Wool goes from sheep to shawl at a beloved Maryland festival

Publish date: 2024-08-07

Inside the fairgrounds, past the sheep show ring, the sheep milk stand, the sheep jewelry artist, the sheep photo display and the barn full of sheep, the fiercest competition in sheepdom has begun.

At the 51st annual Maryland Sheep and Wool festival, six teams have three hours to shear a sheep, transform its wool into yards of yarn, then weave those threads into a showstopping shawl.

They call it “Sheep to Shawl” and ewe best believe that it’s anything but warm and fuzzy.

“These ladies have been honing these skills for years and years,” says organizer and shepherd Rachel Adra. “This is the Olympics for us.”

The games begin when six sheep go belly up, cradled by seasoned “shearers” whose job is to shed them of as much wool as possible, as fast as possible, without an electric blade nicking a sheep or a finger. The baritone bleating is drowned out by the crowd: More than 100 people have gathered to whoop and holler as fleece becomes floof.

This raw wool, unlike yarn bought at a store, is coated in a kind of sticky sheep sweat called lanolin. The waxier the wool, the more challenging it is to weave quickly.

Such a fact is well known here at one of the nation’s best known sheep and wool festivals, where every year, more than 20,000 people — and 600 sheep — flock to the Howard County fairgrounds for two days of sheep in all forms: sheared, natural, woolen, woven. There are sheep named Lassie and Lady and Jason, son of Aquarius and Wildfire. Dozens of sheep are on display for the parade of sheep breeds, originating from Barbados and Scotland and Hog Island, Va., where they were brought by settlers in the 1700s.

Then there are the humans who wrangle the sheep: a shepherd of the year (whose last name, this year, is Breeding); a sheep ambassador, whose title used to be sheep queen (there is still a tiara); and the grand dame of the sheep and wool festival, chairman emeritus Gwen Handler, who is said to prefer the title of “rainmaker” or “visionary.”

Much of the draw for the humans is the shopping. Sheep grace everything from soap dishes to nightlights. Wool has been woven into socks and sweaters. Skeins are for sale in colors called “Blue Crab” and “Old Bay.”

Don’t miss the puns on all the products: Tempting Ewe Yarns. Sheep milk soap from ewe to you. Ewetopia. Re-Ewes Me Again and Again. I Shopped Bare Naked (I was Baa-a-d). Thank Ewe!

There are even sheep at the food stands, the least lucky of them now $9 lamb burgers.

Back at the competition tent, the sheep are naked, the wool has been bagged and the teams are sprinting toward their wheels and looms. Two hours and fifty minutes to go.

This year, the competition is especially intense, with six teams — one more than usual — vying for best shawl in show. Each team has three “spinners,” who separate, clean and roll the tufts of wool before placing them on an old-fashioned wooden wheel, powered by the rhythmic pressing of their feet that are usually shoeless to provide more control.

“And it vibes to show off our hand-knit socks,” says Lauren Slingluff, a spinner whose team, the “Yankee Fiber Friends,” traveled from Connecticut to compete.

Cranking strands of yarn onto wooden bobbins while keeping the same thickness throughout is perhaps the teams’ trickiest task, says competition hostess Susan Withnell, owner of Ewes-ful Fiber Arts.

“It’s like baking a cake,” Withnell says. “You have to put in the precise amount of ingredients for it to come out consistently at the end.”

Teams also earn points for coming up with a creative theme to inspire the colors and patterns of their shawls. “Mutton But Trouble” chose the aurora borealis. “Spin City” chose orioles. The reigning champs, the “Fidget Spinners,” chose a monarch butterfly. Pre-dyed colorful threads are loaded onto the loom before the competition begins, ready for the new threads — all various colors of white, brown and gray, depending on the chosen sheep — to be carefully laced through.

“Spin like the wind!” calls the Fidget Spinners’ weaver, Pennsylvanian Linda Yniguez. Two hours to go.

“It’s meditative,” Yniguez says. “I don’t notice the crowd or what the other teams are doing.”

At this moment, one other team, “Sheep Lightning,” is feeding their weaver french fries. The group of high school students from Sandy Spring Friends School is dressed as the Pink Ladies from the movie “Grease.” They’ve kicked off their Converses and Crocs every week since September to practice pedaling for this day.

“You don’t really find people our age interested in making shawls on their Saturday,” says Maxine Ross, 15.

The team’s weaver, 17-year-old Zoe Burgess, has one headphone in, blaring Abba’s “Dancing Queen,” as she moves a wooden boat shuttle, which holds the new yarn, left to right, right to left.

One hour to go and now, it’s shear madness. Audience members are chanting. Bobbins are flying.

“One treadle pressed at the wrong time, and it will show up in the pattern. One thread in the wrong place, and it will show up in the pattern,” says Withnell, the host. “It has to be exactly right.”

With 35 minutes to go, Team “Alice in Fiberland” is the first to break out the scissors. Their members are all dressed as Lewis Carroll characters. After the last thread is clipped, their shawl is hoisted in the air as their spinner, costumed as the Queen of Hearts, yells “Off with their heads!” Their weaver, dressed in blue as Alice, finally takes a sip of water.

One by one, the shawls are completed, all with time to spare.

The judges break out their measuring tapes and clipboards. Shawls must be at least 70 inches in length. They must have a consistent width. They must have a certain “drapability.”

The teams pack up their supplies and massage their fingers, waiting for sheep to vacate the show ring where this year’s Sheep to Shawl winner will be announced.

Bleachers fill with fiber fans. The teams model their finished shawls. Then, Withnell takes the microphone.

“These shawls were on the back of a sheep as of 10 this morning,” she tells the crowd. “They all got them off the loom in time.”

After lamenting that there could be no six-way tie, she crowns a champion: the Fidget Spinners’ monarch butterfly shawl. Draped in orange and gray, the team’s weaver jumps in the air and accepts her blue ribbon.

Then it is time for the real show to begin.

“Let’s start at $100,” Withnell announces, auctioning off each shawl one by one.

Spectators shout out their bids, eager to get their hands on these one-of-a-kind wool creations.

After all of that fierce competition, they look especially warm and fuzzy.

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Wool goes from sheep to shawl at a beloved Maryland festival