Going to a big fiber fest as a shopper and as a worker
This weekend was the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival (MDSW), which is certainly the largest in my particular geographic region. It’s one I’ve been to many years in a row, but as an employee, while I working at the yarn company.
Here’s how we’d prepare for such a big event: About 2-3 months prior I would take an inventory of all on-hand skeins and earmark a certain amount to pack and take to the booth. Whatever we needed more of, I’d add to the dye queue. The amounts would be decided on the popularity of the colorway or the base, what colors and bases we had of the most eye-catching samples we had, and what the hot designs were. As the date drew closer we’d go into super-production mode, a flurry of winding, dyeing, twisting skeins. About a week out, we’d start gathering display fixtures, register parts, equipment, and fiddly little needs like pens, tape, clothespins, hooks. During this time I’d reconfigure the point-of-sale UI for max checkout efficiency and to add any new merch. Then it was time to load the truck.
Load-up and load-in days are always the hottest day of the month. At least, they always feel that way. After getting everything in and out of the truck I would be drenched in sweat and my heart rate would be through the roof. I would be cursing myself for not preparing with more cardio. And I always forgot something. I developed a superstition that if I was always going to leave something behind, I should add an extra innocuous, unimportant thing to the packing list cursed to be the Forgotten Item, like a scapegoat carrying my absent-mindedness into the desert.
I found many parts of this preparation grueling and mentally challenging. A lot of the responsibility came down to me, and not necessarily because I was capable. Years ago I got hired, and I learned the ropes, then other people left the business over the years, and suddenly I was the senior employee and default manager. I thought, and I told the owner, that managing was something I could do – I was wrong. I thought “if not me, who?” which is not a good mindset to predicate your professional decisions on.
Despite the mistakes and self-doubt I felt before these big yarn events, I was always excited for them. I was really good at talking to customers, getting them what they needed, and being interested in their projects. I love talking about yarn, which made this more bearable than my other retail jobs. Once the show started I was in my element – helpful without slimily upselling, available without being annoyingly clingy.
And the weekend would end, and we’d do everything in reverse. I’d take stock of everything while unpacking, compare it to our original inventory, produce sales data, and reorganize the workspace for a week or two until our workspace no longer looked like an earthquake had hit. And then it would be time to prepare for the next show.
This weekend, I attended MSW as a plain ol’ attendee for the first time in nearly decade. I made sure to mosey as much as possible. I wove in and out of the barns to see the sheep and goats, especially the Valais Blacknoses, this year’s featured breed. I blurbed random facts and insider knowledge to my partner, who is not a fiber crafter but is usually up for a chill day trip (and as a coffee aficionado, appreciates a well-turned ceramic mug, and MSW has plenty of talented ceramicist vendors). I stood in line for $10 lemonade because there’s nothing like fresh-squeezed fairground lemonade, and didn’t have to worry about getting back before my lunch break ended.
MDSW-goers know that weekend is either pouring down rain or hot as hell; this year was the latter. I thought we would be spared with some cloud cover, but by the time we were looking for lunch in the shadeless asphalt strip where the food vendors (and their seething grills) are located, the sun was out in full force. I was only able to keep on my Mizzoni top for about 45 minutes before I had to cry uncle and go down to just a t-shirt.
Heat aside, it was tremendous to simply wander the grounds with no agenda, other than the list I had made with the few vendors I wanted to make a point to visit.
Notable stops include Plied Yarns, who always has a stellar booth with fabulous samples. Like Yarn Hero, who I mentioned in my Frederick Fiber Fest post, Plied is a great place to find test colors, discounted mill ends, and tiny amounts of yarn. They even offer bundles of bobbins in little packs like watercolor palettes, a great option for fans of Fair Isle and other precision colorwork styles. I also got buttons for my Bookkeeper Cardigan from Haulin’ Hoof Farm Store and a shawl pin from Tinkers Hollow, whose geometric take on the classic pennanular brooch design is a very cool modernization. I’ve been wanting one of these for a while because as much as I like wearing my shawls, I hate when they slip off my neck.
Last, I always like to visit new vendors at shows to support the investment they’ve made and hopefully prove to festival organizers that they should return. Among these was Heron’s Llŷn Farm, who offers naturally dyed, handspun yarn. The skeins are labeled both with the natural dyed used for the color and the names of the sheep whose wool was used. The owner was in the booth with a livestream of her barn to make sure none of her flock were lambing without her. I joked it was to make sure they weren’t throwing wild parties while she was out of town. I picked up two squishy skeins of handspun worsted, dyed deep purple with madder root and iron.
Never been to a fiber festival and thinking of going? I highly encourage it! Maryland Sheep & Wool is one of the largest in the US, but there are dozens of similar events happening around the country for most of the year, typically in the summer and early autumn. This blog post lists many in the US and this page lists global and virtual events (shout out to this reddit thread for the links). My tips: Go early to beat traffic, stay hydrated, check food vendors to make sure there are options for your diet, and don’t be a Karen*. Everyone is working too hard for that.
*in this house Karen is a gender-neutral term and also applies to the non-knitters, mostly men, who mope around and make jabs about how much money their spouses, typically their wives, are spending on yarn. No one thinks this is funny, the sales associate is not laughing with you, what goddamn century is it.
Smitty is Knitting 