The Independent Stitch

Keeping the wools organized, part 1

A couple of days ago, someone asked me how on earth I am keeping all of the wools for The Project organized. It's a great question, and although I gave her an overview I thought others might be interested. The answer will involve two posts.

When I began The Project of researching and writing the next phase of what I want to learn (and share) about wools from different breeds of sheep, I knew that keeping the fiber samples organized and identified throughout the long process would be crucial. There's not much point in having demonstration locks and skeins of specific fibers if you don't know which is which. While I can't do anything to guarantee that fibers are correctly labeled when they reach me, I can control what happens after they're in my hands. For that, I needed a system and I have needed to follow it. Always.

With years of experience working on books and magazines behind me, I knew where and how things could go wrong. The system I set up at the very beginning of The Project took into account my vision of what resources I wanted to have while I was doing the thinking-and-spinning part of the work and also what we'd need to have when we reached the point of taking the final photographs. I know how hard it can be to remember which piece of white fluff is which. It's even worse to have to try to figure out which photograph of a piece of white fluff is which. Especially when you took the photos months earlier.

Here's how I keep track of things.

When I receive a package of fiber, I hope it comes with identification. Usually there's at least a solid clue. If not (because the sender thinks I have only ordered one type of fiber at a time from one source, like a normal person would, and that I will, of course, remember what it was that I ordered), I track down that information as quickly as I can and tape a temporary label on the box or envelope.

Then I log its arrival in three electronic databases (kept in OpenOffice, Excel, or Numbers, depending on whether I am, or was, using Linux, Windows XP, or the Mac . . . The Project has been going on for a while) :

• the master list of fibers and their sources (including name, address, phone, e-mail, and website of the supplier)
• the list of missing fibers (the arrival gets logged here by removing its name from the list)
• the processing status list (each breed is at this point marked "received and in processing"; other phases include "missing," "spun and ready to be written up," and "spun and written up")

I send updated copies of these electronic files to my co-author, Carol Ekarius, who is doing most of the fiber acquisition while I'm labeling, washing, and spinning. This Project is not a one-person job.

I also print out two sizes of address labels, ten each, that show the name of the fiber, whether it was received raw (in the grease) or processed, its color, and the source. If I have five colors of a single breed, or even same-color samples from different sheep, each gets processed as a unique item from this stage on (the electronic databases are not as fine-tuned).

One of the large labels goes on an index card that is kept in a small plastic box, which has turned out to be the easiest way to keep track of exactly what I have received and whether it has been spun or not:

Inside that box are 5x8 index cards cut in half. I was keeping this file in a small, open cardboard box. Then I found the more protective box, in a perfect size, at the Container Store on one of my trips to the city.

Sometimes I have notes on the cards, but mostly I take notes directly into my writing files on the computer. (I'm using Scrivener since I moved to Mac. Scrivener has saved my sanity, and likely the entire Project, many times over.) The simple existence of the labeled card means I have the fiber available. The big green dots mean I've spun samples. No dots? Still to be spun. The file box works much better for these two tracking tasks than any electronic database. Plus if I have any computer problems, I still have these baseline records.

Here's the organizing set-up for a new fiber arrival:

The only difference from reality here is that I do all but the clean-lock portion of this labeling and packaging with the grease wool, and the photo shows the materials with a wool that's been washed.

1. Fiber - the point of it all
   
2. Large labels - start with 10 (breed, raw or clean when received, color, source)
   
3. Small labels - start with 10 (same info)
4. Two large bags (gallon-size) with large labels, one for the working fiber and one with SAMPLES for the materials that will travel to photography
5. Two small bags (either sandwich or, for the long wools, quart size) with large labels, one for the RAW lock samples and one for the CLEAN lock samples
6. One card with a large label: this card travels with the wool whenever it is away from its bags—for example, during the washing sequences and when it's on the drying rack (these are old business cards)
7. One hang tag and one small card, with small labels: the hang tag is labeled on both sides (so it won't need to be flipped over when we are handling hundreds of samples during photography), and the small card goes in the corner of a photo to be cropped out before final printing; if I spin more than one sample, I use some of the extra small labels to make hang tags for the extra skeins

I use clear packaging tape over the labels on the bags. Otherwise the labels don't stick to the plastic long enough to do any good.

Here's a demo of how the small cards in 7 are used. Although this is just a reference photo for my working files, it's the same idea that will be used in the final photographs. The identifying info is in the frame but can easily be cropped out.

One more small label goes on a post-it note that is used to catalog what's in the main working file boxes, which are white:

A blue background means the fiber came in processed (top or roving). A green background means it arrived raw. Bright pink with a red dot means for some reason the sample is not adequate (there's also a red dot on the corresponding card in the small file box). There's extra tape holding the stickies in place because they take a beating when the boxes are moved around.

