SNPDC Minutes 10-20-08

SNPDC Minutes 10-20-08

The meeting began at 7:10 P.M. Eastern Time on Monday, October 20, 2008.

Attendees were Holli Cox, Christine Perala Gardiner, Peggy Broz, Susan Simonton, Donna Rudd, and Claudia Raessler. Ann Mayes was on only briefly.

Claudia had just come back from the New York Sheep and Wool Festival and was able to report that it was a huge success. The crowd was estimated at about 40,000 over two days, so the aisles were packed at all times. Our booth received a healthy number of visitors, ranging from people who knew nothing about alpacas, to high-end knitters, to spinners. They handed out a number of baggies with suri roving and with business cards directing people to farms that donated fiber for the roving. Claudia thought it worked very well to have a couple of suris on hand and then show people the fiber, roving, spun yarn, and end products – they could see the whole process, and they could see the difference between a suri and a huacaya (which was in the next booth over). Claudia suggested that for next year, if we have spinning mentors again that are not suri owners, that we have a “pre-call” to bring everyone up to speed on the animals, the difference between the two breed fibers, etc. This time around, some of the spinners were not able to answer such questions on their own. Claudia also mentioned that there was a strong interest from visitors in purchasing goods and thought we should consider this for next year. As we had previously had in-depth discussions about this and decided for the time being to act strictly as an educational booth, this topic was tabled. However, it is one that should be re-visited in the future.

We discussed putting together educational sorting classes for the membership. Donna Rudd offered up the idea of doing a seminar in conjunction with the seminars on classing animals. The overall thought from the committee was that this was a good idea and that it would be worthwhile to link the concept of classing with the concept of commercial fiber production. In expectation of this discussion, Liz Vahlkamp contacted Susan Tellez (who is heading up the effort to put a classing system in place) about this topic prior to the meeting, and Susan is supportive of this concept, which was mentioned at this meeting. The idea was tossed out that perhaps the SNPDC members could each host one of these seminars, given the geographic diversity within our committee. Additionally, because Mary Lou Clingan’s trip to Peru was financially supported by the SN, we discussed the possibility of having her lead the sorting portion of this seminar. The committee was generally supportive of this. The discussion was concluded with Liz volunteering to get back with Susan Tellez and get more details about the classing seminars so we could co-ordinate going forward.

We discussed the idea of an on-line library for the membership. Two committee members, Donna Rudd and Susan Simonton, both have a good deal of research materials gathered, and each volunteered to put their lists together and gather additional information that is available in the public domain. This information will be put on the on-line library once it is organized. Susan is going to also contact Bill Vonderhaar of the SN Research Committee to talk with him about making this library a joint effort. We will also have other articles in the library re: practical aspects of fiber.

We talked about how we want to fold in the processors (mills and co-ops) to our efforts and eventually give them an in-depth survey to complete which Donna Rudd has put together. It was decided that Peggy Broz would call each of the processors on our list and ask them if we could have their e-mail address so that we could send them articles and other information that we are using to educate the membership.

Holli Cox updated everyone on the blog. Everyone was encouraged to write topics for the blog. It was decided that Holli would gather the information from everyone for the first couple of months and post it. After a couple of months, we will review and then decide if we want all SNPDC members to have access to write directly. We also decided that it would be OK to post things more frequently than once a month.

Susan Simonton gave an update on the pattern initiative. We are going to start with three, basic patterns using 100% suri fiber. The patterns will be for hats and scarves and will be geared towards alpaca farm stores. These are patterns that are in the public domain, but Susan will adjust them for suri, write out the patterns, and we will secure photos and offer them in three different colors each.

Everyone was given a homework assignment to read the Fibre Harvesting Code of Practice from both Canada and Australia. This will be an important initiative for us – putting together such a code of practice for the U.S. We will discuss this topic further at the next meeting.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:30 P.M. Eastern Time.