The Independent Stitch

Shipping wool internationally

Carol Ekarius, co-author with me of The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, was our primary coordinator of obtaining samples that I then analyzed, washed, recorded, and spun. Therefore she's the one who needed to figure out the logistics and legalities of moving wool, in the quantities we needed, across various types of boundaries.

She wrote up her findings. I've added some links and the 2012 update of countries' Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) status; the need to prevent the spread of FMD is the reason for caution in transferring animal products between countries.

In short: It's easy to ship wool. You can make it VERY easy by knowing what the regulations are and putting a couple of extra sheets of paper inside your package. For the most part, the papers aren't necessary and the wool goes through without a hitch (as it should). But we're all about preventing problems, whenever possible. (Moving meat products across borders is a whole different issue.)

________________________

Getting Your Raw Wool Fix from Far Away:
Or, importing raw fleeces to where you call home from foreign ports of call. . . .

by Carol Ekarius, co-author of The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook

I have seen a few questions popping up in places where people are talking about The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook that go something like, “Now I am finding out about all these breeds, I’d like to be able to [buy/sell] fleeces to or from [fill in the name of a locale]. Can I order them from overseas and have them shipped in, or are there issues with importing raw wool?”

I actually looked into this somewhat as we were working on the book thanks to a conversation I had with Tim Booth, our wonderful friend at the British Wool Marketing Board (BWMB). Tim went above and beyond the call of duty to (with the help of some other BWMB staff) get us many fleece samples and photos for some tougher-to-find British breeds. He said that BWMB was a bit cautious about sending fleeces to the United States because they sometimes got held up at customs, and occasionally rejected. Rejects got shipped back, which cost a bunch of money on what is still a low-value commodity overall.

Was I familiar with the regulations? he asked me.

“Not offhand, but I’ll find out,” I responded.

Importing to the United States

I called the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (it’s called APHIS for short). I was quickly connected with a veterinarian who said it is fine to import wool from many countries, as long as it isn’t covered in blood or manure. He explained that there are countries where Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) is active, and those countries have a few more considerations that have to be taken into account, but those that are FMD-free—including the United Kingdom—should not be a problem.

I told him Tim’s story of shipments that were turned around by U.S. Customs, and he said sometimes the customs agents, who actually do the inspections, may not understand the rules regarding wool. He told me to check out the Animal Product Manual chapter on Hides and Related Byproducts and he suggested that I send Tim the link with a note to check tables 3.7.14 through 3.7.17 (these charts are available at our Fleece & Fiber website), and he also suggested that the best way to ensure that customs agents know what to do is to include a written statement (see the sample) that this was raw wool from a healthy animal from an FMD-free country (notarized if you are concerned about validating fully), and include the table that shows the customs agent that he or she should release the fleece from customs with no problem so long as it is free from blood.

Lo and behold, these tables are a great resource. They help quickly clarify the process for fibers coming into the United States from FMD-free or FMD-troubled countries. Blood and excess manure are to be diligently avoided, but if you are buying fleece for handspinning, you sure as heck want it to be well skirted, and there should never be any appreciable blood stains on a fleece from a well-sheared critter.

So, if someone in an FMD-free country (list at the bottom of this post) wants to sell wool to someone in the United States, copy the first chart (3.7.14) and include it in the package, along with your statement that this is raw wool from [type of animal] (usually sheep, but could be goat, musk ox, yak, alpaca, or other ungulate not protected as a threatened and endangered species), grown in an FMD-free country. If you are in an FMD-troubled country, include the appropriate chart, and no matter which chart you are using, use a yellow highlighter to emphasize the correct decision mode.

Here's a link to the APHIS publication listing foreign countries and their disease status (including FMD) as of January 2012. It's the resource from which we developed the list included in this post. If you are reading that original APHIS document, note that some requirements (marked FMD/SR) apply to meat-based products only.

Exporting from the United States

This gets a bit more complicated for me, because each country has its own rules, but for European Union (EU) countries, I can define the current status. On February 25, 2011, the EU Commission adopted Regulation No. 142/2011, which allows that “fully treated” hair or wool can be imported into the EU countries from the U.S. and no documentation or APHIS approval is required. The U.S.-based exporter should have the European importer confirm in advance with the Border Inspection Post (BIP), through which the product will enter the EU, that the hair/wool is considered fully treated. In general hair/wool is considered by the EU to be fully treated if the wool/hair has undergone factory washing or been obtained as a by-product of the tanning of hides/skins. Hair or wool that is not “fully treated” doesn’t require shipment certification either, but it must be shipped from a U.S. facility that has been inspected and approved by APHIS Veterinary Services to ship untreated hair/wool to the EU. You can find a list of these facilities at https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/sanco/traces/output/listsPerActivity_en.htm#

The other suggestion from the U.S. veterinarian is to contact the relevant country's agricultural service (in Britain, this is DEFRA, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and ask if they need an import permit. He also suggested that you can check with United States embassy in your country and ask for the trade or import/export department, which may be able to help.

—Carol Ekarius

 

KDTV: Washing wool

I still need to write the third post about the numbers in The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook, but I'm prepping to teach at Madrona and it's all-consuming.

Yet here's a loooooong post that was published on the Knitting Daily TV site today. I'm taking the unusual step of presenting it here as well, because it involved a lot of work and because I want to alert my blog readers that if they go to the KDTV site and leave a comment by noon Central Time on Monday, February 13, they might win some Unicorn Fibre Wash, Unicorn Fibre Rinse, and Unicorn Power Scour.

I've just watched the KDTV video segment on cleaning wool, and considering that host Eunny Jang and I work entirely unscripted and that I wasn't able to get the specific background information I wanted from some sources in time for the taping, I think we did a pretty darn good job. (You may notice my slight discomfort in the situation because of the number of vocal pauses―um―in this segment. I need to learn to relax and trust that I do know enough about fibers to fill a five-minute spot on the spur of the moment, even when I didn't get the info I wanted!)

