I told Branden a couple of weeks ago that I must absolutely not – for any reason – buy another raw fleece at Wisconsin Sheep and Wool this fall. I still have a fleece washed and waiting to be combed, and I just haven’t been getting around to it. I love the fiber, and I have a serious weakness for fleeces, but I really don’t need another.

Well. We all know what happens next, right?

While I was back in Boston, my college roommate and I went to visit a friend who works as the caretaker for a historic farm museum in Rhode Island, called Coggeshall Farm. It’s a fully functional farm on 4 acres in seaside New England.

We helped pick cucumbers and gooseneck squash from the farm garden.

And were followed around by a friendly rooster.

Shelley showed us around the old farmhouse.

It’s chock full of interesting tools, like this cheese press.

And a functional loom.

As well as a beautiful great wheel.

We also got to meet the farm donkey,

(and horse and steer), as well as a curious trio of turkeys.

There is also a flock of sheep, but they are allowed to roam at will and were off enjoying the summer day, nowhere to be seen. But in the basement, we found their fleeces.

The sheep are a rare breed called Gulf Coast. They came to the New World with the Spanish, and have been adapting to life in the warm Southeast ever since. According to the American Livestock Breed Conservancy, they are one of the four most critically endangered sheep breeds in the world, with only about 2000 sheep left (more interesting info about them here, from another small farm that raises them).

It just so happens that they also have beautiful wool.

The fiber is very fine, and it has a ton of crimp. The staple is about 4-5″ long, and the wool was in great shape. I don’t know the name of the shearer, but Shelley said that he comes in and hand shears, and he did an amazing job. I’ve had a hard time finding even a couple of second cuts.

The fleece could have been skirted more aggressively; I threw out about a half of a small grocery bag of fiber that I didn’t deem worth the effort to clean, but I decided to try some of the more doubtful parts (the small pile on the right in the picture) and was very impressed with how well they cleaned up.

Since the sheep are free to roam, there are a few burrs in the fiber here and there, but it’s generally extremely free of vegetable matter for an uncoated animal.

The majority of the fleece was also surprisingly clean (for a dirty sheep), and turned the most beautiful white when I washed it.

Unfortunately, I didn’t use hot enough water the first time around, so the locks didn’t fully open up and release their lanolin. So this weekend I used my hand cards and opened up the locks. (That’s is the “dirty” part of the fleece, below.)

Then I rewashed them in hotter water, and they came out beautifully.

The dirtier sections that I “reclaimed” are slightly stained in spots, but will be fine for dyeing.

I’m still working on the cleaner parts of the fleece; I’m doing all of the washing with 5 gallon buckets on the patio, so it’s taking a while to get through. (This is the cleaner fiber, before teasing open the locks.)

With a 7.5 lb fleece, I think I have my work cut out for me.

Since I know that some of you will ask, Shelley does have a few more fleece in the basement. There are a total of three from this year, and a few more from last years’ shearing. I looked at the three newer ones, and I’d say that they are all top quality. Her asking prices are really unreasonably low, so I’d get in touch if you’re interested. Her email is:   s dot otis at coggeshallfarm dot org.

It recently occurred to me that the fact that I now live in Chicago means that I am now very, very close to Stitches Midwest. (Sometimes it takes me a while to catch on.)

Since it’s only about 40 minutes from our house, my friend Becky came down for a fiber weekend. Neither of us is really in stash acquisition mode at the moment, but we wanted to go check out the market. And so it happened that we spent about 5 hours on Saturday wandering through a convention center full of yarn.

We knew we were in the right place when we saw this in the parking lot

Fortunately, Becky had a camera in her phone to snap a picture, since I was a bad, bad blogger and forgot my camera at home. (You are not surprised.)

The market itself is all a bit of a blur. There was yarn. A lot of it. There was so much variety, that it was a little hard to take it all in. We walked the entire show before purchasing anything, which is just how I like to shop. It gives me time to just look at things without feeling tempted to buy, and then at the end I go back and buy the things that I really remember and that stuck out as unique or interesting in some way. It helps me cut down on the impulse purchases, and it guarantees that I don’t blow the budget on something I love and then go to the next booth just to find something that’s 10 times better. Honestly, I think it’s the only way I can make it through a market that big in one piece.