Handwritten yellow stickies help me see from across the room what breeds are in a box and handwritten pink stickies help me keep groups of breeds organized (these are longwools in the two top boxes—there are more than two longwool boxes!—and Cheviots in the bottom one). The big black checkmarks mean the fiber is clean (either was received that way or I've washed it). While it doesn't seem to make much sense to mark the blue-background items as "washed," because they're clean by definition, I found that it was easier to skim for to-be-washed items if I put a check on everything that is clean. Yes, the blue-background (clean) items have light yellow labels and the green-background (raw) items have bright yellow labels. I use all the color-coding I can get. The blue dots on the upper box indicate items that we wrote up as sample chapters, before we really got down to business.

[part 2 just before this—I managed to post these out of order]

Keeping the wools organized, part 2

[part 1 is adjacent but following; I managed to post these out of order]

All the labeling and packaging preparation happens as soon as the fiber enters the house. Then the system starts being put to work.

When I pull wools for washing, the materials related to them go into holding containers. The wools that are next in line to be washed go into a special file box. The bags for the wools that are either being washed or are drying go into another container (here I'm using a white plastic waste basket).

The fibers come in different quantities, and I have several sizes of washing containers. I have four sets of colander-plus-bowl (two larger, two smaller), gleaned from secondhand stores and a friend's kitchen, and two rectangular washing sets, which were manufactured as cat litter boxes (in each set, one tray has a perforated bottom and the other has a solid bottom).

The business-card labels follow the wools through the washing sequence. They just sit on the floor next to the working area, because I combine wools that are not too similar in each batch. I pick by color and texture, mostly, because apparent staple length frequently changes in washing. The more dramatic the differences the better, of course. The perfect set is a white longwool, a brown double-coated, a gray medium wool, and a dark Soay. It doesn't always work that way.

I wash the wools loose, rather than in mesh or net bags, because I like to be able to see what's happening, especially if I need to give extra attention to getting dirt out of the tips of the locks. Once they're clean, I do put the wools into mesh bags so I can run them through the spin-only cycle of the washing machine and get the extra water out so they'll dry faster. Fast drying matters when you're doing, say, 25 batches in three days, as I did this past week.

I carry the cards to the basement along with the dripping mesh bags (kept under control in one of the larger washing containers). If I have two wools that I may confuse, one goes into a marked mesh bag and I set its card in a special place while the washer does its thing. One of the bags below has a red string tied to it.

As soon as the water has been spun out, I spread out each wool on a drying rack next to its card. In the photo below it's easiest to see the cards on the lower two levels, but every one of these piles of fluff has a card.

I usually flip the masses of wool over at least once while they're drying. When I clear the racks, I use a strip of package-sealing tape to pick up any stray fibers, so they won't mix into the next wools that come along (this is most crucial with the coarse black fleeces, which tend to stick to the nylon of the racks and become a nuisance when the next wool to use the space is, say, a nice white Polwarth).

Clean wools go back into the organizing bags. Then I spin samples, working on the fibers in related groups, whenever possible. Sample skeins, after being washed, get hung over doorknobs upstairs to dry. Again, I work on samples that will be easy to distinguish from each other or I bring the cards upstairs and set them by the appropriate doors. Descriptions within the Scrivener files also help me keep the skeins correctly identified, if I need a backup technique, although they are mostly intended to make it easy to write captions later.

Here's a set of finished samples: raw locks, clean locks, labeled skein, and photo identifier. All of this gets tucked into the SAMPLES bag.

I squish out as much air as possible from all the bags, which can then usually be folded over:

This bag goes into a labeled file folder in a green file box, which will travel to photography (any extra fiber and labels stay in the white working boxes).

When I have too many samples to fit into a single file folder (often), the breed gets a larger box-end jacket, like the one with the black clip on it.

And that's how on earth I keep the samples from getting mixed up.

Comfort and joy: Lots of wool, and Clara Parkes' new book

I have here Clara Parkes' new The Knitter's Book of Wool: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding, Using, and Loving This Most Fabulous Fiber. I've been wanting to write about it for weeks—and actually have been making notes in this file for that long—but life got in the way. This is not a book I wanted to do a quick mention-and-run on (I've already mentioned it, because of my delay). Now I have the pleasure of sharing some of my thoughts.

Short take: Thanks, Clara, for explaining so clearly and well a lot of wool-geeky topics that knitters will find essential to their happy and effective use of this amazing fiber. And for the great collection of patterns. Readers, it's a treat. If someone doesn't give it to you in the next couple of weeks, treat yourself in January. It'll cheer you through the sloggy part of winter and get you ready for shearing season—oh, I mean festival time.

[FTC disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author because she asked me some questions about a few tricky matters as she was writing it and I gave her the best answers I could come up with. She asked very good questions that required me to put some interesting thoughts together. It was fun. I also have a bias in favor of Clara's writing. She's smart. She's clear. She's witty. I say those things not because she sent me a book but because they're true.]

