Great Basin Fiber Arts Festival

This is a belated post- it has just taken me a while to get caught up with life in general after a lovely weeks' break in Salt Lake City.

The Great Basin Fiber Arts Fair

"real man in skirts" spinning on a great wheel

Mary Carol singing and leading the waulking

Fully Waulked Fabirc

During a visit with my sister Luli who lives in Salt Lake City, I had an opportunity to attend the second annual Great Basin Fiber Arts Fair which was held on the grounds of the Wheeler Historic Farmstead.

Although the Fiber Arts Fair is an separate entity from the local guilds, which include the Wasatch Wool Pack, Salt Lake Weavers, Northern Utah Fiber Association (NUFA), Intermountain West Alpaca Association (IMpaca) and the Salt Lake City Knitters Guild, many members of the guilds also share responsibility for the Fiber Arts Festival. Each of the groups had a tent and display area along with volunteer demonstrators . In the case of IMpaca, there was an extensive day long fleece competition and judging of alpaca fleeces as well as a similar competition and judging of wool fleeces on Saturday. There were also spun skein and finished items competitions and two full days of classes covering beginning and advanced spindle and wheel spinning, redneck shibori, lockerhooking, basket embellishment, wool combing, dyeing, and making designer and beaded yarns on handspindle or wheel. There were also some freewheeling locals from the SCA who were doing their self proclaimed “yes real men wear skirts and spin” demonstration while taking turns spinning on a great wheel.

There were also 20 vendors from Utah, Colorado and Wyoming who were selling everything from knitting patterns through equipment and roving to ceramics and finished felted and knitted pieces and western art.

My sister Luli and I were involved in helping to set up tents for the weavers, the Wool Pack, the knitters , the classrooms and one of the vendors( a personal friend). Unfortunately, much of our effort was laid to waste by a couple of very strong afternoon wind/thunder/rain/hail storms which left over half the vendors and several of the organizations scrambling around for replacement tents before the fair opened on Saturday. All that remained of the Wool Packs’ lovely six legged hexagonal tent was a pretzel mass of aluminum rods enshrouded in and poking through the woven polyester and rip stop nylon top and sides.

While Luli agonized over judging the wool skeins, I had ample opportunity to wander the fair, meet many of Luli’s fellow fiber friends and sit and spin. Apparently, many of Luli’s friends thought that I was a fellow fiber fanatic that she had met somewhere and shared a metaphysical sisterhood with without realizing that we were actually flesh and blood sisters. It was amusing to watch and listen to the reactions.

While wandering around, I met a spinner who had fibro myalgia, and as a way to ease the symptoms as well as keep spinning, she had converted her stationary exercise bicycle to a spinning wheel complete with tension gauge, yardage counter as well as time and speed and distance in miles, so she could talk knowledgeably about miles per skein and all the other possible combinations of length, time, speed and distance possible. It puts a whole new slant on the dread “spinning” (go as hard as you can for as long as you can at the most resistance you can) classes at the gym, as well as being a pretty good example of “multi tasking.”

I also got to try my hand at spinning at a great wheel, courtesy of one of the “real men in skirts” as well as having ample opportunity to practice long draw while spinning on my sister’s Rio Grande wheel. She co-owns the wheel with her vendor friend and was glad to have a way to have it transported half way to her house by the vendor. I will say that stacking it plus another wheel and various fleece and fiber purchases into the back of her car Sunday afternoon was an exercise in skill and ingenuity.

For me one of the highlights of the festival was the Sunday afternoon “Waulking” with Mary Carol (whose last name I never caught ), a local weaver, collector and singer of traditionl gaelic and celtic songs and a student and teaching partner of Norman Kennedy, a master “waulker” and collector of traditional Hebridean waulking songs from Scotland.

*“Those are called oran luaidh, fulling songs. After the wool was woven into fabric, the wet cloth had to be worked for hours to open the fibers, and shrink the threads into a tight, weather-resistant unit. Waulking or fulling the wool was hard work, done traditionally by a group of women pounding the cloth in rhythmic patterns over several hours, to the haunting melodies of the oran luaidh.” *

As it turned out, the tables of the picnic pavilion were ideal for “waulking” fabric as they were made of a heavy plastic with 1” drainage holes at 3” intervals across the table top and the roughness sped up the “waulking” process and Mary Carol had several long pieces of fabric to finish off and many willing hands to help.

The fabric had been temporarily sewn into a loop and soaked in soap and water until it was saturated. The process consisted of Mary talking about each song and it’s origins and meanings, teaching the people seated around the table a simple chorus and then singing the song in Gaelic or Celtic while the fabric was “waulked” and worked around the table in a continuous and circular “thump, rub pass it on” motion to the rhythm of the music.

As a trained singer and folk artist, Mary Carol has a lovely haunting voice which perfectly portrays the sad and sometimes baudy tone and translation of the songs she was singing. On at least one chorus, everybody got so confused as to the words that we ended up extemporizing many many verses of “What do you do with a drunken sailor?” as well as at least 17 repeats of “heigh ho and up she rises” by the time I quit counting.

As the fabric drew together and shortened, those at the ends of the table who could no longer reach the fabric, just sat and sang to help maintain the rhythm. When the circle of fabric no longer reached to the end of the second 10’ table, but instead just barely reached the end of the first, the “waulking” was finished. Everybody, including those who had dropped out assisted in smoothing and stretching the fabric out horizontally as far as possible so that it would be wound around a perforated drying board. Over the five days of drying, it will be unwound and smoothed and rewound once a day. When the fabric is completely dry, it will be fashioned into the coats and woven clothing Mary Carol sells.

Although it took several hours to finish all the “waulking”, it was a fun and at times hilarious finish to a very successful fiber festival and a great opportunity to spend times with fellow spinners and weavers.

*From “Dance to your shadow” a travel guide to Scotland by Pam Swan.*