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Some of the sheep are planning to go to the Michigan Fiber Festival in Allegan this August. You can find details at http://www.michiganfiberfestival.info/
The plan is to go 8/19 and spend the night. If you are interested, email Kathleen Hearne of Harriet Atlas [check you member roster].

Speaking of fiber, one of Kathleen's students wrote the following for school:

The scarf’s lasting lesson

One day Ms. Hearne decided to knit a scarf for her favorite niece as a wedding gift. Ms. Hearne woke up and decided that it was a great day to start this project. At 11am right after she had her normal breakfast of scrambled eggs and grits she went on a yarn crawl to find just the right yarn. She and her friends piled into the mini van where they traveled from store to store knitting, chatting, and finding the perfect yarn.

Before they started their adventure they needed to get gas in the car. Using MapQuest they calculated that the total distance of the yarn crawl would be 155 miles. The mini van got 16 miles per gallon so each of the 5 members had to contribute about 2 gallons of gas. At a price of $4.25 a gallon each member would chip in $ 8.50. At 1pm they arrived at a store called “Have Ewe Any Wool” where Ms. Hearne found just the right yarn for the job. It was perfect, thick, warm, and bulky enough to make it the thickness she wanted. She picked out the colors for the scarf: blue and pink, the same as the wedding’s colors. Ms. Hearne was so happy, she couldn’t wait to get the scarf started.

Ms. Hearne only had one problem: how large was she supposed to make it? She thought about it and couldn’t figure out how many rows and columns would be appropriate. Using her size 20mm needles and bulky yarn she knew that each stitch was about 1 in wide by l/2 inch in length. In order to solve the problem she had estimate how large it would be on herself. To do this she had to break out her math skills! She used her cloth tape measure and approximated the appropriate length and width the scarf would be. It had to be about 8 inches wide and 60inches long. So Ms. Hearne took out her calculator and multiplied 8x 1 so she knew to have 8 across. To find the rows she multiplied 1/2 x 60 so 120 rows were necessary. As a result the scarf turned out beautifully! Ms. Hearne packed her scarf in a nice box and added a bow on the top.

When her niece opened it she jumped for joy because she realized it was made with the Wollmeise Yarn that was hand dyed and imported from Germany! She thanked her aunt and wore it to the reception because she was so chilly in her strapless dress!

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