This time, I had a focus for my browsing, too. While we were back in Boston last weekend, I asked my grandmother if she’d be willing to knit me a sweater for Christmas. She knits beautifully, and is always churning things out for charities, strangers, and just about anyone else that could use a knitted item, but she only knits on request. She knit me a small afghan a few years ago, but that’s the only knitted item I have from her. I was thrilled that she agreed, and she was thrilled to get a request, which just works out perfectly. So now I am in search of the perfect sweater.

I had narrowed the choices down to two sweaters from Twist Collective: the Metro cardigan, and the Primrose path pullover. I went to the market looking for a yarn.

It was a tough choice, but eventually I found it. I ended up with four skeins of Madeline Tosh Pashmina, in Rose.

It’s a tiny bit lighter weight than the gauge listed for the Primrose path, but I think it will work well. It has some wool content rather than being all bamboo/silk, so I think it will be a little warmer and a little easier on the hands (both are good things). And, it’s just a beautiful yarn. I hope it’s as nice for her to knit with as it will be for me to wear. (It’s a little hard to resist the urge to cast on myself, honestly.)

Next, I bought some laceweight alpaca silk from Just Our Yarns.

I’ve had a skein of their tencel marinating in the stash for several years, and I’ve been dying to use it. Their booth was just full of beautiful woven scarves, and they were very generous with their time, chatting about the different weave structures and how they use color in their projects. We spent a long time there on the first pass through the market, and then went back to pick up some laceweight to make a woven scarf. This may just be the next project on the loom…I’m really excited to see how it comes out.

Both Becky and I were surprised to find ourselves a little ambivalent about a lot of the yarn at the show. Part of it was probably the overwhelm factor, but part of it was also the fact that we can find a lot of these yarns in our local yarn shops, and we’d tend to want to support them instead, given the choice. There were a lot of resellers rather than indie dyers or company owners there. I guess that’s to be expected from a big show, but we were surprised to find ourselves resisting temptation rather well, considering the circumstances. There were so many beautiful things, but not too many that we absolutely had to have.

And then, I ran into this:

It’s a skein of Toasty Toes from Interlacements. I’ve never heard of them before, but this skein called me over from a booth or two away. I keep saying that these are not really my colors (especially that pink), but this skein commanded that it must be bought, and that it must be knit. With black.

I even broke my stash rule for this one: I have no idea what it will become. But it had to come home, and it will be knit up as some kind of highlight against a black background.

I find that the colors I love most often take me by surprise. They’re things I don’t think of as “my” colors, but they stand out or create highlights in interesting ways that work with my usual color palette. And that palette has been getting bolder of late, moving away from only earth tones and into jewel and (apparently) even brighter shades. I don’t know yet what this will be. I’m frankly still a little shocked at the fact that it made its way home with me. But this skein has a mind of its own, and some very definite ideas of what it should become. I’m excited to find out what they might be.

After the market, we made our way home again and spent the rest of the day cooking and knitting. This morning, Becky got in some spinning time while I worked on teasing apart locks of the raw fleece that followed me home from Boston last week. I’ll tell you…the fiber is getting pushy around here lately. I’ll really be in trouble when we go to Wisconsin Sheep and Wool in a couple of weeks…

As I mentioned the other day, Linda put a bug in my ear about pansy purple. When I looked at my sample cards, though, I found that there wasn’t much to choose from. I only had two cards of dyes straight from the jar, with no real color mixing studies. And so I set about making more purples.

The opportunity to sample is one of my favorite things about working in a new color family. It gives me a chance to combine dyes in ways I haven’t thought of before, and it widens my palette at the same time.

This time, it also gave me the chance to try some new dyes. I have 8 or so new dye colors that I’ve bought over the past year but haven’t played with yet. That’s partly because there is so little time, but it’s also partly because there can be freedom in a small palette. Still, there is nothing quite as exciting as adding new colors to the collection. Since I was planning to play with purples, I chose the colors closest to red and blue, and made up standard samples for Turquoise, Brilliant Blue, Cherry Red, and Vermilion.

