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We survived another Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival in the Pygora Palace! Note the foggy morning sky….brrrrr!
The featured breed was the Pygora goat and Chris Utterback made the neatest display for the fiber arts area - showcasing the goat and the fiber/yarns/finished garments.
It was a bittersweet year for us Pygora folk - we lost some of our own this past year - and there were memorial display cases that were a bit difficult to look at. This year, Kristi Gustafson had many new helpers to keep the fiber arts competition going, but there were several errors (heck, I had the skein competition diamond award for an entire hour!). I want to thank Kristi for hanging in there during what must’ve been a very difficult time.
Then there was the memorial case for Sally McCarrick. Sally was great! She taught me alot about carding Pygora fiber. I wish I’d met Sal years ago! Sally did so much to promote Pygora fiber in the spinning community - we owe her a great deal. Sally was a blast and we had much fun at a few NwRSA conferences - especially the last one in Tacoma. Ha. It was very difficult to look at the display.
I went looking for my skeins - already knowing I had lost, yet once again, to Sarah Anderson who is the most talented spinner I know. And yes, I was correct! She had placed 1st and 2nd to my 3rd and 4th in the professional/advanced category. Her other skein placed 5th - so I guess I beat her there. However, neither of us won the coveted diamond award! I looked at the other skeins, but I couldn’t find the skein that I felt was my best effort. It was a small, gossamer-weight skein of Pygora fiber and I couldn’t find it anywhere.
Then I looked up and saw a special panel - there was my skein! I almost lost it right there and then. My skein had this huge rosette ribbon on it - the Sally McCarrick memorial award for the best Pygora skein of the show. What an honor. I was completely unprepared for that. And I was totally unprepared for the presentation that followed - in the Pygora goat show ring - in the middle of the sanctioned show - by Blake and Chelsea McCarrick. While I understood this to be theraputic for them, it was extremely difficult to maintain my composure in front of all my Pygora goatie friends. Sheesh that was difficult.
On a lighter note - the show was once again a smashing success! We had our plush Pygora scarf, graciously donated to us by Carol Rhoades, for our booth! Saturday was a madhouse and I was a blithering idiot by the end of the day. It was great to see a bunch of my knitting buddies stop by - I hope I visited well enough - it was just danged busy.
The calm before the storm…
As much work at OFFF is, I wish it were just a bit longer because I don’t feel like I got to visit with anyone very well or peruse booths very closely. It was, once again, a blur. I want to thank everyone who stopped by to visit and shop and just say hello! I will post the other OFFF photos in my next post, gotta go feed those goaties!
Terry
Well, ok, so I’m typing this - that means the palace hasn’t left quite yet….a few minutes to go! And those who know us are probably laughing because: palace = pickup camper! But at least it’s not a tent!! We are headed down the road to Clackamas County fairgrounds in Canby, OR - to the Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival!
This is the neatest festival - started by Pygora people and has the largest sanctioned Pygora goat show in the world! If you’re headed to OFFF, please stop by and say hi! We’ll be on the porch.
It’s also (for us) the second time during the year that our group, fondly referred to as the “Wild Goat Women” congregate and enjoy their fun stories, fibers and laughs.
Be back on Monday!!! Wheeee!!!!!
Two reasons to be happy!
I received a very nice email from the other business regarding the web image useage. She was very nice and said she’d remove our image. Happy ending there!
And - uh - pick me up off the floor……(!) Carol Rhoades is sending us that scarf she knitted out of her handspun Pygora! Holy cow! We really hope to have it by OFFF!!!!!
Some of you who actually read this thing know about Molly, our pet deer (courtesy of WA State F&G). I’m here to report that Molly is still alive and well. We sincerely wish she (and her offspring) would quit taking shortcuts through our backyard - the one across our deck - in the middle of the night. Holy crap is that a scary noise - really . freakin’ . scary.
They graced us with their presence this evening… yeah, all FOUR of them!
Gary asked what I was taking pictures of.
Me: Molly and her family.
G: Oh, where did they go?
Me: up the driveway….
G: they aren’t near the mailbox are they?
Me: uh, yeah….
G: (on a mission)
We’ve been through this all summer and after round 1 going to Molly and her family, I think Gary has won the rest of the rounds. With the the goodies in the woods for those deer to be munching on, they don’t really need to be eating these…
Ok, so there are a few nibbled plants, but overall they are in great shape and are so pretty! Gary grew these for me, not for Molly!!
I’ve learned much this weekend about web images. Specifically business website images. I hadn’t focused on this much in the past, because quite frankly the handspinning market is not huge and most spinners are very respectful of one another. Well, ok, maybe not all are….
We post our business images on a remotely-located server that we pay for. Google bots can trawl for your webpages and images. If you search for something at http://images.google.com/ you can get pages upon pages of people’s photos. Are these fair game for others to use? No, they are not. Google even states this on their page http://images.google.com/help/faq_images.html , “The images identified by the Google Image Search service may be protected by copyrights. Although you can locate and access the images through our service, we cannot grant you any rights to use them for any purpose other than viewing them on the web. Accordingly, if you would like to use any images you have found through our service, we advise you to contact the site owner to obtain the requisite permissions.”
So if someone is selling the same product you are, and they are using an image of yours, conveniently acquired using Google images, without asking your permission…they are violating copyright law.
So what can you do? First you an ask nicely and hope they respond. Not all will. If you persist with your request, they may eventually respond and I’ll warn you - it won’t be pleasant, but you should be diligent in protecting your work.
You can place a block on your website images using a robot.txt file. If interested, please shoot me an email, or just Google “robot.txt”. Very handy little file.
What do you do if they insist on leaving your photo on their “copyrighted” website? You have another option which won’t be pleasant for them. But heck, if you’ve asked nicely, then elevated to stronger requests without any action, then you can file a DMCA complaint. You can read more about that here http://www.marketingdock.com/copyrights/dealing-with-copyright-infringement.php
I really never thought I would have to delve in this deep, and maybe some will disagree. However, business is business and if you are ok with a competitor selling their product with your image, then your business strategy is different than ours.
I’m a busy person - I work approx 55 hrs a week at my “day job” and fit my fiber time in during the evening hours.
I work in a production-oriented business, so I’m very aware of being highly efficient - squeezing in all I can. My job is to design efficient control systems.
I guess it was inevitable that my efficiency-focused mind would scrutinize my fiber dyeing process at home with that same critical eye and I couldn’t help myself in efforts to improve its efficiency. It started out so well - my dyeing output soared. I was happy - I told Susan about how danged efficient my little system is and how much fiber I was getting dyed during the work week!
Then it happened - my brain dropped the ball. I forgot to turn OFF the dyepot sitting out in my greenhouse. I don’t have nice automation controls at home like I do at work - so the human factor in my home system is high.
The bad news? I can’t sell that batch of dyed fiber. The good news? I’m ready for Christmas as I now have a nice felted wool wreath! Multi-tasking is highly overrated!!!
P.S. Susan did try said method - and it works, but her modification involved placing approx 20 sticky notes throughout her house (she even confessed to placing one on her cereal box!). Normally I would find that funny - but I’m the one with the wool wreath!
Terry
I’m spinning/knitting some Pygora fiber for a friend of mine. The fiber is from a special goat. I wanted to attempt gossamer weight. The fiber and prep allowed for extremely fine spinning. I ended up with a two ply that I’m happy with. My problem? I can’t see it well enough to knit very well. Arrrgh! Actually, the problem MAY be that Terry needs to go back to the eye doctor….(sorry for crappy photo - was at work at lunch and using my phone, I did remember to include a dime for scale).
Yeah, those are size 0 needles. Yikes!