Western Mass Fiber Shed pop-up shop, the pillows I long for, and a brief Germany update

Perusing my Instagram feed this morning I came across two posts that immediately made me wish I was home. Re-posting them here for the folks who may not be on Instagram.

First, Western Mass Fibershed is having a pop up

In case the image isn’t loading correctly, the pop-up is at Swanson's Fabrics on Saturday April 17 from 11-2. On offer, locally produced wool fabrics in three fabrics and two-ply knitting yarns, all produced, spun, and woven locally. Contact email for questions, WesternMassFibershed@gmail.com

The Western Mass Fibershed had a table at Boston Farm & Fiber Festival last year (ah the before time) complete with samples of some of their woven goods (including a pair of very stylish fabric covered heeled oxfords!) and I have been longing to get my hands on some ever since.

Also on my Instagram feed, pillows from Full Circle Wool.

My neck, weirdly crunched from sleeping on IKEA pillows, longs for one of these.

Someday.

In Germany news, we have moved into our new long term apartment. We now live on the 4rth floor of a five story apartment block built in 1982. The attic is a “drying room” where everyone hangs their clotheslines. There are also communal clothesline in a small green space in front of the building. I hung our first batch of laundry yesterday. It was not a very neatly hung collection of tea towels and bath towels, and I was expecting a stern talking to for hanging out such messy washing from one of the older ladies. I think I did get scolded by a stern older lady the other day for accidentally biking back from the grocery store without my bike helmet. It’s that sort of place.

And just across the river, there are sheep! I am trying to work up the courage (and the German) to leave a note for the farmer inquiring about fleece, or the fiber community here.

I'm a wool sponge convert

Really I want to write about how much I love these wool sponges from Full Circle Wool, because they are genius and do an excellent job of cleaning dishes, but somehow in my head a post about these sponges has morphed into a long complicated essay about the overwhelming nature of the problem of climate change and how the idea that the responsibility for fixing it lies in our everyday choices is actually malarky invented by a PR firm working for BP as a distraction (because it was, and it worked).

But I don’t have the heart to write that essay at the moment, so let’s move away from the idea that converting to wool sponges made from the fleece of well managed flocks of sheep will save the world (though in a butterfly effect kind of way it won’t hurt).

You should convert to these sponges, really just thick pieces of felt, because they are really good at being sponges: they clean dishes and counters without crumbling into little sponge nuggets or developing that rank sponge smell, and then when you are done you leave them to dry and never have to give them another thought. The felt is made from coarser fleece, and so while they feel fairly soft they are also better at scouring than the plastic scrubby part of a conventional sponge without having to worry about scratching. And they are durable. We were wearing out a conventional sponge every two weeks or so, but our current wool sponge has been undergoing the same sort of use since August and is still going strong. And when it finally wears out we can compost it, or put it at the bottom of a houseplant pot.

They felt smaller with use, but the corners and edges remain the perfect tool for cleaning the funk out of travel mug gaskets.

Theses sponges are also a perfect example of the utility of the full range wool that different breeds of sheep produce. Look through any good book about sheep or fleece and you will come across a range of different ways that wool was used once upon a time; from the expected range of clothing, rugs, and blankets to the less remembered mattress stuffing and sailcloth (where wool has been superseded by plastic fibers and foams). As a strong supporter of “strong fleeces”, I really appreciate being able to replace something I loathe (plastic) with natural, renewable, carbon beneficial fiber that is often considered (these days) to be waste.

Even in you have no interest in the sponges, you should go to the Full Circle Wool website anyway. She has created an amazing, educational website with lots of information about Climate Beneficial Wool. Also - these. I’ll take two please!

Vermont Sheep and Wool

The yarn travel deities smiled upon me, the stars and the autumn leaves finally aligned, and I was lucky enough to spend a Saturday noodling north through forests resplendent in their autumn finery to Tunbridge, Vermont for the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival. I varyingly listened to, and lost, seemingly all the New England NPR stations on offer as I wended through through old mill towns and over hills, past working dairy farms and unexpected remnants of manufacturing, admiring the vernacular architecture and lovely slate roofs along the way. The Toddler even slept through most of the drive (both ways!).

My visit to the festival itself was equally charmed, though much too brief. As usual I didn’t take nearly enough photos, but what few I did remember to take I posted to an Instagram Story, which I thought I would repeat here in a more permanent form, both as a reminder to myself and for those who might be interested.