Anyway, this post contains useful information about cleaning wool. My study of the topic has come up with even more cool stuff that I'll need to write up another time.

I really like the Unicorn products. I'm not paid to say that—not paid here, not paid when I appear in the KDTV episodes that they sponsor, and not paid for the ad they've been running—although Unicorn has helped out with my research by sending me Power Scour to use once they figured out that I think it's great and am happy to say so.

_____________

Washing wool

I love washing wool, whether it's fleece I'm going to spin, a newly finished garment whose beauty will be revealed after its first bath-and-blocking, or a loyal garment that has earned refreshment.

Freshly shorn wool may be the most fun to wash, because of its dramatic transformation. The grease that coats the fibers when the sheep is using the fleece to keep herself warm through the winter is still soft, resilient, and relatively easy to remove. I think of the animal, freshly released from this seasonally necessary burden to enjoy the spring air (and to begin growing next winter's blanket), and I think of the fabrics I will make from her hand-me-downs to keep other beings cosy in the future.

Even long-stored fleece can be rewarding to put through the washing process, which releases it from a stiff accompaniment of old grease and dust. Although it's best to wash wool soon after shearing, in part because moths especially savor the "extras" that are removed when the fiber is cleaned, as long as you can keep pests away you can safely store wool for many years.

Here's Emma's fleece when she was done with it, on its first trip into the warm water that begins my washing process:

• START OF CYCLE, when the wool has ONLY been soaked in warm water. The dark brown in the center tray is water soluble dirt and suint, formerly in the wool that's in the tray on the right. The wool in the tray on the left is still soaking.

It's easy to imagine that Emma would want to start over with fresh growth!

Emma is a Leicester Longwool sheep, a breed known for its long, shiny, strong fiber. The beauty of the wool becomes apparent after about two hours of soaking in a series of baths, beginning and ending with plain-water versions, and with two or three in the middle that are infused with a washing agent.

 

 

• END OF CYCLE after use of washing aid. Again, the tray of wool on the right has been pulled out of the center tray, and the one on the left awaits draining. You'll notice some color variation still in the wool. It's all clean, however. This cycle consisted of (1) two plain-water rinses, (2) two soaks with washing aid, and (3) two plain-water rinses. Each bath was 20 minutes long, for a total of two hours of washing, although my active involvement only occurred at each transition point, removing the upper draining tray, changing the solution, and re-immersing the fiber. All water temperatures were standard-issue from the household system, which is not set to be exceptionally hot—about 135°F.

I've described the details of my washing process elsewhere. Today I want to talk briefly about the transition from dirty to clean, mostly for fleece but also for garments.

 

These are both Emma's wool, from the same shearing: as shorn (dirty) on the left and after its trip through my bathtub (clean) on the right.

Washing or scouring?

Washing is what I just talked about. The process of cleaning raw wool is also sometimes called scouring, a term used in industry to include the removal of all contaminants from wool―scouring is "washing plus."

What might the contaminants in wool be? I say might because not every fleece will have all of these, and each fleece will have contaminants in differing types and proportions.

The big three, present to some extent in every fleece, are:

• wool wax or wool grease
• suint
• dirt

Wool wax or grease is not water-soluble. It provides a protective coating, and, in general, the finer the wool the more grease it contains. It's the hardest of the three main contaminants to remove. That's the point for the sheep! It shouldn't be easy to remove!

Suint (think "sweat") is water-soluble―even in cold water. When we're washing wool, it's the easiest contaminant to get rid of.

Dirt is soil, and can be dust or mud. It can be sandy, or full of clay, or may correspond to any of the gardener's or farmer's other options, and it can be easy or hard to remove, although most of it isn't too bad. (Clay, of course, is most difficult, as it seems to be for growing plants where I live.)

Vegetable matter (or VM) is another contaminant that comes in many varieties. For hand processing, VM isn't, for the most part, removed during the washing sequence and its evaluation and management is a topic for another day. In industrial processing, treatment to remove VM occurs during the scouring sequence and involves a delicate sequence of chemical and mechanical maneuvers to get the plant material out without damaging the wool―a different topic for another day (although I talk about it some in the KDTV segment).

Some other contaminants―like dung tags, urine stains, marker dye, and insects―should have been removed before the fleece ever reached the washing or scouring stage.

What to use as a washing aid?

For the intermediate steps of cleaning wool, whether raw or spun or made into fabric, we have many choices in washing aids. I've used a number of them over the years. At this point, I have several criteria for the agent that I use. Oddly, they all start with E!

I want it to be effective, efficient to use, economical, and as environmentally benign as possible.

That means that I look for a washing assistant that

• is concentrated so I don't need to use large quantities
• creates minimal suds (which are hard to rinse out, wasting both time and water)
• does not subject the wool to significant and potentially damaging pH shifts
• works at moderate heat levels even for fine wools (in order to reduce the potential of fiber damage, and so I don't have to be boiling water or otherwise wasting energy)
• cleans by bonding with the waxy or greasy particles, drawing them off the fiber and into the water so they can be rinsed away, instead of being knocked off through agitation (which can result in unintended felt, as well as more work for me)
• does not involve enzymes (which continue to be chemically active even after they've been discarded) and
• contains no ingredients classified as toxic.

I now use washing agents that are specially formulated for use with wool.

Dishwashing detergents and shampoos create annoying amounts of suds. I'd rather avoid the perfumes and colorants that many cosmetic products contain—and they suds a lot, too. Laundry detergents often contain brighteners, enzymes, and other ingredients I consider extraneous at best and damaging at worst. Some components of laundry detergents are actually designed to break down proteins (to get out stains like blood or egg), and animal-source natural fibers are also proteins. It is interesting to check these products' Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) or, for some items, the information in the Household Products Database maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ("Inside the Home" and "Personal Care" categories).

