and seven spinners/knitters. The goal: to see how quickly your team can shear a sheep, spin the wool (in the grease!!!), and then knit an adult-sized sweater. Everyone who enters the competition has the same pattern to follow for knitting the sweater. Everything else is up to your team. The world record is held by an Australian team who completed this task in a record time of 4hr 51min 14sec (in 2004). Last year the competition was won by a Japanese team with a time of 5hr 33min 46sec.

Well, as you can imagine, we were all eager to beat this world record! We met earlier in the week to discuss our strategies and try spinning greasy wool (wool that has not been washed at all). And so when we arrived Saturday morning at the chosen location, we were all quite excited.

Setting up the wheels...

After posing for a group photo with our shearer, Robert, and our lovable chosen sheep, Sis, the clippers came out.

I am the third on the left...the others are the rest of the team,

our time-keeper, and our host for the day

The rules of the competition state that you can only use non-electric hand shears. So with a snip snip snip, the official timekeeper began timing our efforts.

Sis (a Romney-cross),

after her "haircut"...

Within a few minutes all the spinners had handfuls of greasy wool at their feet and the spinning had begun. We spun for about an hour before we began plying singles together. We had to spin a DK weight (plyed) so for me that was a great challenge (although with clean wool, I can now spin my singles to about lace-weight). I was the chosen one to begin the job of plying the wool and then getting the first ball of yarn to the first knitter who would begin knitting the back of the sweater.

We worked hard until we were able to have four people knitting (front, back, and two sleeves). That was extremely challenging! The lanolin in the wool was very sticky and so we had to constantly clean our needles every third or fourth row. While the four people were knitting the other three continued to spin and ply the wool to supply materials for the knitters. I was the last knitter to begin (I worked on one of the sleeves).

Three members of our team...the lady in the middle is 80 yrs old (a Master Spinner).

Her wheel was made in 1840 by a monk in Quebec, Canada.

We worked feverishly all day spinning, plying, knitting, strategizing, laughing...and some of the ladies even enjoyed the occasional glass of wine or added Bailey's to their coffee. "Fuel for the fire" they would laugh and say as they continued on working. We had other members of the guild there throughout the day offering support by means of cheerleading, preparing wonderful meals and snacks (we took time to eat in shifts), entertaining us with stories and jokes, and helping us all to bond together as a group. By the time we hit about the six hour mark, we realized just how much more work the knitters had before them. And then we started to comment on the "world-record" times and the winners from last year.

We had no clue how these teams could have pulled such a monumental task off in such a short amount of time! Just the spinning alone was so time-consuming (and we had two Master Spinners working the whole time!!!). I suggested we send in a mole to either of these two teams to find out their "secrets" on completing this task in record-breaking times. We finally concluded that they obviously were all about the work and less about having fun. However, it would have been great to finish our work within those times and then sat around and had fun for the rest of the day. But where would the challenge be???

Well, this being our first time, we figured (before we began) that we could probably complete the task within 8-10 hours. We were aiming for eight, but figured we should be a bit realistic!!! Well, the eight hour mark came and left rather quickly. The knitters were checking with each other how many more rows we each had to go...WAY too many!!! But we weren't going to give up. Hour ten soon after was upon us. We were all getting pretty exhausted by this point, and many more rows to go. But did we let that get us down? No! Last year there was a Nova Scotian team that completed the task in just over 14 hours. We figured we had those Maritimers beat -- no problems. So we hung in there. The ladies topped up their glasses of "beverages", ate chocolate cookies for extra sugar boosts, and continued to figured out as we worked, where we could improve our time for next year.

But, alas, at about hour 13 we knew we had been beat -- and we were beat...literally exhausted!!! We continued to work feverishly for another 40 mins before calling it quits. We are only about 20 rows from completion (some less than that). But we decided to submit our finish time as 13h 40mins with an uncompleted project. We were all so exhausted -- I could barely see straight. We all joyfully decided we gave it our all and better luck next year. We looked at the clock which was nearing midnight as we tumbled into our cars and headed home for a well-deserved sleep. I was wiped out by the time I got home! So I had a quick shower (I just couldn't go to bed smelling so...sheep-poopy-ish).

It was such a great experience! As exhausting as it was, I think I would like to participate again next year if the group is up to the challenge. Even if we did the challenge unofficially and worked in shifts of people...I don't know, just a thought. Anyways, we're going to finish the sweater at our next meeting and we will take the completed sweater around to the various fairs we're participating in this summer.

Well, I'm off for now. My program's on...