Sheep to Shawl an A&P first

An entertaining, warm, and woolly first took place at the Nelson A&P Show as two teams of talented women competed in the ‘Sheep to Shawl’ challenge.

Sheep to Shawl consists of a sheep being shorn before teams made up of spinners and weavers have only hours to spin the wool into yarn, and then weave that yarn into an award-winning shawl.

“The sheep was shorn by Dave Baigent at 9am on the dot, the fleece was split in half for the two teams and the spinners got really stuck into it and had some wool ready for us to start weaving with by 9.40am,” Richmond Creative Fibre Group president and competing member Janie Hall explains.

Janie says, there was so much unexpected interest that it was tricky to concentrate on spinning and weaving while answering questions.

“The questions were great and helped keep the spinning and weaving skill alive.”

The teams finished within 10 minutes of each other.

A judge assessed, and awarded points, for the spinning, weaving and finished shawl. The winning team won by only two points.

Kerry Irvine, Nelson’s Federated Farmers Meat and Fibre chair announced the winning team.

“It was great to bring some visibility to wool, which is an environmentally positive fibre with so many benefits; it’s natural, renewable, biodegradable, recyclable and sustainable, and that’s not even scratching the surface,” Kerry says.

“Compared to synthetic materials, it’s a very quick decomposer and when decomposing it releases valuable nutrients back into the earth.”

While Janie wasn’t part of the winning team, she says it was a real buzz to do something different which gained a lot of interest.

“It was absolutely exhausting, but so much fun. We were all on a high when we finished, it was real buzz.”