I wash all my natural animal fibers at between 50 and 60°C (120 and 140°F), preferably on the lower end. Wool wax, the stickiest contaminant to remove, melts at 35–40°C (95–104°F) and damage to protein fibers can occur at higher temperatures. The length of time that fiber is exposed to high temperatures, and the pH of the environment, matter a great deal. Dyeing fibers involves balancing these factors in exchange for a rainbow.

Undyed handspun Leicester Longwool samples.

________________

A practical footnote and a random fact

Footnote
Here's a quick note about washing fine wools in their raw form: When wool wax is dissolved, its chemical composition changes. If the temperature of the bath cools, the grease can be redeposited on the fiber as a scum that can be substantially more difficult to remove than it was in its original form.

Random fact
Lanolin is produced from a portion of the wool grease recovered from scouring liquid.

Two excellent resources

Simpson, W. S., and G. H. Crawshaw. Wool: Science and Technology. Boca Raton, FL, and Cambridge, England: CRC Press Woodhead, 2002.

von Bergen, Werner. Wool Handbook: A Text and Reference Book for the Entire Wool Industry. 3d enl. ed. New York: Interscience Publishers, 1963.
_________________________

 

Swatch knitted from yarn grown by Emma's Leicester Longwool flock mates, commercially spun.

For more on Leicester Longwool sheep, see "On the Edge: How a Handful of People Have Preserved Some Rare, Valuable Sheep and Their Wools," PieceWork, November/December 2011. Or, of course, The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook. And Leicester Longwool will be one of the breeds I'm including in the Explore 4 retreat in Friday Harbor, Washington, in March! Yes, that's why I have been washing Emma's wool. We'll be working with it. (Curious? Download Explore-4_2012 PDF)

KDTV - I've never embedded a video before

I have one more post on The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook's numbers to write, but I'm up past my ears in prepping to teach at Madrona. I have three of the five handouts prepared. I can do the slide shows while I'm traveling, because they don't need to be printed. I do have templates for the workshops I teach, but I never know what breeds will be included in the workshop materials until the last minute. So . . . the work has to happen shortly before the event.

Meanwhile, KDTV has been releasing on the web the episodes from the new series, which is 800. I recorded three segments last September, of which I've now seen two.

One is on yarns that pill. I spent a chunk of the summer knitting and "distressing" swatches. Assuming I can figure out how to embed the video, here's how that piece came out.

 

Another segment which I enjoyed doing is the one on yak. There's a lot to know about yak. When I researched for the book, I found a lot of great information. Some of the neatest facts ended up in this short KDTV spot.

 

And now I have another handout to get to work on. I'm even skipping the monthly ukulele group meeting this morning because I'm feeling far enough behind to need every minute.

(There was an unexpected addition to the Madrona schedule this week, relating to the charity-knitting event that is coordinated by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. I can't believe I agreed to do what I agreed to do. However, it's for a good cause. It did take a full day to put together—with some work yet to come, which my daughter has offered to help with. I hope she wasn't kidding. Anyway, that set me behind on the prep for the workshops.)

Hoping the videos embed successfully. The first time I tried, I discovered that if I previewed the post, nothing showed up where they were supposed to be. While bashing around trying to figure out what to do differently, I came up with two other solutions. They both seem to work. I used different methods for each of the videos. We'll see what happens.

For series 800 I did one other segment, which I was least satisfied with when we were in the studio and I haven't seen yet. (Okay, I'll come right out and say it: I was so dissatisfied with it that I flew home thinking, "I will never again do another TV segment. On anything. Ever.") I'm writing a blog post for KDTV on the same topic (it will be up next week), so I'll feel like I've provided some useful information, which I didn't feel like I'd done in the studio situation. The producer was happy with what went on for that segment. I was not. I can figure out how to embed that video, but I'm not ready to!

In all of these, I think I look strange in studio makeup. When you meet me in person, I am highly unlikely to look like this. I made the mistake of showing the wonderful friend who cuts my hair a photo from the studio. He said, "Wow, you should do that every day!"

NO WAY. I'd rather write, spin, read, or take the dogs for an extra walk.

______

That took longer than it should have. First you have to figure out how to embed the stuff. Then you have to figure out how to make it display correctly within the blog. I didn't succeed the first time. Or the second. Final assessment: marginally okay. Giving up for now, though.

Choosing the breeds for Explore 4

For the survey classes on wools that I teach (on both general breed-specific wools and rare-breed wools), I aim to have a variety of types of sheep represented in the fibers I collect to share with people. The final line-up always involves an interesting balancing act, limited by what's available when the fiber-gathering takes place:

• representing different parts of the available fiber world (geographically speaking)
• long / short
• crimpy / wavy / straight
• supple / sturdy
• matte / shiny
• single-coated / diverse fiber mix
• butter-soft / warmly lofty, and, for fun,
• in different colors

Choosing and acquiring the four breeds for the Explore 4 workshop that I'll be teaching in March, where we will focus on a single breed each day, has required the same careful assessment of which will complement each other in ways both obvious and subtle. In this case, I need to cover the broad set of bases with a handful of choices.

It's been a fun challenge, and as of yesterday I've lined up the crew! I've got my breeds, and I've also got the specific fleeces, selected for qualities like individual character and color.

Now—because this is the way I work, with the fiber we'll have in our hands preceding everything else—I can start to prepare detailed background information on the breeds. For the survey courses I teach, I already have the materials roughed out and I refine and adjust them when I know which specific breeds will be included. Yet Explore 4 provides a welcome excuse to present even richer stories about these breeds' history and characteristics.

For Explore 4, we'll be getting to know:

• Black Welsh Mountain (black, of course),
• Leicester Longwool (shiny white and long),
• Navajo Churro (this one will be gray), and
• Romney (I'm getting a brown one: brown Romneys aren't common, and the breed produces gorgeous shades).

The first three are rare breeds, and the fourth is a classic.

That's a Black Welsh Mountain sheep; I took the photo at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival a few years ago during the Parade of Breeds. (Last year, my camera wasn't working right and I missed a lot of good pictures, although I have some. I'll be there again this year and will see if I can do better. Same camera, hopefully working more reliably.)

