This past weekend, I drove out to western Colorado to attend the Artposium, about which I intend to post more as soon as I can.
While there, I stayed and visited with Priscilla GIbson-Roberts. And this is what I brought back with me to my home office:
Here's a peek of what's inside that box:
The charts for the book were ready a year ago. It will be great to move the project to the next phase!
Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm made it to the top ten in the Shine A Light award process, which I mentioned in my last post, although it was not among the three finalists. Because I can't imagine any more appropriate business to win this award, I'm guessing that in the final judges' review larger outfits with more traditionally defined communities got the edge.
In every regard that I can come up with, Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm is a clear winner. So I see its nomination as an opportunity for people within the textile world to vote for it in other ways that involve more than just a click of a mouse on a website, in ways that support the farm itself and also help spread the ideas that are coming out of MVFF.
Here's the gist: Susan Gibbs originated the idea of using the Community Supported Agriculture concept for a fiber-related enterprise—an idea that is absolutely brilliant, deserves to have the brightest of lights beamed on it, warrants huge direct support, and demonstrates a model that could, as I noted earlier this week, boost the chances for survival of rare breeds of sheep while introducing people who use fiber to materials they haven't had the opportunity to encounter. And more.
Part of Susan's mix of animals are Cotswolds, which are one of the rare breeds. She also has Angora goats (which grow mohair), and Cormo and Babydoll Southdown sheep. Overall, a lovely spectrum of fiber qualities, combined with the critter personalities she likes to spend her time with. . . .
Those who are not involved with fiber production tend to think only of the final product. Those who are involved with it—and that includes the shareholders in MVFF who have, thanks to Susan, access to information about daily farm life and individual animals—know that the goats and sheep (and roosters: poke around the farm site) have both breed-based approaches to life—just as, say, chihuahas and Golden retrievers differ—and unique personalities. Small farmers in particular will select types of animals that are compatible with the life of a unique farm family, in addition to being able to contribute the desired crops, such as fiber.
Here's some of what's cool about what Susan is doing at MVFF:
There's more, even though that's already a lot. But stepping back to the central definition and the reason for this post. . . .
What's Community Supported Agriculture?
Community Supported Agriculture has evolved over the past 20 to 30 years as a type of business partnership that provides non-food-producing people with safe, local sources and gives farmers more stable markets. Farms that operate on this model are called CSAs. Members, or shareholders, pay in advance to participate for the year. This money provides the farm with operating cash when it's most needed: during planting and growing. At harvest time, the farm's production is divided between the members.
In our city, we have had CSAs for vegetables and fruits (and, as a bonus, flowers) for quite a few years. Our family participated in the first CSA in the state of Colorado. There are now at least half a dozen food-oriented CSAs of varying sizes operating nearby. They range from tiny to relatively huge. The biggest ones operate partly as CSAs and partly as suppliers to local restaurants and grocery stores, and the word "huge" still applies only in relation to other small businesses.
In this year of multiple hailstorms, one of the larger CSAs, a farm that escaped the worst of the battering, shared produce with the members of a smaller CSA that had its crops wiped out repeatedly by the weather. In addition to the connections among the people in each CSA, the CSA groups also choose to be part of a larger, mutually supportive community.
CSA and Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm
Applying the CSA idea to fiber took a bright idea, a leap of faith, and a bunch of creative work. It also sets up so many connections: between growers and fiber users, between people and animals, between humans and landscapes.
There are more wonderful things to say and share about MVFF than I have time or space to cover. Browse around the website for fun and a lot of great ideas.
Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm offer shares for knitters/crocheters and for spinners. The flock includes Angora goats . . .
and the three breeds of sheep I mentioned:
Here's a quote from the website: "[A] Yarn CSA share makes a great gift for all the knitters and crocheters in your life. If you’re a spinner you can purchase a 'spinner’s share' in the form of raw fleece or roving. Our farm practices humane animal husbandry, we are 'predator friendly' and none of our animals are ever sold for meat."
Here's one of the secrets of being "predator friendly":
If you're not up for a share just now, don't want to wait for next year, or the shares have all been sold alerady (each CSA has a limited size . . . there's plenty of room for more CSAs!), the shop has yarns, needle-felted sheep, wool-filled pet beds, and other treats.