(Sorry about the strange photo – WordPress is refusing to upload that picture nicely, for some reason. Just imagine that the whole picture were as bright as that bottom bit…I have no idea why it’s having trouble with that. It looks fine on my computer.)

Then I took the reds and mixed them with a selection of my favorite blues and blue-greens. I only did these in two dilutions; one very concentrated, and one pretty dilute. That should be enough to give me an idea of the range of colors available from each combination.

Next, I took my stock purple and burgundy dyes, and added reds and blues to see what colors I could tease out of them. I ended up with a range all the way from rosy pink to periwinkle blue; lots of colors to choose from.

And then, since I knew I was looking for bluish-purples for the pansies, I picked my favorite color combination so far, and did a 2:1, a 1:1, and a 1:2 mixture of a purple and a blue to get the full range of colors possible from those two dyes. (The top card in this photo is another red-mixed-with-blue; the bottom two are the changing ratio set.)

There are so many great colors in these samples! I am sure we’ll see many of them again, and I’m excited to add so many more colors to the sample collection. Having new colors always invites new combinations, and I am getting quite a collection. Just think of all the possible colorways!

I don’t usually get political and ranty here, but this post has me all riled up. It’s a continuing theme that has emerged so many times that it’s time to talk about it. So here I am, mounting my soap box.

The fact that I am a feminist does not mean that I cannot be a woman.

I have a right to be girly. I have a right to be butch. I have a right to wear long skirts and high heeled shoes, makeup and fake eyelashes if I want. I have a right not to.

Every time a feminist undermines another woman’s right to be herself, she pulls the rug from under her own cause. She tears down the very foundations of the ideals that she is proclaiming. She says to be a feminist – but for God’s sake don’t be girly. Be a woman, by pretending to be a man.

You know what? That’s not enough for me. That’s not what my grandmothers and my mother and my sisters in feminism fought for. They fought for the right to exist, as we are, and to be treated as equals. And that applies whether or not you choose to wield pointy sticks and bake cupcakes.

Twice my spinning group was hosted by a very nice woman who did not spin. Twice she made loud comments about not being “domestic.” But the way she said it, she meant domesticated, in that particularly sneering way that comes from a certain type of feminist when discussing those of us who choose to create beauty, meaning, and physical representations of love through our craft. I bit my tongue out of politeness and turned my cheek to her ignorance. But let me tell you, no one in that room was domesticated. Domesticated is for cats, not for women (and even cats defy the term).

More than half of the women in that particular group hold advanced degrees in science and technology. Or law. One is an editor. Most of us are highly educated and career-oriented. All of us are brilliant women who are smart enough to know that what you do with your spare time has nothing to do with whether or not you command respect.

And I think that that is more powerful. I think it means more to be able to do what you choose without caring how others will see it. To me, it is time to relinquish the old aggressive feminism that defines us by what we are not, in favor of the progressive feminism that allows us to be who we are.

We are women. We are leaders. We are successful, and we are determined to have a career, on our own terms. We might also wear skirts and bake cupcakes. Or maybe we wear a burqa. Or studded leather. Doesn’t really matter, does it?

We are soft, gentle and caring, and we’re tough as nails. We make peace when we can, trouble when we must, and we raise hell when we know it’s time to shout. We love and nurture our men  and our families, while protecting our selves and demanding that our own needs be met. We refuse to live our lives in fear of how we will be perceived, and instead we spend them pursuing whatever interests strike our fancy.

I do not believe that forcing women to be aggressive, testosterone-happy brutes advances the cause of feminism in any way. I think it puts us back 50 years. Being a stereotypical feminist is no better than being a stereotypical housewife. You are still defining yourself on someone else’s terms.

I don’t find that acceptable.

Defining yourself by the stereotypes that you do not fill will never free you from them. You have to be brave enough to be who you are, on your own terms. Appearances be damned.

So let’s stop this, right now. Let’s get over this undermining of women by other women in the name of liberation. Let’s stop for a second and think about what we say we’re fighting for – the right to be heard, the right to pursue our dreams and opportunities, and the fundamental prerogative to do that in whatever way we see fit.