Chapter 5, Patterns

Being somewhat contrarian, I began my excursion into the book's pages with chapter 5, the patterns. I have been digging into the qualities and varieties of wools for a very long time, and I skipped to the hands-on portion before I eased into the technical material.

There are 23 patterns, and if that's all you buy the book for you'll get your money's worth. The designs have been planned to offer opportunities for experimenting with the varying qualities of wool yarns—at least, of those wool yarns that knitters are likely to find most appealing (weavers are another story, and another book). The projects are mostly at the easy to intermediate skill levels, with a handful at the experienced end.

Contributing designers include Pam Allen, Cat Bordhi, M. Diane Brown, Nancy Bush, Evelyn Clark, Jane Cochran, Sivia Harding, Jennifer Tepper Heverly, Shelia January, Ilga Leja, Clara Parkes, and Sandi Rosner. All of these people understand their craft very well. They can devise inriguing-to-knit concepts capable of showcasing, instead of upstaging, the materials. Yet even the simplest projects contain nice, knitterly details that add a lot of appeal without unnecessary complication.

The items offered as templates for discovery are hats, sweaters, and shawls, fingerless mitts and mittens, socks, a shell, a baby set, a pillow, and a felted bag. I can't pick a favorite, because most could become standby patterns, knitted repeatedly for the simplicity and pleasure of working the design in different wools. In addition to being great in the making phase, the finished objects are the sort that will end up being used a lot. For example, the Three Bears family sweaters are perfect for playing with yarns and I could see them being worn for a very long time (made with good wools, that could be decades, possibly a couple of generations).

Of course, even though the idea is to experiment, the instructions do specify which yarns were used to knit the samples. Those yarns include solid, reliable mid-range 100% wools, interesting blends (mostly of fine fibers, which is where blending usually occurs in handknitting yarns), and some breed-specific wools, including a Perendale and a Bluefaced Leicester for socks, a couple of Cormo projects, a cardigan in Columbia, an Icelandic shawl, and Shetland for the felted bag.

There is enough information in the front of the book (about which I'll say more in a moment) to help readers select substitutes.

Chapter 1—What Is Wool?

Chapter 2—From Pasture to Pullover—Turning Wool into Yarn, and

Chapter 4—Plays Well with Others (blending)

Next I looked into the chapters on the technical aspects of wool fibers—what makes wools different from other fibers, and how we can have such a wide variety of wools, and what each of them is good for—and on wool processing and blending.

Clara has a remarkable ability to find effective explanatory metaphors for complex concepts. I admire this aptitude she has. It's in full force in these chapters, and if you want to you can even come away with an understanding of what the orthocortex and paracortex have to do with crimp (everything), in addition to, of course, what the heck crimp is and why it matters (spinners will know, but this knowledge has not been frequently offered to knitters).

My pencil came out at a few points in these chapters, in response to a mental "yes, but . . . " reaction (where the core statement was correct and I wanted to explore or refine a detail), but I'm a fiber nut and these reactions pertained to excruciatingly fine points that don't matter in the lively and engaging view that this book offers. (Example: a bit about standard deviations and wool grades. Really. The basic concept presented is correct. Only people like me will care that the SD varies for each grade in the USDA—not traditional—scale of grades, and if you care that much you probably already have the detailed info and/or have been carted off to a wool-padded cell.)

I'm especially fond of Clara's "quick tips for reading a generic wool yarn" (chapter 2), in which she tells how to evaluate by looking, shaking, tugging, smelling (yup—serious wool aficionados say "of course"), and twisting (or, rather, untwisting) a sample.

You'll gather here, appropriately, that wool is a sensual material. That's a good part of the delight in getting to know the wools, one that Clara understands thoroughly and presents well. As she points out repeatedly, getting to know a yarn is key to success in using it, and there's so much variety in wools that ultimately you have to educate yourself and then depend on your own thoughts about what a yarn will be good for.

Chapter 3: Meet the Breeds

Finally, I dug into what is for me the greatest fascination of wools: how the many different breeds offer a banquet of delights for fiber artisans. Clara talks about some of the basics of how wools differ from each other—fineness, staple length, crimp, luster, what the wool is suitable for, and felting qualities—and then divides the breeds she presents, which focus on those likely to come between knitters' fingers, into five categories: finewools, mediumwools, Down and Down-type wools, longwools, and dual-coated and primitive breeds. Wools don't always separate neatly into categories, but she offers good working clusters.

She presents a couple of descriptive paragraphs on each breed, and a box that ballparks facts about the wool. There are frequently photos of clean locks and of yarn spun from the wool. One difficulty (not under Clara's control) is that the book's design calls for the same size photo for each lock, so the Leicester Longwool and Teeswater, for example, appear to be the same length as the Merino and the Southdown. The layout is pretty and the length info is available in the "facts" box, so I'm just being picky about this.