It's all about relationships
When I first mentioned the idea of CSAs as a way to provide more financial stability and incentive for people who are raising endangered breeds of sheep, one friend suggested that I could do this, setting up a system where I'd coordinate the purchase of shares by fiber folk, would channel money to the growers, and would send out shares of wool at shearing time.
This is a perfectly valid small business idea, and a fine one at that, but it wouldn't be what I'm talking about. I'm not the grower. I would be just another business standing in the middle between the producers and the shareholders. I couldn't offer the direct relationships which are key to the success of CSAs. (I've also got a few other commitments taking up my days . . . and nights!)
CSAs are about people helping people, not just providing a product (however fair trade, local, or sustainable). They're about our understanding with some immediacy (even when carried out through the internet) our interactions with the natural world, including specific places and living beings. They're about sharing the risks involved in producing farm products, and also about sharing the pleasures and the bounty. They're about connections between unique, identified, people and animals.
Even a large CSA will be small by today's business standards. One of the exciting things about them is spreading the idea. Our local veggie-and-fruit CSAs have helped each other get started and grow, and also, as we've seen this year, have helped each other smooth over some weather-inflicted rough spots.
While a CSA has to operate successfully as an economic entity, Susan Gibbs at MVFF has given animals to others who want to start growing fiber. She also provides consulting services to farmers who want help with creative ideas that will set up new relationships between people and make life more rewarding and enjoyable for everyone involved. She does, and should, charge for providing that help—her experience can shorten other folks' path to forming more nurturing communities and more solid financial arrangements.
So let's take this opportunity to shine a BRIGHT, BRIGHT light on Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm! It's a winner in all the ways that matter.
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Images copyright © Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm. Used by permission.
There's a national award process going on right now called Shine A Light, intended to "recognize small businesses for persevering in tough economic times with their concentration on community involvement."
Readers who are so inclined can vote on the finalists for this award beginning 9/24/09 (the date of this post) and ending on 11/16/09 at 11:59 (I assume p.m.) EST.
The three finalists were selected by Diane Von Furstenberg, JJ Ramberg, and Ellen DeGeneres (interesting collection of judges!). The finalists are Beacon Paint and Hardware of NYC, a strongly generous and neighborhood-oriented business that's been on the same street for 109 years; Sacred Wind Communications of Albuquerque, NM, which brings telecommunications to the Navajo nation; and Happy Baby Organic Baby Foods of Brooklyn, NY, which promotes awareness and use of organic foods for babies.
On the project's site, click the orange "view the nominations" button to find details on the finalists. Heads-up: Despite the high-profile sponsorship, the website design leaves something to be desired in readability and is challenging to navigate. Since the finalists were posted early this morning, I have unfortunately not been able to locate and directly access information on all of the other nominated businesses. I think those original pages still exist. The navigation has just become obscure.
Moving on to our primary topic of interest, which I'm going to give its own post in a short while. . . .
Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm
One of the businesses nominated is Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm (MVFF), in Massachusetts. Here's the nomination link I picked up for the farm on the award site yesterday. Because MVFF is not one of the three in the last set (although it came close), and also because the whole idea of a competition for community-oriented activities seems odd to me, I'm inclined to transform the original, official "award" process into an unofficial "aware" process and spread the word in ways that will shine a different type of light on this truly exceptional endeavor, which speaks to community in the fiber world in many innovative ways.
Note: MVFF has Angora goats (producers of mohair), and Cormo, Cotswold, and Babydoll Southdown sheep. That's a Cormo up there. Based on the image title, I think this is Cosmo the Cormo. Thanks to Susan Gibbs for saying it's okay to use the images in this post and the next one.
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Photo © Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm. Used by permission.
In celebration of Sock Summit 2009, Priscilla Gibson-Roberts put together instructions for some socks she made that evoke "How did you make those???" questions whenever she wears them. We sold a bunch of patterns at the Summit and expect to have them available for sale through the Nomad Press website in early September. They are printed pattern booklets (because we haven't had time yet to determine the best way for us to sell downloadable PDFs, and we are still tactile enough to love print, even as we do more work electronically). I'll talk about that more later, but for now here's the cover with photos of Priscilla's socks:
Priscilla knitted both pairs (rainbow and random) with leftovers from the Bazaar Socks she designed that appeared in Interweave Knits and are now available as a downloadable PDF from Interweave's store (they have an actual staff to figure out the downloadable PDF thing). The yarns are Brown Sheep's Cotton Fine (80% cotton and 20% wool), which comes in a miraculous array of colors. Priscilla worked her socks at 10 stitches to the inch (40 stitches/10cm).
