Northwest Pennsylvania Spinners and Weavers Guild worked with Camp Stone, an Orthodox Jewish summer camp, to introduce 680 campers to an array of fiber arts. 

Recycling plastic bags by knitting them into totes is one of the latest projects of the Staten Island Handspinners & Weavers Guild (New York). Directions for creating them were in a recent newsletter. This interest coincided with the hyperbolic crocheted reef in the NYU Window Exhibits which featured Bleached Reef, the Branched Anemone Garden, and the Ladies Silurian Reef. An additional exhibit in the World Financial Center featured a yarn-and-plastic extravaganza Toxic Reef, used plastic shopping bags in the Rubbish Vortex, hyperbolic octopi, and plastic jellyfish forms. In April, members took part in their annual “Shear Madness” day at the zoo. The public witnessed a shearing demonstration of the Shetland sheep who reside there, then watched as prepared fiber was spun and knitted into useful items. All the zoo fleeces were given to the Guild, who later held a skirting party before sending them in for processing.

In conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Festival in South Dakota, a Fleece to Shawl contest was held this July. The Crossthreads Fiber Works Guild competed against a guild forming in the North Country Watertown area. The use of locally grown natural fiber was encouraged and examples of the raw fiber were on display with the team. Prior to the event, the fleece could be washed and dyed but unprocessed further—in other words, not teased, carded, or picked. Fulling instructions for the shawls were included when they were picked up for judging. Teamwork, design, quality and uniformity of spun yarns formed part of the award criteria.