Here are the breeds Clara covers—an excellent selection for the space available (and they're alphabetically arranged within each group):

Finewools:

• California Variegated Mutant (CVM)
• Cormo
• Merino
• Polwarth
• Rambouillet
• Romeldale
• Targhee

Mediumwools:

• California Red
• Columbia
• Corriedale
• Finnish Landrace (Finn)
• Montadale
• Tunis

Down and Down-type wools:

• Cheviot
• Clun Forest
• Dorset Down
• Dorset Horn and Poll Dorset
• Oxford
• Ryeland
• Shropshire
• Southdown
• Suffolk

Longwools:

• Bluefaced Leicester
• Border Leicester
• Coopworth
• Cotswold
• Leicester Longwool
• Lincoln
• Perendale
• Romney
• Teeswater
• Wensleydale

Dual-coated and primitives:

• Icelandic
• Jacob
• Navajo-Churro
• Scottish Blackface
• Shetland

When reading any information on wools, it's important to remember the vast diversity of fibers that are grown by different types of sheep (the variety continues to blow my mind, after all these years) and that wool is a natural substance, not one manufactured to specs. The guidelines are just that: an idea of what to expect, not rigid parameters from which the actual fibers never stray. (They do stray. It's wonderful.) The only way to tell what a wool is really like is to begin to play and experiment with it . . . which brings us back to the patterns. The book is organized logically and appropriately. I'm just an out-of-order reader.

Clara's book left me both satisfied and wanting more (more breeds; more info on the individual breeds). Which is good. Because it sends me back, energized, to The Project. EXCEPT that I want to be both spinning and ordering yarn and knitting up some of these patterns. That'll have to wait a bit. I hope not too long.

Those wools on the second drying rack from the top would make good Three Bears sweaters (Kerry Hill and I think that's the Devon Closewool, I've just got the photo here at the library, not the wool itself). Top right is too soft for the durability I'd want (Polwarth). Top left would be too heavy (Dartmoor). Take a look at that bottom right: neat-o! But not sweater wool (Rough Fell). (The dark ones are Polwarth, very soft, and Balwen, this sample quite coarse. On the right on the second from bottom is Gritstone.)

Bonus

Hungry for wonderful wool yarns? Clara has a nice resource list, also worth getting the book for. Here's a taster of sources, three of which are in Clara's list and four of which aren't. On the farm yarns, note that they do sell out. They are limited-growth-and-production items. If what you thought you wanted is gone, there will be something equally appealing in its place. That's part of the fun.

In alpha order, here are a few places to get started:

Bear Farm Yarns

Farm Wool Shop

Juniper Moon Farm

Marr Haven

Solitude

Spirit Trail Fiberworks

Sweet Grass

Tip of the iceberg. Many, many more. Some growers sell (out) at festivals and don't have websites. Others sell through etsy or web-based farm coops.

Happy hunting, happy knitting. Happy reading. Let Clara show the way.

Herdwick: like no other sheep, like no other wool

I'm way behind on blog posts: lots to say, not enough hours right now. Running fast for a deadline (that I now see in the rearview mirror and I'm still trying to meet it); there's hardly time for sleeping or eating.

But here's a quick note about what I spun up yesterday: Herdwick. Sheep, Herdwicks primary among them, are responsible for the landscape of England's Lake District. Beatrix Potter (locally Mrs. Heelis) raised Herdwicks and was the first woman to belong to the breed society. There are lots of good conservation stories involved with Mrs. Heelis, the Lake District, and Herdwicks, although I need to keep moving. . . .

Herdwick wool is truly distinctive. When we went looking for samples for The Project (deadline buzzing), the shepherd who ultimately supplied us with some wondered why in heck we wanted it. Admittedly, it's not usually the first choice among handspinners and textile crafters, although it's available as ready-to-use yarn, as well as finished products, and there's no reason not to play with it. What I like best about Herdwick is how unlikely a fleece it is, and how its qualities push my creativity. (They push industrial creativity, too: Herdwick wool provides the basis for naturally sourced insulation.)

But I need to get back to work, and I want to show some Herdwick first. The fleece Herdwicks grow consists of several types of fiber: a relatively soft, woolly undercoat that keeps the sheep warm (and independent: they live pretty well without much human intervention); a hairy outercoat that repels water (Herdwick wool gets wet more slowly and dries out faster than other wools); heterotype hairs, which change their character depending on the season (warmer in winter, more moisture-resistant in summer); and kemp, that wiry, stiff, twist-resistant fiber that in most other breeds is strictly discriminated against. In Herdwicks, kemp adds texture that just ups the ante on the game; there's enough that it becomes a factor, rather than a hindrance. These fiber types are so scrambled they resist separation, although you can tease them apart if you work at it.

Color, too: kemp is white, and while Herdwicks are born black they quickly begin turning gray and keep up with a steady lightening effect as they age, always tweedy with a range of shades mixed throughout the fleece (no spots).