The written pattern talks about substituting other yarns. Not many appropriate lines of fiber come in enough solid colors to get the effect Priscilla did. (For dyers, this is a great project to use up samples. For knitters of commercial yarn, it can be adapted to use any array of leftovers that is moderately harmonious.)
I decided to knit a pair in Blue Moon's Sock Candy (96% cotton and 4% Elite elastic), which is offered in an array of nice colors. I began working before Sock Summit, worked through Sock Summit, and am knitting after Sock Summit. This design is very entertaining to knit and progress is quick when I'm actually knitting (instead of doing other things, like teaching), and I'll have more photos later.
Picking the right gauge
Socks knitted at a relatively tight (although not board-like) gauge last longer. Sock Candy is slightly heavier than Cotton Fine. I cranked the needle size down from the recommendation for the yarn (spec'd for 7-8 stitches to the inch) and worked at 8.5 stitches to the inch (34 stitches/10cm). I loved the weight and feel of the fabric, but I ran into two problems. First, at that gauge the tips of my needles kept separating the plies of the yarn. Also, working the stitches that firmly ended up being hard on my hands—it was hard to pull the new loops through the old ones.
During the Summit, I made a lot of progress on the sock at that gauge, shown at left in the photo below, but after the festivities ended I decided to start over on one-size-larger needles. The gauge is now 8.25 stitches to the inch (33/10cm), and the two sock-portions shown on the right are the new pair. I'll unravel the first, tighter, sock after I replicate large portions of its color sequence, which I like, on the second sock of the "real" pair. On the first sock at the new gauge, I shifted colors around, which is one of the ways I keep myself from being bothered by reknitting things: I make them differently on the rework.
When the socks are on feet, the bands stretch out and they look like the socks in the photo on the pattern, even though they're worked in a different yarn at a different gauge. (I'll have more pictures later, when they're closer to done. That turquoise stitch marker shows me which is the little-toe edge of the four-toes section of the sock.)
What a difference a quarter-stitch (per inch) makes!
That shift in needle sizes and therefore gauge made all the difference in the world for my knitting pleasure. I'm no longer splitting plies and it's easy to form the stitches. The fabric is noticeably less firm—even with that tiny adjustment!—but should still be sturdy enough (even for me).
I think those facts are rather stunning. A QUARTER-STITCH per inch makes a night-and-day difference in all aspects of this knitting project. With a coarser yarn, a quarter-stitch wouldn't have that impact—but a half-stitch could. With sock yarn, a quarter-stitch is all it takes.
What effect does my shift have on sock size? At the original gauge of 8.5 stitches to the inch, the sock's circumference was 8.47 inches (21.5cm). That works for me. The sock, which I could try on as I went, fit snugly and would have worked fine.
When I changed needle sizes, I stayed with the same number of stitches (72). At 8.25 stitches to the inch, the circumference is 8.72 inches (22.1cm). The result is slightly looser—enough easier to get on that I like it better and think that I will wear this version a lot more often than I would have worn the previous version.
In this photo, the new (larger, 8.25 gauge) sock is underneath and the old (smaller. 8.5 gauge) sock is on top, to show the very slight difference in circumference.
Socks are very flexible projects, but small things can matter nonetheless.
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Note on needle sizes: I work loosely, because it's easier on my hands. With the Sock Candy, I was on size 1.5mm (000) needles and changed to 1.75mm (00). A "normal" knitter would have been on 2mm (0) and moved to 2.25mm (1).
Today was about as good as it gets, although I didn't get enough work done. I'll have to tell about it in two portions or it will be too long.
So here's the morning.
I decided to take a bike ride, and my sister thought that was a good idea.
That's my bike, and my sister walking toward it. Behind her, my mother is heading for the cabin where we are congregating for meals, and heading out the right side of the photograph is my niece, who is on her way to the coffee shop with her computer.