And now, if you will excuse me, I am going to go knit.

The moment has now arrived – I can tell you what I’ve been up to. (I’ve gotten confirmation that the surprise has been had, and it is now safe to post all the fun details.)

This is the third fiber in the latest series of dyeing posts. (Look back at the colors; you’ll see that they really are almost the same. Amazing how much variety you get just by applying the colors differently.) I thought that I’d share a little bit about the process of dyeing this one, to make up for the whispers and the suspense.

I got word a couple of weeks ago that Jan had fallen prey to the spinning bug at Sock Summit. And there is nothing like a little good fiber to start a spinner on her way, now is there? So I did a little research, and I enlisted an accomplice. (Sisters are a wonderful thing, especially when they know addresses for mailing things on the sly.)

After poking around on the Twinset blog for a while, I found this photo of a peacock that frequents Jan’s beautiful new house. Look at those colors!

As soon as I found it, I knew that this had to be the color. Now, it was just a matter of translating it into fiber. The blue and the dark spruce green were obvious; they’re what I think of as traditional peacock colors. The gray in his wings was unexpected, though.

And when he opens his tail, the browns and the lime green pop out.

When I look at a photo, I look first for the dominant colors. Then I look for the unexpected ones (like that fabulous bright green). In this case, the dominant hues were strong, vibrant colors. I wanted something to ground them and balance their intensity. The gray and the brown came in here; subtle background colors to help show off the rest.

Next, I went to my sample cards, and plucked out colors that came close.

Next, I needed to decide how to lay them on the fiber. I wanted long repeats of the same color, so that they really stand out from one another. That meant that the dye needed to cover more than a staple length (and sometimes two or three, to make the long repeats really long). The proportion of fiber dyed in each color would determine  the weight of each color in the final yarn. Blue, of course, is dominant. Then the greens, and the brown and gray to balance them out.

I divided the fiber up into sections, and then decided which colors would blend the best at the joins between color repeats. I didn’t want the colors to blend too abruptly, so I chose to paint in order; dark blue to dark green. Light green to brown, brown to gray. Subtle changes that should help to keep the colors intact.

Unfortunately, I neglected to take a picture of that step in the process (I was too excited about how it was coming out).

Here’s a picture of the final fiber, instead.

Within each section, I started with my base dilution, and then added in splashes of more concentrated dye to keep the colors dynamic. See all those different shades?

I must say that I am thoroughly pleased with the results. Proud as a peacock, perhaps.

Because I loved these colors so much, I dyed another 4 oz, same as the first.

Now that the first has safely arrived, the second has gone to join its siblings on Etsy.

Don’t they look beautiful together? (It’s like the litters of kittens we used to foster; I know it’s time and it’s for the best, but I hate to split them up!)

Up next, we’ll be taking the dyeing in a whole new color direction: Linda has gotten my brain churning with visions of pansy purple.

You could be forgiven for thinking that this site hasn’t really been about knitting lately. What with all the spinning and the dyeing (and even the weaving), there hasn’t been much knitting content around.

That’s mostly because I’ve been knitting a sweater on size 2 needles. And that doesn’t really make for good progress shots. Until now:

The Briar Rose sweater is finally finished. I was hoping to have photos for you today, but it has decided that it is also going to take a long time to dry. (August is like that, I suppose.)

In the couple of days since the Briar Rose sweater was finished, I’ve been zooming along on Branden’s MacGyver sweater. This one is knit from my Shetland handspun, bought almost exactly a year ago at Wisconsin Sheep and Wool. The sheep’s name was MacGyver. I knew from the moment I heard that that it would end up being a sweater for Branden. And so it is.

The wool ended up a little heavier than I was expecting (story of my life, at the moment), but on size 6 needles at 4.4 stitches to the inch it is knitting up amazingly fast. I’m already halfway to the arm split on a top-down Raglan. The knitting is slowing down as I add more stitches, but for now I’m enjoying the speed.

I’m also considering breaking project monogamy and casting on for a lighter-weight project that will be slightly easier on my hands. It’s not completely decided yet, but this sweater is quickly approaching the too-big-to-travel stage, so it may be necessary.