I've already been washing the Leicester Longwool, which I bought at a freeway stop in Oregon last August. (I just needed a few yards of yarn, but I couldn't resist the raw wool.) Isn't it beautiful when it's released from its covering of grease, suint, and garden-variety dirt? The top and bottom in the next photo are the same fleece. All I did was wash it! Yet the luster and potential are clearly evident in the just-shorn state. (Um, the bottom is the clean portion {grin}.)

Speaking of washing, I've been asked to write some background information on how wool gets cleaned for a couple of upcoming online posts on other websites. (I'll try to remember, when these go live, to mention them, either here or on Twitter, where I'm @effortlesszone.)

I do love the transformation that happens in the tub. It's magic. And it's the start of a whole bunch of other magic.

* * * * *

Detail-y stuff, for those who want to know:

I'll be conducting survey workshops—expeditiously covering as many breeds as we can fit into the scheduled hours—at the Madrona Winter Retreat (in Tacoma, Washington) in February, and later in the year at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival (schedule not posted as of when I'm writing), Olds College Fibre Week (Canada; registrations open March 1), Convergence 2012 (California; registration open now), and the Weavers Guild of Minnesota (registration open now). I'll also be teaching at The Spinning Loft (Michigan) in the fall, although we haven't decided what topic(s) we'll feature.

In addition, Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook co-author Carol Ekarius and I may be doing a couple of informational programs (not hands-on workshops) together at one 2012 event. We have a good time working together, so we've agreed to see if we can get it onto our schedules. I'll provide details when they're firmed up.

Registration numbers for all my classes and workshops are limited, yet openings do occur—one workshop that sold out on its opening day ended up having a space freed up a couple of months later. It's worth checking back. For all of these workshops, only basic spinning skills and equipment (listed in the descriptions) are necessary. It's all about starting where we are and moving to the next level.

Speaking of moving skills to the next level, I THINK I've figured out how to make the basic information for Explore 4 available here: click to download a PDF about Explore-4_2012. We've got a fantastic group coming together and there are still some spaces available for folks to join in.

* * * * *

All of the photos of wool in this post, from raw to knitted swatch, are Leicester Longwool. I do need to get a good picture of the Leicester Longwool sheep at Maryland! The photo with the skeins shows a couple of handspuns. I knitted the swatch from commercially prepared yarn.

Spinning Lincoln wool in the sunshine

It's a crisp day in the Rocky Mountains. I'm tucked into a bright space warmed by sunshine. I've been spinning Lincoln, which is one of the English luster longwools. They're called lustrous because they're brilliantly shiny. Yesterday I spun singles. Today I began combining them into a two-ply strand.

The three wraps of thicker, more matte, yarn on the right are part of the leader, or the length of yarn that stays on the bobbin as a starter. When the early morning sun came through the window at just the right angle, the contrast with the Lincoln was so dramatic that I stopped spinning and got out my camera.

The more Lincoln, the more the bobbin gleamed:

Lincoln is listed as a rare breed of sheep by both the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (North America) and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (British Isles). The realization that Lincolns were among the endangered breeds was what initially pushed me into learning more about the conservation of livestock.

The wool is long-stapled: each Lincoln sheep grows a lot of fiber in the course of a year. These sheep are sometimes shorn twice annually to keep the lengths manageable.

For the yarn I've been spinning, I combed the locks on my two-row St. Blaise combs. Sometimes people complain that there's a lot of waste from combing. There can be, depending on the fleece you're using and your techniques. But here's the waste from my combing of this Lincoln sample:

1 - A second cut.

2 - A bit of wool that didn't get completely clean (stuck together).

3 - Some short bits.

I could have salvaged 2 and 3, except that I'm spinning for a deadline. Most of the fiber in the batch ended up in the top that I pulled off the combs and spun into the bobbin shown above. Yet it's true that a fair amount was left in the tines, too short or tangled to be included in the top. I set those clumps aside each time I had pulled a length of top. When I was done preparing the top but before I set about spinning it, I picked the "leftovers" well to loosen any jumbled bits, and then I turned them into a small randomly textured skein, shown below with some classic Lincoln locks: shiny, gently waving, strong, and long (these are 6 to 7 inches/15 to 18cm).

Lincoln comes in a magical array of grays, too, but that's a story for another day, one without a pressing deadline.

Deadline or not, though, spinning Lincoln transforms ordinary moments into bright ones.

Mini book tour, with slush

Last May, I began the process of scheduling a mini book tour this week. It's all set up and announced. It's "local," which means "in the same state that I live in." For a Westerner, quite a bit of ground can be covered by that definition.

Last night it started snowing (again), with a prediction for 6 or 7 (more) inches (12.5 to 14 cm). By morning, that much new white stuff was on the ground, and I was scheduled to drive 200 miles across some mountain passes that I know well enough to be very cautious about when the weather is bad. I've driven them in fog, sleet, rain, and snow—experiences I prefer to avoid, if possible.

After less than an ideal night's sleep, I optimistically dug out the car and cleared the driveway and sidewalks, poked at the tree branches again to knock off as much snow as I could, and then signed onto the excellent road-conditions website sponsored and maintained by the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT). The CDOT map is most useful and gets updated frequently. Road conditions are color-coded, so it's really easy to see what the surfaces are like. There is, however, no topographical information, so "icy and flat" and "icy with 7% grade" look the same. This is where it's good to have experience with the roads you're considering.

I noted that parts of I-25 and I-70 were closed, although not the parts I planned to use. Highway 85 north of Greeley was black (adverse conditions = in my words "you'd be really stupid to drive this road right now"). Most of the roads I would need were bright blue (icy = "cars are going off the road and being wrapped in yellow caution tape until the weather clears and the tow trucks are less busy; expect to see on average one abandoned vehicle, many of them 4WD, every half mile").