My bike has a Brooks (leather) saddle on it that I'm breaking in. I finally gave up on other saddles, which were uncomfortable and likely to be that way forever, and got a leather saddle, which is said to be uncomfortable for the first several hundred miles and then to be a delight, except by the few people who never get them broken in. I've decided that even UNbroken-in, it is not appreciably less comfortable than the other saddles I've tried. I'm willing to give it a good trial run (and the test period with full refund is quite long).
The saddle arrived a couple of days before I left—long enough that I could treat the leather (especially important during break-in), install it on the bike, and test it a few times. I repositioned until I thought it was in the right adjustment range, and ascertained that it would be okay to hit the road with this as my only saddle. I also borrowed bike shorts from a friend, who suggested that even if I didn't wear them later I'd appreciate them during break-in (the question being debatable as to which was being broken in, the leather or my butt).
That's my bike on the left, and my sister's on the right. They're relatively similar bikes (of different brands) but are set up entirely differently: seats, grips (I'll be changing mine, but haven't yet), and positions of handlebars, seats, and so on. We swapped bikes for a while, each appreciated the other's, and happily went back to our own.
We rode to Oysterville. Oysterville is a historic site on Willapa Bay. 1854 is a very early date for this type of settlement in this part of the world.
Here's my sister, with the bay behind her.
The sign below says, "When in Honolulu, take home pineapples. When in Oysterville, take home oysters." The rest of the crew got oysters the other day, but what does a vegetarian take home from Oysterville?
CRANNIES! Last year, I bought a one-pound (450g) bag and we had to ration them severely. This year I figured price-per-pound and went straight for the industrial-size seven-pound (3.2kg) bag. Salads, muffins, eating 'em plain (the way they all got eaten last year). . . . I'm thinking they might last until we can come back, if we're judicious in our use of them.
It's a little challenging to stay off the highway when biking in this part of Washington State, because in some places there just aren't other roads. The shoulders on the highway are smooth but very narrow: probably 12 inches [30cm]). Not much margin for traffic error. We managed to pretty much stay off the main route on this ride. There's a lot more interesting stuff to see off the beaten path, like this gate my sister noticed as we pedaled past:
The adjacent fence was constructed of similar materials, in a less complex configuration.
And I snapped a photo of this house, which I spotted through the shrubbery (Colorado's a little short of shrubbery with this much enthusiasm), for Lynn H at Colorjoy!:
On the way back into town, we stopped at the coffee house and discovered the place was full of people we knew. Five of the seven customers in this photo are part of our crew.
My sister and I sat at the table in the foreground, drank excellent chai, and caught each other up on what's been happening in our respective parts of the family.
Below is one of the coffee house's browsing shelves. There's a bookstore in the other half of the space: small but superb selection. One could read well for quite a while in this small town (population 1500).
And that was just the morning. The afternoon was equally fine, but I'll have to relate those events later.
This part is mostly a blur of exceptionally fine memories.
I had three primary responsibilities at Sock Summit: teaching my own classes; assisting Priscilla Gibson-Roberts with her classes; and participating in the Luminary Panel on the final afternoon.
I'd also planned to attend the Sock Hop (I didn't have enough energy to move, much less dance, even though I love to dance), get to the Ravelry party (you'll see what happened instead), and cruise the marketplace (no time: I did manage a few dashes in and out, but didn't even get to everyone on the core list of vendors-to-check-out that I made in advance).
Here's the neat Sock Summit banner in front of the Oregon Convention Center:
Priscilla's classes
Priscilla Gibson-Roberts can't teach any more because of physical challenges. Through a minor set of miracles, she was at Sock Summit and gave three lectures on ethnic socks and stockings. As she said, "If it wasn't all about socks, I wouldn't be here." (You add her "degraded south Texas accent," as she calls it, to that statement in your mind.)
Her sessions involved three tables filled with her own collection of socks, as well as two-and-a-half large-capacity slide carousels of slides representing both her own collection and socks and stockings that she's borrowed from other people over the years to document. Participants could examine socks firsthand and ask questions. There's a lot that isn't known yet about socks, and many socks identified as "Turkish" came from other parts of the world but were acquired by their owners in Turkey, which has been a trading crossroads throughout history. Priscilla identifies the provenance of many socks from the idiosyncracies of their construction and from the motifs used to decorate them.
My favorite socks were the Georgian ones, which have bright, flower-like motifs.
Priscilla also brought some of the socks she has knitted using traditional techniques and designs, many worked in her handspun yarns.
