It's a little late but we are always running behind at the farm.  The Contest winner for the 2001 MegliFleece Challenge is Laurie Osborn... Yay Laurie!!  Here is a picture of her project...

Laurie's letter that accompanied her entry...

The "Sleeves in your Pi" shawl/sweater is a design from the Winter 2001 Knitters (k61), but I do not think that the pictures in the magazine actually do it justice.  My version is wheel-spun rather than spindle spun--a Border Leicester/Lincoln cross from MegliFleece, carded and spun long draw style (my maiden voyage into that particular strategy).  Spinning it that way made for a less dense yarn that made the most of its "hairiness".  Because it was a multicolored fleece, I ended up with 15 skeins of varying shades of gray (I numbered them from lightest to darkest to keep track), so I knit from lightest to darkest, center out:  I spun about 1500 yards of two-ply. as called for in the design, but the shawl only took about 1350.  The sleeve placement is created by knitting in waste yarn, transferring those stitches back to the right needle and knitting across with the "right yarn".  To make sure that the sleeves followed the same pattern of shading as the Pi part, I finished off the skein after the sleeve holder stitches and then went back to knit both sleeves from a couple of skeins of the same general shade.  Once I reached the same length as the shawl part, I began alternating rows with the darker skeins and followed the same procedure with both sleeves and shawl "body".  I used only the darkest skeins for the last rows and edgings.

Cheerfully submitted

Laurie Osborne

The fleece that Laurie used was Colored Border Leicester/Lincoln cross #D1 that scored 89 on the MegliFleece scoring system.

The Prize!

We sent Laurie the fleece Colored Rambouillet #DX21 with a score of 90!

We hope that you love the fleece Laurie, and we hope to see another winning project from you in the 2002 MegliFleece Challenge!!