Highway 285, a crucial part of my route, was decorated with at least a half-dozen of the red circle icons that mean "restriction." The detailed information on those locations indicated that trucks, and along some stretches smaller vehicles, were being required by law to use chains. The highway wasn't closed, but when chain laws are in effect wise people don't join the melee unless it's an emergency, they have a bit of extra time to spend, and their tires are in great shape. Maybe they even have chains (and use them) themselves. The two sections of road that can be particularly ugly to drive (although spectacularly beautiful) are Crow Hill and Kenosha Pass. Those were, of course, included in the restricted areas. So was Turkey Creek Canyon, which is sometimes a clear part of the road even when the rest is not so good.

There is an alternate route, taking I-25 farther south (bright blue/icy all the way) and then angling over toward Penrose and crossing Wilkerson Pass, instead of Kenosha. Wilkerson has less precipitous grades and doesn't have Crow Hill east of it. The roads through that area were a mix of bright blue (icy), blue (snow), and green (wet, rain, slush), and there were no restrictions in place.

Yet Kenosha is southwest-facing (it would get sun, if there was any) and the plows would be out. It's the shorter route. I know it better. So I waited a couple of hours, and the chain-law restrictions were lifted and more of the road became blue, and some of it even green. "Rain" and "slush" mean "the stuff's melting."

The familiar route won. And it was all fine.

Here are some Crow Hill photos:

There was some slush. This wasn't the worst of it. I was glad I'd bought, and installed, new front windshield wipers yesterday. (I got strong wiper blades: on a previous trip through this area, I'd had to find an auto parts store mid-journey and get sturdier ones.) I need to put a rear wiper blade into the budget for next month. The biggest difficulties occurred when the slush kicked up and instantly froze on the glass. The new wipers handled that just fine, though. (At times, I had about 10 square inches (65cm²) of back window free of ice.)

Kenosha Pass was dry and clear, with the usual view-to-almost-forever. You can't tell, though, that there are 14,000-foot (4250m) peaks out there because they're covered in clouds.

Toward the south end of South Park, the day got brighter, with some sunshine breaks coming through.

On the drive, I saw two splendid herds of pronghorn. There were about a dozen stunning ones standing in a cluster just north of the Buffalo Peaks turnoff. If there hadn't been a semi right behind me, I would have found a place to pull off (not much trustworthy shoulder today) and snapped a picture. There was a smaller group not far from Salida.

Tomorrow night, I'll be part of Dies Librorum (the day of books) at The Book Haven independent bookstore in Salida. RSVPs are required, and there will be music, a couple of authors, and good food. Oops, when I went to retrieve the link, I learned that the event is FULL! Well, that will be fun! I'll be interested in seeing who turns up. Party!

Anyway, you can see how nice the day was when I reached Salida in the late afternoon. Perfect.

On Saturday afternoon between 1 and 3, I'll be at Serendipity Yarn and GIfts in Buena Vista. Buena Vista is a few miles back toward home, and on my outbound trip today I took a side jaunt to pick up some yarn (because I didn't have enough, right?).

Liz Gipson will be at Serendipity on Saturday, too, and we'll likely be playing with fiber in the upstairs. There's a whole lot of yarn in that yellow house, and an amazing selection of gift items, too. No advance planning or RSVPs needed. If you're in the area, come visit with us. Bring your knitting or spinning or weaving (if it's portable, as Liz's often is) or your questions about fiber. We like to talk about fiber.

I have a spinning wheel with me, and a couple of deadlines to work toward while I'm doing this. However, I also plan to enjoy a little quiet time when I'm not at an event.

Like now.

____

Oh, two other things:

Today's Spinning Daily newsletter is called "Tools for Writing a (Rather Large) Fiber Book." It's about The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook, as regular readers of this blog might imagine.

And some folks have decided that this month is Wovember, not November, and are dedicating the time to raising people's awareness of how wonderful wool is. Yes! Natural fibers! There are great sheep photos on the website. I keep opening the page I linked to, seeing that Herdwick, and smiling. Thanks to Valerie for letting me know about this.

A good friend of mine would like me to remind folks that llamas also produce delightful, practical, and warm natural fiber. She's right.

And we can't forget the yaks, mohair and cashmere goats, musk oxen. . . . (See The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook for the remainder of the list I just started.)

____

Stay warm. I am.

Teaching 2012

In a recent post, I mentioned that I am taking an online class on teaching. That's because I love doing it, but have been an infrequent teacher for the past several decades. I'm looking toward a number of teaching opportunities next year, and I want them to be the best possible experiences for everyone involved.

I so enjoy the people I meet by teaching workshops on topics I'm passionate about. One of my fantasies involves figuring out how to be part of a gathering that lets me introduce to each other the people who came to Scotland, those who were in California, those who found their way to New Hampshire, those who will be making pilgrimages to future workshops. . . .

It was truly a source of joy for me to hear that a group of the people in my workshops at UK Knit Camp last year immediately formed the Blacker and Beyond group on Ravelry to stay in touch with each other, and they are coordinating activities to increase awareness of (and markets for) rare-breed wools. (Ravelry has free memberships. If you're already a member, here's a direct link to Blacker and Beyond. The group is named for Sue Blacker's Blacker Yarns and Blacker Designs, because she generously donated most of the materials for our workshops.)

And now I've learned that twenty folks from the recent SOAR (Spin-Off Autumn Retreat) events have organized a year-long (or more) spin-along experience to take them more deeply into the breeds that I only had time to tantalize them with in our brief time together a few weeks ago.

I get happy chills when I find out about these things. They make what I'm doing worthwhile.

___

Here's what I normally look like when teaching:

That was at SOAR a couple of weeks ago. I have a few photos of workshop participants to help myself remember the wonderful vibe in the room, but I don't put pictures of other people out in the wide world without permission, and I'm always so involved with the wool that I forget to ask for permission. Oh, well!

