Sheep & Shawl

08/05/2026

Please watch.

08/04/2026

Hope to see you in Sunderland!

Hi Everyone! This is a reminder that our monthly Community Crafting Night is coming up next Monday August 10th, 2026 from 6:00-7:45 pm at the Sunderland Public Library in Sunderland, MA.

Bring your portable works in progress and join us for a casual evening of chatting, sharing, making, and mending things together.

20 School Street, Sunderland, Massachusetts 01375.

Hope to see you there!

08/04/2026

Hope to see you there!

Hi Everyone! This is a reminder that our monthly Community Crafting Night is coming up next Monday August 10th, 2026 from 6:00-7:45 pm at the Sunderland Public Library in Sunderland, MA.

Bring your portable works in progress and join us for a casual evening of chatting, sharing, making, and mending things together.

20 School Street, Sunderland, Massachusetts 01375.

Hope to see you there!

08/01/2026

Festival tickets are now available for purchase online. No hurry! There's no deadline and no limit on tickets sales.

Adults tickets are $10 ($12 at the gate), children under 12 are $5 and toddlers are free.

Please be sure to download the ticket PDF to the device you will have at the festival. Better yet - print it out. That will help if we have any Wi-Fi problems at the gate.

See you in October!

https://vtsheepandwoolfest.com/festival-tickets/

07/30/2026

Love this!

For generations, some of the world's brightest mathematicians were trying to explain a shape that almost seemed to defy reality. Hyperbolic geometry—where space curves away from itself like ruffled lettuce or coral—was notoriously difficult to visualize. Professors folded paper, sliced models from cardboard, and carefully assembled delicate constructions that often tore apart before a semester was over. It was one of mathematics' most frustrating teaching problems.

The breakthrough didn't come from a laboratory. It came with a crochet hook.

In 1997, Latvian mathematician Daina Taimina was searching for a better way to teach her students when she noticed something unexpected. By adding stitches at regular intervals while crocheting, the fabric refused to stay flat. Instead, it rippled and curled into the very shape mathematicians had struggled for decades to demonstrate.

It looked almost too simple to be taken seriously.

Some colleagues initially assumed the colorful yarn models were little more than clever crafts. But the mathematics was exact. Every carefully placed increase produced an authentic hyperbolic surface—one that students could hold, bend, and examine from every angle without destroying it. Suddenly, an abstract concept that had baffled generations became something you could pass around a classroom.

The idea spread far beyond mathematics departments. Scientists used the models to explain everything from coral reefs and sea slugs to the folds of kale leaves and certain biological structures found in nature. Artists embraced the unexpected beauty of the forms, while educators around the world abandoned fragile paper models in favor of crocheted ones that lasted for years.

Perhaps the most remarkable part of the story is that one of the most elegant advances in teaching advanced mathematics didn't require a supercomputer or expensive technology. It required recognizing that an ancient textile craft could solve a modern mathematical problem—a reminder that breakthroughs sometimes appear where no one thinks to look, until someone is willing to see them differently.

07/18/2026

Increase stitches !

07/13/2026

So sad and unconscionable.

07/12/2026

Monday the 13th - hope to see you there!

Hey Everyone! Our Summer Quarterly Meeting is coming up next Monday evening, July 13, 2026. And you're invited!

We're combining our monthly community craft night meet-up with our quarterly meeting. Our skill share topic will be natural dyeing. We'll we talking specifically about how to identify local plants for dyeing, both common garden plants that you might already be growing and commonly found plants that you can gather here in Western MA.

Where:
Sunderland Public Library
20 School St.
Sunderland, MA

When:
6pm-7:45pm (the library closes at 8pm and staff need time to close up)

The library is located near the intersection of Route 116 and Route 47 by the Sunderland bridge.

As always, please bring your works in progress, be it spinning, hand-stitching, mending, knitting, crochet, or other portable project.

We hope you can come, and bring a friend, too!

Questions? Email us at [email protected]