Maine
Maine club competes in all-day international wool challenge
BANGOR, Maine (WABI) – Mainely Spinners, a club that creates wool fiber art, spent all day Saturday competing in the 28th annual International Back to Back Wool Challenge.
The team started in the challenge five years ago, getting introduced by Stacey Wilson who competed on the San Diego team.
“The International Back to Back Wool Challenge was originally created to bring together farms in Australia. It was just a fun event, competing against each other seeing who could make a sweater faster,” explains Wilson.
The 8-person team must shear a sheep, spin its wool, and knit a sweater all in one day, competing head-to-head with teams from around the globe. Teams hailing from Australia, Canada, Japan, Norway, and more have participated in the event.
In the U.S., there are teams in Maine, California, and New Hampshire.
Along with wanting the fastest time, the international challenge also offers the Brigadoon trophy for the team who has raised the most money for their chosen cancer foundation.
“Last year and the year before, we raised the most amount of funds,” says Wilson about the Mainely Spinners.
This year, Mainely Spinners chose Sarah’s House of Maine, the “home away from home” for cancer patients undergoing treatment.
Donations are raised through their sweater raffle, silent auction, and over 100 items for sale, available both online and in-person.
One-year-old Squirrelly Dan from Orono’s Shepherdess of Black Sheep farm got his fresh spring haircut, providing the fleece for the team to use.
While the team was hard at work, students from College of the Atlantic stopped by to see the spinners in action. The students are currently taking a “Sheep and Shawl” class, which teaches them the process of creating wool garments.
With mentorship from the club, sophomore JouJou and her classmates got to take spinning for a spin themselves!
When she first got on the spinner, JouJou says it was “scary”, but the guidance quickly eased any worries: “With Barbara, she really felt welcoming and helping. We can do this together. You can mess up, it’s fine.”
After the demo, she ended up liking it so much that she said she plans on getting her own wheel!
“A lot of people don’t realize how important the fiber arts are, or even just making your own clothes what’s involved,” explains Wilson on the event’s significance. “A lot of people feel like it’s a lost art, and it really isn’t. It is so important for the fiber community and the wool industry to know that we’re still here, and we’re a growing industry and a lot of people just don’t realize that, so it’s important to get that word out. And the younger generations involved right at the beginning all the way to the end.”
The team set a new personal record on Saturday with a time of 10 hours and 36 minutes.
To learn more about Mainely Spinners, view the items up for auction or participate in the raffle, and even view their livestream to spectate on their journey through the challenge, head to their Facebook page.
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Posted inCommunity, News, Outdoors, Schools & Education
The group from Skowhegan Area High School’s outdoor leadership program built tables for the overlook in Dallas Plantation.
The loons are back and nesting on lakes statewide and we need your help to monitor their population! Every year since 1983, hundreds of volunteers have gone out to lakes and ponds across Maine on the third Saturday in July. These volunteers submit data about the number of loons they observe from 7 to 7:30 am, which gives us an excellent “snapshot” of the loon population. The Annual Loon Count allows us to monitor how the number of adults and chicks has changed over the past 40 years and make sure we know how to best protect their population!
This year, the Loon Count will take place on Saturday, July 18. We encourage you to join a group of over 1,800 volunteers and help us count the number of loons in Maine! The Loon Count occurs on lakes and ponds all across the state and volunteers can survey by boat or shore (you don’t have to have a boat to take part!).
If you’re interested in getting involved, please contact us at conserve@maineaudubon.org and tell us if there’s a specific lake or area you’d like to survey. We are always aiming to expand our coverage across the state and particularly encourage volunteers in northern Maine to get involved!
The deadline to sign up for the Annual Loon Count is July 10, so please reach out as soon as possible.
If you can’t make it on July 18, or if one day just isn’t enough for you, you can monitor loons throughout the summer.Through our Loon Pair Monitoring project, you can submit observations of breeding loon pairs over several months to help us better understand nest and chick success across Maine. Find out more here >
If talking to people and doing outreach appeals to you, and you’d like to help spread the word about loon conservation, check out our Look Out for Loons outreach program.
THOMASTON, Maine (WGME) — The Maine DEA says they arrested two people on Wednesday in connection with drug trafficking out of Vinalhaven.
Mariah Grover, 22, and Jefferson Jazzir Arias, 27, were reportedly arrested following an investigation by the Maine DEA’s Mid-Coast Task Force and the Knox County Sheriff’s Office into suspected drug trafficking from the island of Vinalhaven to Rockland via ferry.
Jefferson Jazzir Arias (Courtesy of Knox County Jail)
Both Grover, a resident of Texas and Maine, and Arias, a resident of Texas and California, were pulled over by authorities in Thomaston in a car that had been identified in that investigation, according to the Maine DEA.
The Maine DEA says a search of the car found 66 grams of suspected cocaine, a .45 caliber handgun, $9,500 in suspected drug money, and other “items indicative of drug trafficking.”
Mariah Grover (Courtesy of Knox County Jail)
Authorities say Arias had two extraditable warrants related to robbery in California and theft in Texas. Arias was reportedly charged with aggravated trafficking in Schedule W drugs, and Grover was charged with unlawful trafficking in Schedule W drugs.
Grover was reportedly taken to Knox County Jail on a $50,000 cash bail and will make a court appearance on May 29th.
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Arias was also taken to Knox County Jail on a $75,000 cash bail and will make a court appearance on the same day, according to authorities.
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