Here's what I looked like for a fancy gig (KDTV taping, with professional television make-up—Note to family: I figured I'd better identify myself so you would know who it was):

____

Over the past several months, I've been negotiating agreements and arranging for supplies for next year's teaching. It takes a LOT of advance planning and help to stage the wool-centric workshops that people have been wanting and that I enjoy presenting. Because of the amount of work that happens behind the scenes, the number of presentations I can make is limited, and 2012 is already booked up. (We have several more months of logistics to complete for the workshops already on the calendar.)

I want to make an announcement about next year's teaching here, now, because later this week Spinning Daily (an e-newsletter from Interweave Press) will have a post with information on The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook and it will link to my workshop page. I want the people who read my blog to hear about things first! I've delayed putting this information up because I've been so busy . . . teaching (and getting ready to teach). Funny. Anyway.

The events will vary in the lengths of the workshops (3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours, or more); the topics covered; the number of breeds included; the number of participants; and the teaching/learning environment. Also, of course, in the costs, although I almost never have any control over that piece of the equation of attending. More details on dates and links to the sponsors' websites are on the aforementioned workshop page. If you have questions about a particular event's individual characteristics, feel free to contact me.

____

Here's my 2012 teaching overview

February 2012: Madrona Fiber Arts, Tacoma, Washington—I'll be doing a banquet talk on the little project that grew (The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook), workshop sessions on both rare-breed wools and breed-specific yarns for knitters and/or spinners (in other words, some sessions will be fiber-based and some will be yarn-based), a couple of half-day classes on publishing alternatives for fiber folk, and a walk-in fiber clinic. The list of instructors was posted yesterday, and registration opens, I hear with a flurry, some time in November—get on the mailing list for an announcement of when. If you are interested in Madrona, stay on top of the calendar and get up to speed on the registration process before you begin. Keep in mind that some spaces may be available after the initial rush, and cancellations may create openings later.

March 2012: Explore 4 Retreat, Friday Harbor, Washington—A leisurely fibers-for-spinning workshop (more expansive schedule than usual, enjoying a focused selection of fibers) in a relaxed environment. Deposits now will save spaces; full registration is required by the end of January so I can get all the supplies arranged.

May 2012: Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, West Friendship, Maryland—A two-day pre-festival workshop (12 hours) on Thursday and Friday, plus two morning walkabouts in the barns on Saturday and Sunday, visiting with sheep (walkabouts will be the same schedule on both days). (Below: An American Tunis sheep in the Parade of Breeds at Maryland in 2011.)

June 2012: Olds College Fiber Week, Olds, Alberta—Although this event's activities haven't been firmed up, workshop organizer Michelle Boyd and I are both operating on the assumption that I'll be there and I'll be teaching something. We've been talking about this for a while, in bits and pieces between our teaching commitments. We thought we might have twenty minutes to visit about details when we were both teaching at SOAR in New Hampshire, but that ended up being a joke. We did get to wave hello as we both went to our classrooms (which were really close to each other). We're continuing the discussion by e-mail.

July 2012: Convergence 2012 (Handweavers Guild of America), Long Beach, California—Two two-day (12-hour) workshops on rare-breed wools. Pick one workshop or the other; HGA has asked me to facilitate the same workshop twice to accommodate the predicted number of registrations.

July 2012: Minnesota Weaving Guild, Minneapolis, Minnesota—An evening guild program plus a three-day (18-hour) workshop on rare-breed wools.

September 2012: The Spinning Loft, Howell, Michigan—Owner Beth Smith and I are still working on what I'll be teaching. I'm expecting that there will be an evening program on Friday night and a two-day workshop on Saturday and Sunday.

____

Below: Some of Sue Bundy's Karakul sheep at Maryland (Sue is part of Solitude Wool); a Karakul fleece ready to be shorn before summer arrives; and samples of Karakul yarns from The Fleece & FIber Sourcebook.

For all of my teaching events, basic spinning skills are sufficient: the ability to spin singles and make a two-ply yarn. While most people like to bring their spinning wheels to the workshops, some participants find they prefer to sample with handspindles, and that's fine with me.

Okay, I'd better post this. The day's getting away from me.

Teaching at the Spin-Off Autumn Retreat (SOAR)

Sunday night at about 1:30 a.m. Eastern time (the time zone I woke up in) or 11:30 p.m. Mountain time (the one I'm readjusting to), I arrived home from teaching at the Spin-Off Autumn Retreat, or SOAR, the spinning-focus conference sponsored by Interweave Press that was held this year in Manchester, New Hampshire. I've been part of thirteen previous SOAR gatherings, between 1987 and 1999 . . . but had not been to one for the past eleven years.

Previously, when I worked at Interweave, I was part of the staff, making sure both mentors and participants had what they needed to enjoy and benefit from the event. (Examples: Filling goodie bags. Running to town for carrots and nuts to feed an unannounced vegan. Distributing air fresheners to cabins that were stale-smelling. Finding electrical cords. Locating boxes of fibers. Hauling, stacking, and shipping cartons on Sunday afternoon before catching a flight back home with the rest of the generally slap-happily exhausted crew.) I also, of course, did lots of things that related to my position as book editor and/or editor of Spin-Off magazine: talking with people about book ideas, hanging the gallery, uninstalling the gallery, being the announcer for the fashion show, and cruising the whole rich environment for ideas to feature in the magazine.

So this was my first time in another role: mentor, or instructor. Because it had been so long since I was part of a SOAR, I knew the event would have changed. For one thing, there are a lot more people. (In 1987, for the tenth anniversary, we had 300 people and the first marketplace. In general, there were between 125 and 150 attendees. I heard rumors this time about 400 participants. I didn't count.) For another, we were in a hotel, rather than one of the environments that both required us to cope with weather (rain, snow, mud) and gave us the opportunity to experience different settings outside of hotel-neutrality (North Carolina, Vermont, Oregon, Missouri, California, and so on). For many reasons, then, I went into this experience expecting some continuity but also prepared to have the event be entirely different than I remembered.

