Winter Wool Festival explores natural fibers’ origins, uses
Winter Wool Festival explores natural fibers’ origins, uses
Go to the source and learn about the use of natural fibers and where they come from during the Winter Wool Festival.
The event, which takes place on Saturday, Feb. 24, at the Heritage Farm in the ABQ BioPark Botanic Garden, will showcase plant and animal fibers. There also will be a children’s craft station, and the Red Light Ramblers will entertain from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“We should have called it a Fiber Festival,” said Pamela Dupzyk, education coordinator at the ABQ BioPark Aquarium and Botanic Garden. “We’re not just talking about wool. We’re talking about all the other animals and plants that contribute to making fibers we wear and make as cloth.”
Some stars of the festival include the Heritage Farm’s popular Navajo Churro sheep. The sheep, a Spanish breed, were originally named Churra. Their name changed somewhere along the way in America. The sheep can have up to six horns. Usually the sheep have four horns, with two pointing up and two pointing down or their horns are crooked. The Heritage Farm boasts two female sheep named Laverne and Shirley and a male named Kos.
“They were adopted by the Navajo,” Dupzyk said. “They love them because they come in white and rust and brown and black. They have this wool that comes in many colors that they don’t have to dye it.”
Festivalgoers will learn what is done with the wool once it is removed from the sheep.
“We have a station about them where you can see their wool and what happens to it once it comes off of them, how it is cleaned and samples of rugs and things people have woven from it,” Dupzyk said.
Local fiber weavers Las Arañas Spinners and Weavers Guild will do a demonstration on spinning. They have a loom and a table where people can learn about stick weaving, dyeing, and rope spinning, which Dupzyk said takes some skill.
A table focusing on plant fibers will help educate attendees on the uses of cotton, hemp, yucca, cattails and silk pods. Silk cloth is woven from the silk larvae of a moth, according to Dupzyk. The cocoons, without live moths, will be on display.
“It’s a moth that it comes from, the moth silk cocoons,” Dupzyk said. “They see what it looks like before you unravel it. Each cocoon is one thread. They drop the cocoons in boiling water and unwind one thread from a cocoon. It is a couple hundred yards and someone has to unwind it. It’s really strong.”