Herdwick wool is normally quite long: 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 cm) is pretty usual, longer is possible. My samples were 2.5 to 3.5 inches (6.5 to 9 cm), making them a bit harder to handle than a more average fleece would have been. Nonetheless, I had an enjoyable afternoon and came up with a few bits that show the range of Herdwick:

 

Obviously, the top is a mass of (clean) raw fiber. The tiny medium gray skein on the left is some undercoat, imperfectly removed; it's quite soft, soft enough for a sweater or hat. The larger darker gray skein is the whole caboodle, spun up together. It could be woven into a coat. The light gray bristly skein on the right is mostly kemp and rough hairs, with some of the finer fibers left in to help hold the yarn together. The dimensionality of that yarn gets my idea-mill going.

FANTASTIC texture! And natural color fun. Makes me think of rugs, baskets, hairy bits added to something basically smooth . . . and to wonder how much undercoat I could get out and how it would work up into a sweater. As well as pricking my curiosity about whether the kemp might work in pottery glazing the way horsehair does.

Herdwick sheep heft or heaf to a particular spot of ground, staying put without fencing, and ewes teach lambs where they live. If a piece of land is sold, the sheep go with it. You can't just move another type of sheep onto this landscape because they'd wander all over the place (or need enormous amounts of fencing) and couldn't stand the climate (a few other breeds do well here, but Herdwicks are still outstandingly suited to it). Because of their geographic concentration, the Herdwick population was hard-hit by control efforts for foot-and-mouth disease in 2001.

Herdwicks have a lot to teach us, in many regards: about connection to land, about variety and experimentation, about loyalty and versatility. And about careful stewardship, in many aspects of life.

And now I need to get back to work. Next up is a trip to Kerry Hill (the wool, not the place), which is a totally different spot on the fiber rainbow: all white, just a bit lustrous, crisp but not too crisp, and with quite consistent fibers all in a narrow range of micron counts. . . .

 

Never a dull moment, although some folks might wonder. . . .

Saturwoolday

It's shaping up to be a fine day. One of the things I love about wool is its variety, and what's going into the tub today represents quite a range:

There's Castlemilk Moorit, a very rare breed closely related to Shetlands. The provider of this sample apologized for its second cuts (snippets caused by shearing with two passes) and scurf (I'll skip describing scurf at the moment . . . ), but it's a lovely color, with excellent staple length, and will be just fine when washed and processed:

There's Polwarth from the Falkland Islands . . . not all of the sheep from the Falklands are Polwarths, but a quantity worth noting are . . . fine, with really cool crimp (those wavy contours in, in this case, both individual fibers and locks):

And we finally, finally (thanks to the generosity of friends on a couple of continents) have some Herdwick, giving us an opportunity to consider things like kemp (coarse, dye-resistant fibers) and Mrs. Heelis:

And while the wools are soaking in the tub, with their 20-minute demands for attention and changes of cleansing and rinsing solutions, I have THIS to enjoy:

It's Clara Parkes' new The Knitter's Book of Wool. Just arrived. I've glanced. I love Clara's take on the world, and am so glad she wrote this book.

It's shown on some Suffolk fleece I have here . . . I pulled out a lock at the lower right corner of the book, because it's so nice and long for a Suffolk. In the background is a rug I wove many years ago from Pendleton mill ends. I have a lot of rugs made with those mill ends, picked up at a weaving place in Poulsbo, Washington, long, long ago. They are still trucking. Our older dog "digs" in this one every night, making herself a nest to sleep in.

Snowing out. A good day for enjoying a variety of wools in a variety of ways.

If I get the washing done in time, I might even get to spin or knit some.

Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm: Community Supported Agriculture for fiber folk

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.

• Here's the Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm nomination on the Shine A Light website.
• Here's the farm's own website.

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:

• creating community around the farm, where participants share the risks and the benefits inherent in any agricultural pursuit
• developing a different, more viable, economic model
• setting up a "lambcam" and other resources so folks can stay in touch with what's happening at the farm
• helping other potential shepherds get started, by supplying animals and support
• consulting to folks who'd like to change their ways of doing business to be more rewarding in all regards, including economically
• providing a focal point for "Yarn Storming," where fiber people with excess stash share their abundance with people who are having trouble obtaining materials

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:

• Cormos, which grow very fine, soft, long-stapled wool (ballpark 17-23 microns and 4 inches/10cm long).
• Babydoll Southdowns, which grow a wool that's on the fine side for the Down breeds (ballpark 23-31 microns and 3 inches/7.5cm). These are the variety of Southdown that is closest to the old-style breed, before industrial factors influenced development of the larger, commercial Southdowns.
• Cotswolds, one of the classic (and rare) longwool breeds (ballpark 33-42 microns and 8-10 inches/15-20cm).

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.

____

Images copyright © Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm. Used by permission.

Visiting Soays (rare sheep!)

I'm still on the road—getting ready to leave a motel in Elko, Nevada—so there will be photos here but not much text.