It took two of us, in addition to Priscilla, to keep up with her . . . and some volunteers as well, to keep the media pieces of her presentation working and to keep her collection together and in the right places at the right times. Nelda Davis, who is in the upper photo of this set, has often helped Priscilla teach and was her right hand person. I was the back-up, except during the session where I was teaching elsewhere, when Susan Strawn filled in. (Susan is the author of Knitting America: A Glorious Heritage from Warm Socks to High Art. I'm linking to the Powell's page for the book, although its description needs to be revised.)
My classes
I had the pleasure of meeting about fifty people who are interested in publishing their work or learning about the world of publishing in order to consider that step. Publishing can seem extremely arbitrary and bizarre from the outside (sometimes it just IS arbitrary and bizarre). My goal was to give people a map of the publishing possibilities; an introduction to the ideas and vocabulary and tools needed for success in publishing; and the knowledge that much that happens in publishing that seems weirdest isn't personal. It's a whole lot easier to have the necessary persistence to get published if you know at the start how crazy it can be.
I taught better once I remembered I could take my shoes off. Those are handknitted socks, of course. Thanks to Fibergal for being willing to snap a few pictures in my class.
What we did one evening
I was planning to go to the Ravelry party. However, Lynn H (Colorjoy) had brought some marvelous textiles with her that we couldn't resist taking a closer look at. After dinner (Priscilla, Nelda, Anna Zilboorg, Lynn, and me), we retired to the hotel room and began an impromptu examination-and-documentation session. Anna sensibly went to bed after we'd resolved some of the questions, and the rest of us stayed up way too late.
Here are Priscilla, Lynn H, and Nelda:
Nelda is quiet. You might think she's just a helper. NOT. She knows a whole lot about textiles. She's great fun to hang out with.
She and Priscilla have been friends since graduate school at Purdue.
We ended up with impromptu documentation of the socks Lynn brought: good thing our hotel room can equipped with a steamer (other people think it's an iron) and an ironing board. Lynn had pins so we could get good shots of heels from all directions. I had a tiny magnifying glass. We moved the lights in the room around. Nelda had a neutral-colored t-shirt that we used as a backdrop. The photos we took aren't great pictures, but they will let us remember what we were looking at in person.
Nelda's had a lot of experience steaming textiles.
Even the apparently simplest sock has a story to tell, when observed closely.
For example, what was going on here?
It can take some close examination and thought to figure it out. In this case, the knitter ran out of yarn and substituted something else that almost matched but worked up at a different gauge. That explains some of the stitch irregularities in the photo above, but not all of them.
As we've all learned over the years, we can figure out a lot about a textile through careful examination, but the only way to be reasonably certain you've figured out how a knitter accomplished a task is to put yarn on the needles and knit, with the intention of replicating the results. (As you might imagine, those are Priscilla's hands in the photos of the sock. She thought she was tired enough to go to bed when we finished dinner, but she ended up as the ringleader in staying up late and documenting the socks.)
Knitting is endlessly fascinating in that way, and Lynn had brought four extremely diverse pairs of socks. We got to bed very late and we missed the party completely.
Luminary panel
This was really an intense time for the speakers, as you might imagine, and, of course, I don't have any photos. I was on the platform. See a few notes and photos in the blog posts by other people with more perspective on the event, noted below.
Two comments, however:
Why were we chosen to be on the panel? We asked. We learned that we'd been selected because we had all been working full-time or full-time-equivalent in a realm concerned with sock knitting for long enough to have seen changes and deeply enough to be able to speak to the questions the moderators had in mind.
As we were preparing to file into the ballroom and take our places at the tables, someone observed that NONE of us was wearing makeup. The observation turned out to be not entirely true: one of us had on eye makeup. But there was NO lipstick in sight. In sum, everyone up there was a "what you see is what you get" sort of person.
People who have shared their impressions of Sock Summit
These are some blog posts that reflect parts of what I experienced through Sock Summit—along with their writers' personal pathways through the events.
OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting): An interview on public radio called "The Joy of Knitting," an episode of Think Out Loud.
Periwinkle Sheep: The opening reception.