This book looks fantastic and is one that I really want to add to my library (and also knit all the Selbu mittens!). Selbu Mittens, by Anne Bårdsgård

The Felting Studio continues to grow and every time I come across their booth I just want to loose myself in their felted hangings, as beautiful and intricate as a medieval stained glass window. My fingers itch to take up needle felting. Beyond the beautiful felt art, they have expanded their wares over the years, seemingly in any direction that takes their fancy, which is an urge I much support and admire. They are now producing the pattern for this lovely child’s jacket, and though I didn’t see any on display I must remember to ask if they are selling kits for it as well. I need to make this jacket. I just do.

I want to get in touch wth Steeple Chase Farm, in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire (pardon the lack of link, they don’t appear to have a website) both because they are actually very close to where I live, but also because they have a flock of heritage sheep, including Teeswater. I came away with this lovely sampler pack including some Jacob and - ? I’m embarrassed to admit that I can’t remember what the light gray is - a very lustrous longwool; Leicester? It was getting late in the day for the toddler at this point and a conversation I really wished to linger on was instead conducted while doing the toddler soothing bop - my apologies to everyone in that display barn on Saturday at around 3:00. I really want to pick up my drop spindle and feel these beauties drift through my fingers and let them be the yarn they want to become, but the part of me that prefers planning wants to wait to make sure I have a project in mind first. All my two minds can really agree on is that I need to get in touch with Steeple Chase Farm.

And of course there were a host of lovely, charming, animals with gorgeous fleeces who I really wanted to take home.

Along the way I ran into many yarn friends, admired much knitwear, ate some fantastic salted caramel ice cream, and generally had an inspiring day. So thank you to all the vendor and organizers and fiber enthusiasts at VT Sheep and Wool!

Wool sponges!

One of my favorite things about wool is how many uses it can to put to. A quick perusal of most books about sheep will result in a long list of things we used to use wool for before the invention of plastics and/or the shift towards enormous flocks of sheep far away from centers of population made lower value uses for excess wool unprofitable. Wool could be a comfy mattress or pillow stuffing (and people are starting to do this again). Wool can be insulation (another use that is coming back). Wool can be cordage and sails (I would love to see this in action).

Apparently wool also makes great sponges. Poking through my instagram feed this morning I came across a post by @ladysheepshearer memorializing her beloved wool sponge, finally worn through after several years of use and now on to the next use, “probably holding water in a plant pot”. The sponge in question was made by @stargrazers of Full Circle Wool in Petaluma, California who sells them in a pack of two on Etsy (July 2020 Update: They have moved off of Etsy and developed their own website; sponges now available at www.fullcirclewool.com, and they also make pillows!). They also wrote a wonderful article about the dance between sheep and shearer during the shearing process for Fibershed.com, Choreography and Skill: How Sheep are Sheared.

Now off to buy myself some wool sponges…

(Apologies for not reposting the original Instagram post I am referencing - such things are beyond my pre-caffeinated brain).

July 2020: post edited to update link to wool sponges

Jennifer Steingass on Fruity Knitting

I’m a bit behind in the world of podcasts (vlogcasts? hmmm…not the most mellifluous of words) and so am once again posting a recommendation that is a little out of date, but I finally got to watch Episode 74 of the Fruity Knitting podcast, which included an interview with the designer Jennifer Steingass.

The interview itself is well worth watching, but the part that I am selfishly excited about is that Jennifer is wearing her Arboreal sweater, which she designed and knit using Upton Yarns Bluefaced Leicester. And it looks great!

The interview starts at 54:13.

Elsewhere: morning newsfeed and echoes of my other life

Scrolling through my newsfeed this morning, first cup of coffee in hand. Came across the following stories (among many others, but these stood out):

A new species of whale has been discovered - which is just nuts. Anytime it feels like we’ve discovered it all and filmed it for iMax, just remember, we are still discovering new species of giant mammals. It’s also worth noting that this isn’t the only new species of whales that have been recently discovered. There was a new beaked whale in 2016, and there may be another new species in Antartica. Also in Antartica, a new (to science) type of killer whale.

On a far less good note, a cruise ship is experiencing my worst nightmare off the coast of Norway. The BBC posted cellphone video footage taken by passengers. The roll they take looks pretty scary because nothing is stowed for sea, but that much roll is also pretty normal underway in a storm. The actual problem is that the engines aren’t working and the ship was drifting towards rocks, but while the engineers are working madly to fix that, the hotel crew is no doubt working just as madly to keep unprepared passengers from getting hurt. The cruise ship industry has done such a good job building enormous floating hotels and marketing family vacations that people seem to have forgotten that they are going to sea. Ships seem so stable in flat water that it is impossible to imagine what they will be like if things get rough, and how difficult and exhausting and scary it can be to simply exist on a ship once it starts to roll. Compounding this is the effects of any sea sickness medications that people have taken. My heart goes out to the crew, and especially to the engineers.

