HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — Chris Herr tells the story of a five-person sheep-to-shawl team he was part of 30 years ago called the Wool Wizards. They were competing in a
Pennsylvania Farm Show
that went next-level when his elderly teammate lunged at their rivals in the heat of the competition.
A sheep-to-shawl team is made up of five members that consist of a shearer, three spinners, and one weaver. In the competition, each team has 2 1/2 hours to shear a sheep, spin the wool, and make a shawl. The judges then assess the shearing, fleece condition, the quality of the spinning, and then the weaving and the design.
WHO IN AMERICA IS BOWLING ALONE?
“You all compete to shear a sheep, spin the fleece, and weave it into a shawl. My job at the time was to shear the sheep, then get out of everyone’s way,” Herr explained. As he withdrew, Herr saw Mary Hubler, whom he described as petite, dressed in a granny outfit, and well into her ’70s disappear into a cloud of dust during the popular competition. “She was heading straight for one of our rivals to do who knows what. The next thing we know, she was being pulled off of her.”
Tom Knisely, who was also part of Herr’s team, still cannot unsee that moment. “At the time, I was 20 years old, and I was brought onto the team as the weaver, and I’m seeing this old lady go crazy, and I thought, ‘Maybe it is time to step out of competing in this field,’” he said.
Both men laugh at the moment now, but 30 years ago, it was a big deal.
Knisely was at the Pennsylvania Farm Show, the largest indoor agricultural event held in the United States. As the coordinator of the sheep-to-shawl events, he was walking around the juvenile competition as each of the five teams, made up of young people age 12-18, worked diligently to win the competition; later that day, the adults held their competition.
This event is the rodeo in farm world; there are no empty seats in the arena, nor is there any elbow room along the gates that surround the event, and every news organization in the state is covering it. “It can be a pretty intense shearing, spinning, weaving process, but at the end of the competition, there are some breathtaking shawls for people to bid on,” Knisely explained.
“They can go upwards of $3,000, with the winnings going back to the teams,” he said.
Knisely is a joyful, witty, humble soul; as he walked around the arena observing the young competitors with his clipboard, few realized he is a world-renowned weaver whose reputation and love of textiles drew people from around the world to learn from him in his hometown in York County.
The 65-year-old said he’s been spinning and weaving since he was a child. “I grew up on a regular agricultural farm. My father was actually a butcher by trade, but we lived on a little farm in Lewisberry, Pennsylvania,” he said. “But because my parents were always interested in history, I got drug to antique shows, and I was told about history and why people used the things they did back then.”
It was on one of those antiquing trips that Knisely saw his first spinning wheel. He was 13 years old, and he said he wanted to know how it functioned. “I had no idea how it worked, and I wanted to understand the mechanics of making the thread, then what I would do next with the thread,” he said.
He quickly convinced his parents to buy it for him, but that wasn’t enough for the creative and curious teenager; he now wanted to make it work.
Not far from home was this place called Mannings Hand-Weaving School & Supply Center. When he could get his parents to take him there, he would buy wool to take it home to spin. “I kept looking at all these weaves and thinking, someday, this is what I want to do, never knowing that I would eventually spend 38 years working six days a week for them,” he said.
It was at Mannings that Knisely saw firsthand the craftsmanship he had only read about in his beloved Foxfire books — stories that detailed farmers raising sheep, then spinning the wool and weaving their own clothing. He bought his first loom there, learned to weave there, and would eventually teach it to others from around the globe.
He’s also written half a dozen books, including children’s books, centered on weaving.
A few years ago, when Mannings closed its studio and school, Knisely and his daughter Sara Bixler, also an accomplished weaver, started their own studio in York County. The Red Stone Glen Fiber Arts Center is now considered the premier weaving studio in the country, if not the world.
“We’ve been doing that for now, seven years,” he said. “It’s a full-scale weaving studio where people come from all over the country, including countries like Scotland, Ireland, Israel.”
Knisely said at 65, he has seen some of his students grow up, marry, and have children of their own, who then become a fresh new generation of artisans who come to him to learn how to hone the craftsmanship and creativity to make their own clothing or bedding.
Many of his students have also gone on to compete in and win the annual Sheep-to-Shawl contest both as juveniles and as adults.
“People have this idea of what they envision what the agriculture community is, and I think, often through lack of their stories being told correctly, their ideas are often missing a lot of important elements,” he said. “Like the stories in the Foxfire books, nothing is wasted, everything is used, everything, everything has purpose.”
Looking around at the work done by the young people that day, what they were doing there was nothing short of a master class in American exceptionalism. Everyone was working as a team; everyone had purpose in producing something remarkable. And as the crowds cheered them on with the same intensity as at a Monday Night Football game, it was hard to leave that arena and not realize that the very things that make us great in this country are still very much alive.