Periwinkle Sheep did an amazing and surprising (and smart) thing. Karin Maag-Tanchak dyed a colorway for each of the participants in the final day's Luminary Panel. As I mentioned, I had barely any time for the alluring and fantastic market. I might not have discovered the Luminary Panel yarns except that I was chatting with a participant named Deborah and she mentioned the skein of yarn she had bought—called "ink for Deborah"—and its origins in the Luminary Panel colorways. Having combined textiles and publishing for so many years, I was delighted to find myself represented by skeins in the color of what looks like fountain pen ink that's separated into its components of blues and purples, as if water had dropped onto the paper. These are colors that I wear, and they have a delightful metaphoric quality for my life. Karin graciously gave a skein of yarn to each "luminary" who came by her booth (I paid for mine, because a helper was in charge when I dashed in to check this out, so Karin gave me a second skein the next day . . . my design wheels are turning . . . ).
Velma’s World: Overview snippets, plus the best photo I've found of the Luminary Panel.
Do Stuff! Leethal Blog: Personal overview, with quotes from the Luminary Panel.
Twin Set: Personal overview that covers a lot of territory and includes the crutch cozies.
Blog-A-Roo: Personal overview, including a photo of me with a chicken on my head.
In sum
You just never know what will happen when knitters get together.
Unfortunately, I missed a whole lot of what happened at Sock Summit.
Fortunately, what I did get to discover and participate in was all grand and memorable.
A gray Suffolk fleece would be a curious and remarkable thing indeed. So when I saw "grey Suffolk roving" advertised, I had to order some.
("Gray" is the U.S. spelling; "grey" is the U.K. spelling, and the way the fiber is labeled. I'll try to be consistent in my usage, but I'm not copyediting right now, I'm writing. So.)
Why would natural gray Suffolk wool be so interesting? Suffolks are grown primarily for meat. The wool is a byproduct, sold primarily to a wool pool for industrial processing. Suffolk wool, while it can be truly lovely for handspinning, may not even be mentioned by growers, even those who are aware of wool for the handspinning market.
Non-white fibers are anathema in that marketplace because they reduce the value (low-end in the first place) of the whole batch. Normally a breeder would not want an off-color fiber anywhere near a clip that's intended for a wool pool.
So where might this "grey Suffolk" be coming from, and why?
And why do I care so much? The fiber itself is just fine. It would work great for many applications, including the making of rugs, bags, and other sturdy textiles, and it looks like it's a good candidate for felting.
But people will buy and work with this wool thinking they are getting to know what the Suffolk breed of sheep grows, and they're not. I don't think the misleading information is intentional. I just think the labeling is not accurate and it's being passed along without being questioned.
The not-Suffolk that's labeled Suffolk
I began working with this "grey Suffolk" wool in March, and it was immediately obvious that it wasn't Suffolk. I have some previous posts on the topic. Below is a revisited photo. The gray is the "grey Suffolk," and the white is a bit of real Suffolk that I had about four locks of, for comparison.
Here's a closer look at the fibers: different fiber length and diameter, crimp pattern, everything. Lots of kemp (very coarse fibers) in the gray—another disqualifier for a wool pool.
Sources for this particular fiber on the internet (found by searching "grey Suffolk roving") show photos of what are, indeed, Suffolk sheep. Somebody clearly thinks this wool was grown by Suffolks.
(Rowan has a grey yarn called Suffolk in its Purelife series. Nice-looking yarn. Here's the description: "Rowan British wool is shorn & blended from 4 classic British sheep breeds (Jacob, Black Welsh, Bluefaced Leicester & Suffolk). Then the beautiful undyed wool is spun into 5 natural shades capturing the beauty of each breed's fleece."
The five shades are called Bluefaced Leicester (white), Black Welsh (black), Mid Brown Jacob (brown), Dark Grey Welsh (dark gray), and Steel Grey Suffolk (light gray). For these yarns to work together without having radical texture differences—a consistency question that would be essential for marketing the wools as a line—they have to consist of the same blend, shifted slightly to produce the natural colors, which would be coming from breeds other than the Suffolk. The Suffolk would be used to, among other potential reasons, smooth out the differences between, say, the Jacob and the Black Welsh.
In this case, "Suffolk" is just an identifier given to the marketing color, because they used the name of one of the component breeds for each of the five colors and "Suffolk" was left over at the end of the naming, since Bluefaced Leicester had already been used for the white.)