And since my mostly yarn blog has been hijacked by whales and cruise ships this week:

A friend of mine (and former co-worker) is currently working on a research cruise aboard the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer to Thwaites Glacier. Also aboard, a writer for Rolling Stone. Articles here.

And I just happened to read a great article in the New York Times Magazine this weekend about an accident in Glacier Bay National Park. It’s actually a meditation on life and chaos and luck, but there is a whale and a Coast Guard rescue and it happened in a part of the world that I miss greatly.

And a weird connection to my first paragraph about recently discovered whale species; one of the very few skeletons of a beaked whale that we have, and the only know skeleton of a Baird’s beaked whale on display, can be found sitting out on the carpet of the second floor of the Glacier Bay Ranger station.

The world is a strange and wonderful place.

Blog recommendation: Whistling Girl Knits

I have been trying to find the words to explain how and why I love this post (hopefully to become a series) over a Whistling Girl Knits, but I keep coming up short.

Podcasts I adore : 99% Invisible, and a book recommendation

  The Podcast 99% Invisible as described on Stitcher:

“Design is everywhere in our lives, perhaps most importantly in the places where we’ve just stopped noticing.  99% Invisible is a weekly exploration of the process and power of design and architecture.”

As summaries go, this one is a bit dry, but it’s probably impossible to summarize the joy of a podcast devoted to delving into all the random elements of our world that are so taken for granted that most of us never even think to ask about how they came to be, if we notice their existence at all.

Last week’s episode, and the prompt that got me to finally write the recommendation that I’ve been meaning to write for years, was an interview with Kassia St. Clair, about her book The Secret Lives of Color.  The book is a collection of essays, each about a given color, from ones that I have previously never heard of (isebelline - a light dun) to the ubiquitous (a history of beige).  Sometimes she writes about the historical cultural associations of a color; sometimes she writes about the chemistry of a pigment or the history of its use.  Whatever she chooses to focus on, the results are fascinating.

Working with natural dyes (spending two to three days to produce a green yarn, never mind the time required for scouring and mordanting before dyeing, and rinsing and drying afterwards) has given me much time to meditate on how I, and most of the modern world, take the easy availability of color for granted.  The price of dyeing or coloring an item is so minimal relative to the cost of production, or so much considered to be part of the production process itself, that the cost and time required disappears entirely into the final price.  Dark blue items do not cost more than light blue items.  Undyed items are rarely cheaper (if they are available at all) than their dyed counterparts.  We still have strong cultural associations with different colors (national flags, sports teams, high school colors etc) but unless we work in specialized fields, we rarely think about what is required to produce the color in question, or how amazing it is that we can so easily create it.

So we forget how much the quest for color has changed human history.  As the host of 99% Invisible summarized in what has become one of my favorite quotes, our love of color is a “...real human pursuit: basically food, shelter, and the brightest color imaginable seem to be ingrained in our DNA”.  Or, as Kassia St. Clair puts it, “We love shiny bright colors and we are prepared to do all sorts of weird and wonderful things to have them.”

Listen to it here, or on your favorite podcasting service.

Wovember Day 1 - Wool

In which I am already a day behind. Sigh.  

For several years now I have seen the Wovember posts on my Instagram feed, celebrating all things wool and wool related.  I love reading about other people’s relationship to sheep, wool, and wool craft, and I love the writing prompts that make me examine my own relationship to wool, yarn, and sheep.  I’ve never actually done the actual writing part before though.  This is going to be the year!

 

Wool means too many things to me to encapsulate it all in an Instagram post.  To the archaeologist I meant to be, wool is probably the result of a random mutation in the genome of feral sheep and became one of the major (often overlooked) elements in the toolkit that got us to where we are today.  Wool is wealth and trade routes, an economically valuable crop that changed the landscape of Europe (literally, among other places, I‘m just most familiar with the European context).  Wool is a display of wealth and prestige, but also a utilitarian comfort.    Personally wool is a feeling of connection to the six or seven or eight millennia of wool workers, and also a feeling of home and safely. 

Which doesn’t really capture it all. Hmm. 

Anyway, my inner archaeologist found this fascinating paper about the history and development of wool, published on eTopoi:Journal for Ancient Studies.   The Textile Revolution. Reasearch into the Origin and Spread of Wool Production between the Near East and Central Europe

For the archaeology/history of wool production and craft I also reccomend many of the books by Elizabeth Wayland  Barber ,  Women’s Work- the First 20,000 Years especially.

