100 Years of Pendleton

This weekend in Portland at the Home and Garden show at the Expo Center, Pendleton Mills is celebrating their century mark. I was really, really honored to be a part of that celebration yesterday. Last month I was tapped to find some spinners for their "wool story" exhibit.
In the picture above, you can see they had bleachers set up for the 3 demo's of the day. What actually happened is that folks just flowed through the space all day and we just kept going. The wonderful Kathy Monaghan was the organizer at Pendleton that I had been working with and the lady was on fire! She talked each person who came to see us through the entire process of making a blanket. I certainly learned plenty.
You can see here some of the fabulous fashions, past and present, on display.
Here you can really see the amazing display of 100 blankets representing 100 years of Pendleton.And there's my weird little wheel where I was sitting on a platform all day, yesterday. To the left you can see actual 50o lb bales of wool that they purchase for making their wool blankets, etc. Young and old alike were asked to take a bit 'o wool with them. The kids loved it! The orginal plan was to have live sheep there, but then upon the realization that it's lambing season and on top of that folks couldn't touch the sheep (because of hygene reasons) we had a lot of "stuffed" sheep instead. Still went over well...

I ended up talking to folks the entire time about just how it all works. I ended up spinning one whole bobbin of laceweight merino. They had this huge round of about 50lbs of sliver just to my left. Today I've been plying it. Really gorgeous stuff I had to work with. I actually tried first the "craft wool" that they sell for felting and that didn't go too well. The staple was too short.

So, "my people" will be there today, Saturday and Sunday. I'm not sure I could have done all four days even if it had been suggested. I actually carried my spinning wheel on the MAX train, after walking about 7 blocks with it. It rolled along on a carrier, but because of my height, I have to bend a little to use something like that. I did get a ride home though from my fellow demo gal, Lise who was weaving just in front of me, to complete the circle. The circle of the WOOL.