A couple of days ago, I had the pleasure of visiting some folks who have Soay sheep. Soays are as close as we have to the original domesticated sheep. They were located only on one island well offshore of western Scotland, and may have been there for thousands of years. A small population on a rock out being battered by the Atlantic Ocean is vulnerable, so now there are satellite flocks elsewhere.

Priscilla and Steve Weaver at Saltmarsh Ranch have a large satellite flock and are working on maximizing genetic diversity within the breed. Steve is a geneticist. They have both British and American Soay flocks. They are in love with their Soays. It's very easy to see many reasons why.

Soays in the morning:

Soays are tiny sheep, which doesn't exactly show in these photos.

 

Their friend and guardian, Isaac, who is significantly larger than they are:

He keeps coyotes away. There are four guardian dogs with the Soays at Saltmarsh Ranch. I fell in love with Isaac.

Also Molly (Mollie?), the herding associate, who injured a leg recently and has to be on forced rest for a bit.

Although, as you can see, she is always on the alert for a bit of work she might do:

Maybe she could help????? With ANYTHING?????

These Soays are clearing underbrush: eating star thistle and blackberry vines in preference to the grass. They'll eat the grass if all the good weeds are gone.

These are young Soays:

We went out to look over and snap photos of the rams, several of whom are going to other farms fairly soon (with genetically diverse ewes). They are identified as to lineage by the tape on their horns (all Soay rams and many Soay ewes have horns).

 

I have more photos, but I don't have more time at the moment. There's a great article on Soays in the January/February 2008 issue of Hobby Farms magazine.

Yes, Soay wool is fine and spinnable. There isn't much per sheep each year and it tends to be on the short side, and it roos (sheds) instead of being shorn, which makes gathering it a challenge. The quality of the wool, however, is part of what makes Soays the link between wild sheep (which you can see in their coloring and some of their behavior) and early domestication.

And now I-80 calls me again.

Fleeces: variations and consistencies within and between breeds, using the Leicesters as an example

This post will consist of ideas and musings, not pronouncements.

Having been fascinated by breed-specific wools for years, especially the rare breeds that will vanish if we do not have adequate financial support for the shepherds who want to care for flocks of them, I have jumped off the deep end (again) in another study of fibers.

This is the Big Project that I've been talking about. It will result in a book. Carol Ekarius and I are working on it together; I'm responsible for the fiber aspects. Done right, it would take another several decades. We have deadlines (although they have flexed as our vision has expanded, they still exist). The results will not be perfect. However, I tell myself that I've already put several decades of preparatory work into The Project, and whatever I accomplish now will help someone else in the future take this work to its next step (maybe I'll even have the opportunity to take it farther, after The Project has been completed). Similarly, I am, of course, depending on the labors and observations of those who have written down their thoughts and ideas about wool before me.

I'm going to use the Leicesters as an example for this scattered group of thoughts-without-conclusions. In these thoughts, I'm only looking at the wool from these breeds, not all the other aspects of how and why they came to exist as separate entities, what sizes the sheep are, what ecological and cultural niches they fill, and so on.

A quick overview of "the Leicesters"

"The Leicesters" is not an official group of sheep breeds. People who know very little about sheep think all sheep are the same, except most are white and a few are black. People who have dug a little deeper and know about breeds get confused by the Leicesters because of the similarities of their names—Leicester Longwool, Border Leicester, and Bluefaced Leicester. These breeds are, indeed, genetically related. Their wools can be radically different . . . or, in some cases, a bit similar. More different than similar, though, at least when seen from where I'm sitting.

Leicester Longwools came first, a breed refined during the 18th century from early Lincolns and Leicesters (geographic variants of the same ancient breed). They have a lot of other names, including English Leicesters.

Border Leicesters have also been around since the 18th century, but their breeding was based in part on the then-recently-developed Leicester Longwools.

Bluefaced Leicesters are the relative newcomers, having been developed early in the 20th century by selecting Border Leicesters that had "blue" faces (black skin under white wool) and . . . most importantly for fiber folk . . . fine fleeces.

Differences between breeds, looking at "the Leicesters" all at once

Here are some samples from the three breeds (clean locks, shearings from different sheep for each):

It's easy enough to see the relationship between the Leicester Longwool and the coarser (left) lock from the Border Leicester, as well as between the finer (right) Border Leicester and the Bluefaced Leicester.

Variations within a breed: Bluefaced Leicester

The photo also hints that it may be easier to predict what type of fiber you'll get when you have a Bluefaced Leicester fleece, as compared to a Leicester Longwool or a Border Leicester.

Although a sampling of two means nothing, there is a useful bit of information behind the consistency that we think we perceive in these Bluefaced Leicester locks: the breed standards for Bluefaced Leicester are narrowly defined, and the wool tends to be in the range of 24 to 28 microns (equivalent to Bradford counts and USDA grades of 56s to 60s), and the staple lengths are between 8 and 15cm (3 and 6 inches).