A new use for sheep, and I'm knitting socks!

I am usually the last person to hear about things, so I suspect that the entire sheep-interested world has already heard about this, but I just found about it and I am ridiculously excited.

According to this article in the Washington Post (to name one, a quick Google search shows that many other news organizations also ran the story) the topography and lack of roads in the Faroe Islands make it impossible to photograph the islands for Google Street View using the normal cameras mounted on cars.  The folks at Google were just willing to let it go, but the Faroe Island tourism board very much wanted to add their islands to Google Street View, and so they strapped solar powered cameras to sheep. Which is honestly just the coolest solution.   (Although it actually turns out that sheep are generally too focussed on grazing and therefore move across a space too slowly to be much good at photographing an area - so most of the footage of the Faroes that is currently on Google Street View was actually taken by human hikers).

The Sheep View footage is available on the tourism board website, and a lot of it made it onto youtube.

On a more knitting related note, I have been longing to knit Kanoko Socks by Mary Jane Mucklestone, published in Making Magazine No. 3,  ever since I saw her wear them during the Wool Scout Retreat at Bradford Camp this August.   As usual, I got a little sidetracked and my knitting queue got in the way, but when MJ’s Instragram post came across my feed announcing that the pattern was being released for individual sale on Ravelry they immediately jumped to the head of the line.  I started knitting them a few days ago (using my Straw’s Farm Island Sheep fingering weight) and am thoroughly enjoying them.  The four rows of dots are charming in cream, but they would also be charming in different colors.  Yup, I’m plotting kits….

Fibertrek wool scout retreat

In addition to hosting a podcast (FiberTrek, available on iTunes) and facilitating the introduction of designers, crafters, and yarn producers to each other and to knitters at large, my good friend Sarah Hunt puts on lovely, cozy, educational, yarn/knitting retreats in Maine.  In her podcasts and personal knitting she is interested in the relationship of wool, yarn, and knitting to landscape and a sense of place. For the last couple of years she has been bringing these ideas into focus during her Tidal Tours knitting retreats in collaboration with Jodi Clayton of One Lupin Fiber Arts, but even more exciting, this year she is also drawing on her background as a Maine Guide to bring interested knitters into the wilds of Maine.

From August 13-17 Sarah will be hosting the Wool Scout Knitting Retreat at Bradford Camps on Munsungan Lake, in Township 8-Range 10.  The camps may be reached by logging road, but a float plane is the recommended mode of transport.   Mary Jane Mucklestone will be holding classes in Fair Isle knitting (!!!!!!!)  Sarah will be teaching classes in starting fires with flint and steel, and also in working with rare and primitive breed wools,  Jani Estell of Star Croft Fibers will be leading a class in making Viking Chatelaines (an organizer for small tools)  and Igor Sikorsky will be teaching fly fishing and map and compass skills.  And, boat schedule willing, I will be there as well with my indigo pots, introducing interested folks to the magic of dyeing with natural indigo.  I am giddy to be included in such company, and also just really looking forward to getting to be part of the retreat.

For more information, and to register, go to fiber-trek.squarespace.com

Ganseys and Gansey Yarn

I have fallen right back under the metaphorical rock thanks to spending last week in a class necessary to maintain my Coast Guard License (long boring story, also a long boring class, but my fellow participants worked on drill rigs and tug boats and that bit was fascinating) but now I get to spend the morning sipping my first cup of coffee and catching up with my favorite blogs. 

I was thrilled to discover that The Fringe Association published a really lovely interview with Dotty Widman of the Netloft in Cordova, Alaska about the Cordova Gansey Project.   Dotty's series of posts on her own blog have become some of my favorite writing about knitting generally and ganseys specifically.

(You can find the yarn I created for the #cordovaganseyproject listed here at the Netloft's website).

Now that I am finally done with the Coast Guard class I will have time to work with the 2016 Coopworth gansey yarn that arrived while I was away (I could not be happier with how it turned out!).  For those of you on the wait list for 2016 Coopworth gansey yarn, I am trying to put together a newsletter to inform you that it is finally here, and that I am beginning to work with it.  I would rather spend time working with yarn than trying to create a pretty newsletter about yarn, so I may just give up on the newsletter and send a quick email.  If you are on the wait list and you read this, feel free to send me a quick email about your order.  

The two natural colors of my 2016 Coopworth Gansey yarn - lovely undyed, and gorgeous after a few dips in the indigo vat.