This will not be a tremendously coherent post. I had a great time. I loved meeting the people who were in my classes and the other folks whom I chatted with elsewhere around the hotel. Yet the SOAR schedule doesn't leave a lot of time to refill the well from which buckets of energy are constantly being drawn! I missed talking with a lot of both mentors and participants whom I saw from a distance. (I would have loved to have taken D. Y. Begay's sessions, and could happily have learned lots from every mentor on the program.)

I love to travel light. That wasn't a possibility for SOAR.

Here are my suitcases, packed and ready to be loaded onto the shuttle to the airport:

The two on the left contain class materials. The second-from-right contains my personal basics. The small gray backpack on the far right holds my computer and its cords and accessories, a water bottle, travel food, my iPod Touch, two books, and a couple of magazines.

On Saturday a week ago, I flew from Denver to Chicago to Manchester, New Hampshire. The Chicago flight arrived six minutes before the Manchester one was due to depart. Southwest kindly held the plane a few minutes for the handful of us who were making that connection, the last flight of the day. There obviously wasn't enough time to stop and pick up a salad. It's a good thing I had packed enough trail mix, apples, and almonds to get me through. I boarded the 737 in time to get one of the few remaining seats.

Night fell as I traveled 2,000 miles east, arriving at, oh, some time when the restaurants in the area had closed down and I was too tired to cope with finding, ordering, and eating dinner anyway. The bartender at JD's Tavern in the Radisson Hotel, where SOAR was being held, kindly sold me a to-go glass of milk and I enjoyed granola in my room. About an hour after I got there, my roommate, Stephenie Gaustad, arrived, and we did chat a bit before shutting down for the night, or, to be more accurate, early the next day.

Sunday morning, thanks to Twitter, several mentors and early-arrival participants managed to coordinate gathering for breakfast in the hotel's cafe. I snapped a picture of Stephenie (in green), who taught cotton spinning and spinning on the tahkli, and Beth Smith, who taught classes on breed-specific wools (in pink and orange).

The rest of the day was dedicated to finding the rooms we would be teaching in, retrieving the supplies that had been shipped in, and setting up to teach.

I had hoped to have photos of all the materials for my classes, but I got so involved with unpacking and sorting that I only got an approximate record. There were the suitcases, shown above. There were also three boxes that Beth Smith packed and sent from The Spinning Loft (the brown ones), the box of record sheets I'd shipped (the little blue one that weighed 22 pounds [10kg]), and the handouts Interweave had copied and sent ahead (the white box). The third photo in this series explicates the numbers on the packages—i.e., shows what was in each container.

Around supper time I connected with Jennifer Heverly of Spirit Trail Fiberworks, who had brought nine (I think) big black bags of wool in her van. I missed getting a photo of those packages in all their puffy, space-consuming glory. Piled into one of those hotel luggage carts, they left no room for anything else. Here are the mostly deflated bags after I did the initial unpacking:

Those items expanded to these types of materials:

1 = handouts

2 = record cards

3 = fiber samples

There were 33 pounds of wool (acquired, washed, divided, and labeled) to provide 1,004 fiber samples, representing 19 rare breeds of sheep, ready for 106 participants in three groups: a three-day workshop, a one-day workshop, and four half-day retreat sessions. The specific rare breeds presented to at least one of the groups, and sometimes all of them, were:

1. Black Welsh Mountain
2. Clun Forest
3. Dorset Horn
4. Gulf Coast Native
5. Hog Island
6. Jacob, American
7. Karakul, American
8. Lincoln Longwool
9. Manx Loaghtan
10. Navajo-Churro
11. North Ronaldsay
12. Portland
13. Romeldale / California Variegated Mutant (CVM)
14. Santa Cruz (tiny bonus samples, thanks to a participant, whom I'm happy to credit if she wants the public notice!)
15. Shetland (also here and here and here)
16. Soay
17. Southdown
18. Tunis, American
19. Wensleydale

My prep work included sorting the fibers by workshop type (right number and right fiber amounts for each), making lists of which breeds were actually present so I could put together the final versions of my slides, making sure the Interweave projector worked with my computer, counting out record cards in groups that would be quick to distribute, and so on.

Also setting up the chairs so the correct number fit into the teaching configuration I prefer, with room for spinning wheels and for people to get in and out of the room.

The carpet made an interesting backdrop for spinning. Whatever color wool we were working with, it couldn't be clearly seen against that pattern! Fortunately, most people had spinning cloths with them to provide light or dark contrast. Me, I used my jeans. I'd remembered to bring a spinning apron but was too busy to put it on.

When I'm teaching, I'm teaching—so I don't have photos of any class in progress to share. I have fiber, though!

Those are North Ronaldsay locks and North Ronaldsay yarns. Yes, there are reasons that the different colors have different staple lengths and fiber composition, and therefore produce different yarns. I learned more about why that occurs from conversations at SOAR. I love meeting up with other folks who care about this stuff as much as I do.

On two occasions, I got to the market for quick browse-throughs. On one of those, I visited with Richard Ashford, whom I hadn't seen in quite a few years. We first met in the 1980s.

I also got to catch up briefly with Gord Lendrum and Barry Schacht and Chris and Phil Switzer and Florence Feldman-Wood, who had brought a super selection of old spinning wheels to display (not sell!).

I met folks I've heard about or communicated with on Ravelry, and through this blog. That was all lovely. And on Sunday, after it was all over, I even got to sit and spin and visit with a handful of late-departing participants in the hotel lobby, after we'd all checked out.

During the week, I got out of the building once, when I skipped the usual buffet and went out to dinner with Gwen Steege, the editor I worked with most closely at Storey Publishing on The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook. Gwen has a new book herself! It's called The Knitter's Life List.

As we walked out that evening, this one of a pair of dog statues in the park in front of the hotel looked like it was wearing a wig or had been yarn-bombed. Turned out there was a squirrel sitting on its head. I didn't have my camera, and wouldn't have been fast enough if I had been able to pull it out of my bag.