Those are, for wools, quite narrow ranges. (And just look at that crimp: all of the Leicesters have delightful crimp, although of different character.)

Differences between breeds: Leicester Longwool and Border Leicester

Here's where matters get complicated and it gets harder to make generalizations.

These are older breeds with less stringent breed society constraints. There's much more variability in the wool right from the start, and that variation is also pushed in specific directions by breeders' preferences, both in their individual goals for their flocks and in different parts of the world. In addition, white and natural-colored sheep don't have the same wool profiles.

Overall, Border Leicesters can be slightly finer than Leicester Longwools, although their micron count and Bradford/USDA ranges very nearly overlap (the finest Border Leicester is not, on paper, quite as fine as the coarsest Bluefaced Leicester, although it's very close). Border Leicesters can also be as strong (or coarse) as Leicester Longwools. (Except for . . . oops, that's a digression for another time.)

Let's say Border Leicesters run from 29.25 to 40 microns (40s to 50s) in the British Isles and North America, and between 32 and 40 microns (36s to 46s) in New Zealand and Australia.

And let's say Leicester Longwools run from 32 to 38 microns (40s to 46s) in the British Isles*, North America, and Australia, and between 37 and 40 microns (36s to 40s) in New Zealand.

* (except for British natural-colored Leicester Longwools, which, according to the British Coloured Sheep Breeders Association, range from 37 to 46 microns [40s+])

Oh, and staple length. Both of these breeds can be shorn twice a year, so depending on whether you are looking at a half-yearly shearing or a full year's growth, you may see between 12.5 and 25cm (5 and 10 inches) for the Border Leicester and between 12.5 and 35cm (5 and 14 inches) for the Leicester Longwool.

There are a lot of possibilities in these two breeds. Yet we can still draw some conclusions. I won't do that now, because that's the work of The Project, and I have to read, spin, and mull a lot for each breed in order to come up with something resembling conclusions. I'll probably be right in my conclusions part of the time, and wrong part of the time. I hope there won't be much of the latter, but I also hope that whatever "wrongness" ends up in The Project spurs someone else to dig even deeper.

Wool in the hand

Numbers can be helpful, but spinning the fibers tells so much more. It has seemed to me, over time, that fibers with exactly the same numerical identifiers—micron count, staple length, and so on—can feel significantly different, likely because of differences in the patterns of the scales on the surface of the fiber, possibly the way the cells that make up the insides of the fiber are arranged, and other things we don't usually get to look at in detail.

Nor do we need to, if we take each fleece in front of us on its own terms, having trusted (and trained) our fingers to feel the individuality of THIS fleece by comparing it to other fleeces we've spun before. (The same goes for working with commercially spun breed-specific yarns, although some of the most subtle individualities are smoothed over in large-batch processing.)

Leicester Longwool

Glorious, lustrous, heavy in the hand, Leicester Longwool makes me think of rugs, and durable bags, and how beautiful and clear the colors will be when it is dyed . . . because of that luster. It could also be used to make interesting large-scale laces. It could make a lovely, nicely draping blanket, and for someone who is into making home furnishings it would also make great pillow or upholstery fabric—very hard-wearing! There's something about that crimp, too, that wants to be part of a fleece rug or heavily textured tapestry . . . especially in that shorter fleece on the right.

If I decided not to use the locks as locks or simply flick them open and then spin, I would comb both of these fleeces, to keep the fibers parallel and thus conserve as much of the shine as possible all the way through to the finished yarn. I'd use my Viking combs (I love my Viking combs). The fleece on the left would be challenging to comb, because of its length—not something for a beginner. It would require very long strokes to keep it from tangling. The fleece on the right would be better for someone who is either new to combing or impatient.

Border Leicester

With Border Leicester, I'd have to do more evaluation before planning a project or the preparation technique. At the finer end of the breed's wool range (something like the fleece on the right), I might be inspired to make a hard-wearing everyday sweater or mittens or socks. At the coarser end, I'd be looking again (like the Leicester Longwool) at sturdy rugs or bags, wall hangings, and the like. A coarser fleece with long staples (like the one on the left) could be used to make a fleece rug or blanket. There is plenty of luster to these fibers and they will show off dyed colors very nicely.

That longer fleece on the left would require some experience to comb. It might be fun to simply flick the locks open at both ends and spin. See the different length samples in the fleece on the right? It would be best to sort that fleece and prepare the different sections in different ways. The shorter bits might be carded and the longer ones combed.

The fleece on the right could become a nice sweater. The one on the left would, perhaps, rather be spun fine and woven into a coat.

Bluefaced Leicester

As we've noted, the Bluefaced Leicesters are more predictable, although husbandry, health, and weather all can produce fleeces that don't fit the regular profile.

