PLY Away 4 Scholarship Winner

PLY Away 4 has come and gone. As always we had an excellent time attending the show and classes, but our favorite part was getting to meet the winner of the scholarship that we sponsor! Each year we sponsor someone to attend PLY Away and this year L’ubica Noemi Kovacilova from Slovakia was the winner! She's on the right in the photo above with Perri. 

L'ubica should be a huge inspiration to the spinning community. After going through a divorce and needing to find a way to support her three sons she turned to the fiber arts. Fiber arts have always been in L'ubica's blood but she found a deepened passion for them while exploring them during a difficult time. L'ubica started spinning and never looked back. She has producing yarn and other handmade fiber goods for her business and learning everything she can about the art of spinning. All of L'ubica's references for the scholarship mentioned how much of a thirst for fiber knowledge she has so it is such a pleasure too give her the opportunity to come to PLY Away and absorb all the spinning knowledge she can!

During her fiber journey L'ubica started to think about her own local Slovakian sheep and how she didn't really hear about people using their wool for fiber arts. Looking further into it she realized that farmers didn't find it worth it to sell the wool from their sheep, that the sheep were raised for meat and the wool when shorn simply got burned or thrown away.  She decided she had a mission, to produce roving from local Slovakian Romney sheep. And she has succeeded in that mission! L'ubica was kind enough to share some of the roving she had made and it's just a joy to squish.

L'ubica has an excellent blog and lovely store (where you can get this roving!) on her  website that we encourage you to check out! Also her Instagram is full of inspiring photos to get your crafting mojo up! 

We look forward to seeing more of L'ubica's work in fiber arts in the future! And we're already looking forward to PLY Away 5 next year!