My concern is that people will buy this roving and spin it thinking they have Suffolk in their hands. NO WAY. The wool may have been grown in Suffolk, but it did not come from sheep of the breed known as Suffolk.
Now, THIS is Suffolk wool
I recently acquired a beautiful sample of Suffolk. I don't think it's from a spinner's flock, but it shows the delightful qualities of Suffolk wool at its best.
The unwashed fibers measure about 5 inches (12.5cm), which is long for a Suffolk (often closer to 2 to 3 inches (5 to 7.5cm), but otherwise the characteristics of this wool—fineness, crimp pattern, and so on—are right on. The length just makes a good wool better. There are no specifications for staple length in the breed standards for U.S. Suffolks (because it's a meat breed).
After washing, the crimp contracted and slightly reduced the apparent (but not actual) fiber length. The tips washed clean. The fiber contained quite a few tiny bits of vegetable matter (VM), but with wool this long and a pair of wool combs VM of this type is not a big deal (two-row St. Blaise Viking combs from The Spinning Studio of Vermont).
Lashed on and ready to comb:
Is this gorgeous, or what? (The top, ready to spin, is up in the locks photo at the beginning of this section.)
On the left, true Suffolk. On the right, might-have-been-grown-there not-Suffolk.
The true Suffolk would make great socks or sweaters. It's on a nice balance point, for wools, between softness and durability. The not-Suffolk surpasses it by miles in durability, but would drive most people crazy if worn next to the skin.
To get a gray true Suffolk, you'd need to add a dyepot to the processing sequence.
Soay: sample not looking so hot
Here's what you don't want in a fleece, especially from a rare breed: sunburned tips that snap off. Sometimes sunbleached tips on a fleece are just fine—the color has lightened or gone brown without weakening the fiber very much. Sometimes the damage goes too far. Especially bad when it's a hard fiber to get, like Soay, a breed that's been around since the Stone Age (that's before the Bronze Age and the Iron Age) and doesn't fit the industrialized agricultural model in any way. It's far from impossible to get Soay, but when you do get it and it falls apart . . . that's a problem.
The top lock is the original form. The bottom two locks show what happens when I pull—not even very hard—on those crispy, brown tips (they feel like pencil shavings).
Also, at the bases of most of the locks is a bunch of scurf, or skin flakes, that can be removed from a fleece but the fiber needs to be able to withstand extra handling, which this wool won't. If just the tips were damaged, I could snip them off. But the rest of the staple feels crispy (therefore fragile) as well. Hmmm. What to do? I don't know yet.
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North Ronaldsay
North Ronaldsay's another very old breed. Most writings say Iron Age, but recent DNA testing says it goes back farther.
Working with this sample was slightly challenging, too, because the breed's fleece has a tendency to form matts at the bases of the locks (an incomplete transition from naturally shedding to needs-shearing types of sheep) and the tips of the locks were stuck together.
However, the tips didn't break off and I was able to flick both ends of each lock on a fine-toothed hand carder and separate the fibers, which I then spun on a hand spindle. It made quite a blissful yarn--not much of it, because I have to move on, but I could feel the North Ronaldsay's close relationship to Shetlands as I spun. (Some North Ronaldsay fleeces feel closer to other relatives.)
The wee two-ply sample skein is drying (in this photo, it was still singles).
A clean, unprepared lock is on the bottom and one of the prepared locks is on the top. It's a Magpie spindle.
One little surprise on this sample was that when I checked it into the tracking system I wrote "light gray." Obviously, it's pretty darn white. It's amazing how the dirt in a fleece can shift the perceived color of unwashed wool. Spinners find this most disappointing when they think they've found a light brown fleece and it turns out to be cream or white.
Part of what I learned today is why the matting forms at the bases of the locks within this breed—which gave me more patience in dealing with it. I also wrote up most of the material on North Ronaldsays, with all sorts of additional information that I, at least, find really cool.
One breed a day? Oh, I hope not! This project will take forever, and I have until the end of summer.
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Hat from the booth of El Centro de Textiles Tradicionales de Cusco at Maryland Sheep & Wool
I promised a more accurate photo:
Isn't it lovely?
And as a bonus here's a better photo of the breed-specific skeins I bought at Maryland:
That helps me keep my perspective about things like disintegrating Soay wool.
Thank you!