I still can’t talk about the secret roving, but I thought I’d show you the other two colorways that I dyed along with it. I’ve been enjoying using photos as a jumping-off place for my dyeing, and so both of these colors began as photos.

A week or so ago, Branden sent me a link to this fabulous photo of some very colorful ducks sitting on a log:

The photo was taken by Alan Shapiro, and he has lots of other great photos on his website; check it out, if you get a chance. The people photos are particularly striking; there’s one of an old lady that I love – she is just the essence of an Italian grandmother on a mischievous day.

When Branden sent the photo, he naturally expected that I would be interested in the ducks, but all I could see was that water. Look at those greens! There’s even yellow in there, when the sun hits it just right. Not at all what I’d expect from water, but I fell very much in love with the colors. Here they are on Polwarth:

The final yarn ended up a little heavy on the yellow; I was worried about bleeding between the colors, and so left wide open swaths of yellow. The shading is beautiful; I love the way the different greens mix on the fiber, fading from deep spruce all the way down to sunshiny yellows.

There’s just something about greens that is catching my eye at the moment. I’ve recently discovered Pinterest, and have started a collection of photos for color inspiration. This one just jumped out of the collection the other day:

Since I suddenly find myself with an embarrassment of wool types to play with, I thought I’d do a bit of a comparative study.

I started out by pulling a lock of wool from each of the different fiber preparations that I have, and then began organizing them, first by staple length:

From left to right: Manx Loaghtan < Finn < Portland < Whitefaced Woodland < Shetland < Polwarth < Welsh Mountain

< Falkland < White Welsh < Cheviot < Norwegian Gray < Corriedale < Blue Faced Leicester < Wensleydale < Lincoln < Masham

I noticed very quickly that staple length had very little do do with the coarseness of the fiber. Just comparing the four longest staple lengths, you can see what a difference there is in coarseness of the fiber. The White welsh (the shortest of the four) is incredibly hairy, with guard hairs that are almost like fine wire. The Lincoln is also pretty hairy, but the Masham is actually quite fine.

Grouped according to coarseness, I get the following:

Finn < Falkland < Polwarth < BFL < Shetland < Manx Loaghtan < Portland < Cheviot < Masham < Wensleydale < Corriedale < Welsh Mountain < Whitefaced Woodland < Norwegian Gray < Lincoln < White Welsh

The Norwegian Gray and Lincoln really are very coarse; they feel more like human hair than wool. The stiffness of the hairs will make them poke out of a spun yarn, and it will be more likely to feel itchy (think low-quality alpaca, mohair or cashmere that hasn’t been fully dehaired).

Still, I noticed that some of the fibers were more scaly than others, too. When drafted, some of the wools stuck together strongly, and some pulled out pretty easily. The ones that slipped easily felt softer, even if they had a coarser fiber. I think this scaliness is also part of what makes wool feel itchy. Ranking according to scaliness, then, I got this ordering:

Manx Loaghtan < Finn < Polwarth < Falkland < Shetland < BFL < Wensleydale < Masham < White Welsh < Corriedale < Norwegian Gray < White Woodland < Portland < Cheviot < Welsh Mountain < Lincoln

By this ranking, even the White Welsh with its wiry guard hairs is smoother than the Lincoln, which is a very grabby fiber. Both the Wensleydale and the Masham are very long-stapled fibers, but they are about as “sticky” as BFL (which is not very sticky).

I imagine that these “scalier” fibers will felt very well, though I haven’t tested that to be sure. Still, if I were looking for a rugged wool to felt into hard-wearing (but not particularly soft) items, Lincoln would probably be my first choice. White Welsh might work well here, too, since it has so many fine fibers mixed in with the coarse ones. The finer fibers might help the felt hold together nicely. Honestly, I can’t imagine using the White Welsh for much else; those guard hairs are just too stiff (and too plentiful) for me.