  

The wool from Bluefaced Leicesters is soft enough to be used for next-to-skin wear. It will make lovely sweaters, scarves, mittens, gloves, blankets—it's easy to see why this wool is so popular (and it's easy to forget that there are jobs the other Leicesters can do much better). The staples are often long enough to comb, and some fleeces might be amenable to carding as well. Again, the luster means dyed colors will be clear and bright.

Conclusions, which I said I wasn't going to provide

The Leicesters share some genetics, and propensities toward luster, well-defined crimp, and enough staple length to suggest spinning from the lock, flicking, or combing as the first ideas about preparation for spinning.

Yet depending on which breed you select and which individual's fleece (from which year) you have, you could end up deciding to make anything from an heirloom-durable rug to a lacy camisole.

Moving to and from an off-site workspace for The Project

I haven't been posting much lately, having been slammed by deadlines from all sides . . . not including the deadline for The Project, on which I recently spent a blissfully concentrated week. I have a few additional photos of that endeavor.

Easily amused, I enjoy the pictures of how the car looked, coming and going. Rotating around the doors, beginning with the front passenger side:

Of course, that's the spinning wheel on top (Lendrum folding, single-treadle). Yes, it's belted in. Its top end rests on the box of reference books that went with me. Its lower end sits on one of the boxes of fiber. The blue sticky notes mean the fiber came to me clean. The green notes mean it came to me in the grease. A black checkmark means the fiber is clean and ready for me to work with. A big green dot means I've put it through all the necessary steps. Big green dots are good. They don't mean I'm done, but they mean I'm about three-quarters of the way there. My Cowichan-style sweater is tucked into the gap, along with an old blue towel. Old towels come in very handy on The Project. The white thing next to the towel, right under the dash, was probably my lunch, wrapped in a paper towel.

Moving to the next door, the rear passenger side:

The red bag in the distance is my suitcase. It also went to Maryland on this trip, so it held enough for ten days away from home. The wood-and-metal structure is my daughter's high chair/toddler seat, which makes an excellent stand for wool combs and is friendly to have around. But I wouldn't pack it if it didn't do the job better than anything else I could imagine having access to. Within its frame is a cardboard box of labeling materials for wool at various stages (sticky notes, adhesive labels, string tags, index cards, old business cards, and plastic ziplock bags in quart and gallon sizes). On top of that is a small blue plastic box of food: cereal, soups, Teeccino, along with brewing supplies, and tea (Good Earth Original, black, green, and Celestial Seasonings' Fast Lane.

On the floor is one of my knitting/crochet bags, with a bit of stray (clean) wool in a bag above it (I try to avoid stray bags of wool: this is clean wool bits left from combing, that I'll use to stuff something with). The atlas is just behind it: within reach of the front, if needed (there are also maps in both of the front doors' pockets). The black-with-blue bag on top is Computer Central Backpack.

Moving to the back of the car:

This is the core of the work. I can fit 12 file boxes in the back and still have full rear-view mirror scanning available. The green boxes contain the final record files. The white ones contain samples and clean wool ready to be processed (I didn't transport any boxes that were not ready for this step). That top box on the left in the row that can be seen was a bit overfull, but there was no room to put the excess in any other box. Tucked into the right side are my yoga mat and my rain jacket. There's something under the yoga mat, but I don't remember what it was. Behind them, aligned with the 6 white file boxes that aren't visible, is a case with two pairs of Viking combs (one-row and two-row).

Along the rear bumper on the left is the open toolbox, with three sets of carders (regular, fine full-sized, and cotton), spritzers, C-clamps, sample-size niddy noddy, four spindles, and Louet mini-combs. The cardboard box contains the master file of fiber inventory (index cards in a plastic box—I also have electronic records, but this is often handier) and more labeling and packaging materials. Oh, and I see the tip of the Eucalan bottle. I'm using Unicorn Power Scour, Unicorn Fiber Rinse, and Eucalan unscented at various stages of this project. (My daughter's aversion to lavender influences some of my choices.) Next to that: hand vac. I travel with a hand vac, specifically chosen to handle dog hair and fiber decently (although cleaning the roller is not my favorite job).

Moving to the rear driver's side door:

The suitcase (already seen from the other side) and an essential cardboard box whose contents I don't remember right now—oh! I'll bet it was the lazy kate and three extra bobbins, among other things, both above the pile of reusable shopping bags (wrapped around a few more groceries that needed some insulation). I think there might have been a small cooler under that pile. And on top, a planter (which made it home safe and sound)—thanks, Susan! The suitcases and boxes kept the planter upright and kept it from being crushed. The load was packed so nothing would shift en route.

And finally:

Room for a driver, with unimpeded visibility and movement options. Along with the green travel cup (containing tea or water), there's probably an apple or two. Just the other side of the console is a tiny space on the floor with CDs, although I usually drive without any additional car-noise input. Camera and purse are nearby, for easy access during stops.

And that's how The Project travels.

Suffolk and gray not-Suffolk, revisited

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.