Judy's Spinning Blog

My adventures in Hand Spinning

Christmas Craft Show

My booth at the Originals Christmas Craft Show In Ottawa

I spent a very hectic ten days in December at the Originals Christmas Craft Show in Ottawa. There were several of us who worked together as part of the "Weaving Demo" area. I'm not a weaver, I guess they just forgot to put "Spinning" in the title.

The other people WERE weavers and had some lovely stuff for sale. We had two floor looms on the go and three spinning wheels. We had tons of space so customers were able to see how everything is made and try it out themselves. I demonstrated dyeing with KoolAid in a crock pot, drum and hand carding, and spinning with a wheel and drop spindle. I sold drop spindles, fibres for spinning, handspun yarn and knitted hats, mittens and scarves. One of my popular items was a kit to make a hat out of handspun dog fur.

Lacie at the craft show

People were absolutely AMAZED that I was spinning cat and dog fur. My friend Don brought his cat Lacie to the show twice to help with the demonstration. Lacie is a gorgeous long haired calico cat that Don adoped from the shelter. She was a very good girl and lay on the chair and ignored everyone. Lacie and her Persian sister Fluffy provided the fur for a warm hat that you can see on the left in the top shelf in the picture above. As a reward for her I took her down the aisle to the booth where they sell catnip mats and toys and got her a catnip toy to play with.

Two sisters were the highlight of my time at the sale. They wanted to learn to spin on a drop spindle. We spent a couple of fun hours together one afternoon and they seemed to really like spinning. Later on in the week they came back for more spinning. Finally, they came back another time and brought me a jar of delicious hot chocolate mix!

On the last day of the show we had a huge snowstorm. We couldn't leave the show until 6 pm when it officially closed but there were very few customers who had braved the storm to go out so we spent the afternoon talking with other vendors and trading our stuff for their stuff.