For spinning and knitting, I would happily use any of the finer fibers. I was surprised to find that Corriedale – which is one of my go-to wools – is so high up on the coarseness scale. I would have expected it to be much closer to the fine fibers, but it’s pretty far down the list. Unsurprisingly, my favorite “special” fibers like Finn, Falkland, Polwarth and BFL are at the fine end of the spectrum. I was surprised and somewhat amused to realize that, with all this wool in the house, I have no Merino to compare to. It’s never been a must-have for me, and it’s apparently faded out of my collection entirely now. I wish I had a little to compare to these other breeds, though, as a standard yardstick measure for fineness.

From the longwools, I would definitely knit/spin with the Masham and the Wensleydale. I think they will probably make a slightly coarser yarn, but one that’s comparable to Corriedale, which I don’t find itchy at all. It will be really fun to work with a staple that long, too. For me, BFL is a long staple at 5-6 inches; both the Wensleydale and the Masham are pushing 9 or 10. I think that the Cheviot will also be similar to Corriedale, and the Portland and White Woodland may be a little less soft.

The Norwegian Gray is an interesting fiber. It is very coarse and heavy, but it isn’t terribly scaly. It feels almost like a coarse alpaca, with that similar oily texture to it. I don’t really know how it will spin up, but it will be interesting to try.

The Manx Loaghtan is completely different than the rest. It has an incredibly short staple, and looks like a very delicate fiber. This particular preparation is not very good (I was warned before I bought it); it’s full of vegetable matter, and it looks like it has a fair number of second cuts. Still, it is very, very short and a little slippery, and it reminds me of the exotic fibers like Yak or Bison. I’m not sure how it will spin up, but it will be interesting to see if it is as soft.

Of course, now that I know a little more about these fibers, I need to start coming up with projects that will let me use them to their best advantage. I am thinking that the coarser fibers might make good wools for rug weaving. I’ve never tried that before, but having a rugged fiber to begin with seems like a good start for something meant to be walked on. The fine fibers will probably turn into garments of some kind. I’m also considering spinning up some samples for another side-by-side study, which would let me test some of my guesses about how these wools will behave. We’ll see if I manage to get to it before getting distracted, but I think it would be interesting to see how these different wools behave when spun, especially how the coarseness and scaliness play into the final texture of the yarn.

Look!

Know what that means?

(Well, it means that I need to buy new gloves that don’t rupture every time I use them, but besides that.)

It means I’ve been dyeing again!

I have to be a tiny bit hush-hush about this one, because it’s kinda a surprise, but I thought I’d give you a little sneak peek:

Full story coming soon!

The doorbell rang just a little while ago. It was the UPS delivery guy, with a box full of goodies for the dye studio.

That would be 12.5 pounds of fiber from Copper Moose. I make one of these big orders every year or two, and then all of the dyeing comes from this stock of bare fiber. That way when I am ready to dye there is always something on hand. The last batch of stock has been running dangerously low, so it was time to order more.

This time, we have Shetland, BFL (of course), Polwarth (because I loved its bounce so much the last time I spun with it), Wensleydale, White Welsh, Finn, and Masham. Much is destined for Etsy, and some is for experimenting to see what other fibers might be fun to carry in the future.

Now it’s just a question of what colors to put on them.

I’ve been playing with some Falkland lately, and I’m a little sad I didn’t order some of that, too. It’s lovely stuff. You can’t really see it here because of the cat who was insisting on being in the photo, but at least you also get cat trying to be cute.

(She seriously inserted herself into at least 4 different photos before I gave in. Someone is jealous that the fiber is getting all of the attention.)

I think I might actually have succeeded in spinning this up pretty fine. I’m not sure it will be a real laceweight, but it’s heading in that direction. All of this sweater spinning lately has gotten me into a worsted-to-bulky rut, and it’s proving harder to break out of than I’d expected.

The Falkland is very soft and has a nice loft, but not quite as much as the Polwarth (so I may not end up with my “laceweight” singles becoming heavy fingering weight yarn when I ply, as happened last time!). It’s a nice medium-to-short stapled fiber, and has a good bit of shine for such a fine wool.

I’m about halfway through my 8 oz sampler, so I should have a nice finished yarn to show you soon. It didn’t make the order deadline this time, but I think it’s likely that Falkland will be top of the list for new fibers in the next ordering cycle, if the yarn turns out to be as nice as the spinning has been.