On Sunday afternoon, I went for a walk down Elm Street in Manchester. I finally got a picture of the dog, squirrel-less. I came across something else during my Sunday walk, but that's a subject for another post.

I'm home now. I hope to get my suitcases unpacked within the next few days. I've ignored them so far, while catching up with all the things that were awaiting my immediate attention when I got back.

Thanks to everyone who came to the workshops for sharing your interest and questions and willingness to try new things. Regardless of the surroundings and circumstances, so different than in the past, you brought to life in this new place the heart of SOAR. And I'm glad that hasn't changed.

KDTV, take 2

I'm not even going to try to make this entirely coherent. That's not how life is right now.

KDTV

Last week I flew to Cleveland again to be a guest for three segments of KDTV series 800. KDTV is Knitting Daily TV, a program that is available for broadcast on public television stations (PBS). A year ago I took this trip and appeared in two segments. I had the pleasure then of working both with Shay Pendray, an amazing woman who established a place for needle arts on public television, and with Eunny Jang, editor of Interweave Knits.

This time, I missed seeing and working with Shay; she had already completed her scheduled appearances and returned home. The trade-off was that because Eunny and I did all three segments together, we were able to get a little better acquainted and as a result could carry the positive energy from one segment to the next. In addition to the segments she did with me, Eunny was also taping introductions and finales and some technique concentrations, so she was busy changing clothes, getting the right demonstration materials ready, and talking to the cameras. Kristin Omdahl, who hosts the crochet sections, had finished her work early but wasn't scheduled to fly out yet, so we were able to visit in odd moments, and that was a treat.

Kristin's recent blog post shows the studio set-up and talks about the TV makeup, plus preparation, suitcases, and wardrobe issues. She's a pro at this and can show you the environment, while I'm just working hard not to trip over my own feet or end up stammering on camera: not much time or energy to document my surroundings or the process. Kristin's post also shows the amazing Annie Bakken, who last year and this managed to be in half a dozen places at once (or so it appeared), doing unobtrusive tasks that kept the process running smoothly, got us where we needed to be, and so on.

The segments are about 5 minutes long, and are timed to the second. The host—in this case, Eunny—keeps track of the timing. In addition to her microphone, which records the audio for the show, she has an earphone and has to listen and respond to information coming in from the production area. I just need to stay on my toes, follow her lead on the general timing, and be ready to let her wrap up when they call time. I imagine tightrope walking would be similar.

One of the segments was on using yak fiber. I talked about the basic qualities, and about using yak either on its own or blended, as well as why yak is a relatively new presence in knitting yarns. Eunny presented a neat hat pattern made with a yak-bamboo blend that features an intricate, but not so hard to work, cable running around its brim.

Back up two months, because it took me about that long to get all the swatches ready for the demonstrations of the segments that I did. For a 40-hour trip, I packed two suitcases and a large backpack. In the backpack and my carry-on suitcase were the absolute essentials: if the check-through bag had gone astray, we could have managed the segments, although not with the ideal array of supplies.

In addition to swatches, yarns, raw and washed fibers, and a bunch of sweaters to use as examples, the suitcases contained about a dozen different shirts and blouses. The garments all needed to be in specific colors, and had to be able to go on and off without messing up the makeup, which is done first and just once. I took the two shirts I wore last year, because I know they worked. I wore one of them again for the DVD I made for Interweave last fall. My daughter said I really shouldn't wear the same thing all the time, so I took along two other new tops I found on sale and a bunch of appropriate knits that I'd found at local resale shops. It's hard to tell in advance what will work best, so it's good to have alternatives.

Fortunately, one pair of black slacks, which I already owned, sufficed for the rest of what I needed.

We ran into a little glitch while filming the segment on why yarns pill. The numbering on one form was off, so Eunny wore the wrong sweater for our first take.

So we got to do it again. This was where it started getting nice that Eunny and I were working together repeatedly. The retake went smoothly. Here's the right sweater, and our smiles embody our confidence that we will hit the revised segment length. These photos are taken in advance of the taping of each segment. In addition to being useful for publicity, they are tacked up on the door to the green room, where everything gets prepared, to help everyone keep track of who wore what, and when. In general, they work really well.

By the way, the sweaters on the stands behind me are thirty and forty years old and have not pilled. In this segment, I talked about fiber content, processing damage, yarn construction, durability, and maintenance, and why and when we make trade-offs that result in pilling. (There is, by the way, an absolutely fantastic article by Erica Heftmann in an old issue of Spin-Off magazine on why yarns pill. Although I worked with other sources, if you want a one-stop overview, Erica did a fantastic job. Summer 1999, pages 70 to 77.)

The final segment involved some information on scouring and washing wools. Recognize Eunny's sweater? It belonged on this segment. I wasn't as happy with the content on this final bit. We did it twice as well, for reasons of the producer's, and I preferred the first version.

Still, Eunny and I managed to do two takes on two segments and keep them fresh-feeling each time. On one of them (and I forget which one), somebody mis-read the timing notes so Eunny was given the "wrap it up" signal at either 20 or 30 seconds too short or too long. I don't remember which. I think we needed to fill an extra 30 seconds on the second take. My job is to speak in ways that are conversational but that I can cut off at any time and sound like I meant to end there.

Then I packed up my suitcases and Kristin and I shared a cab to the airport. I heard she had a delay in getting home, including an extra overnight.

For me, this is what the day looked like, with all times indicated for Mountain Daylight Time, even though Cleveland is on Eastern Daylight.

• 3:45 a.m. Wake up
• 3:45 to 5:15 a.m. Yoga, wash and blow-dry hair, dress, breakfast, pack suitcases, check out of hotel, and be in lobby for ride to studio. I wanted to walk to the studio to see if I could stretch out my back some more, but it was raining and I needed not to show up with wet hair. I am so not a TV-ready person in everyday life!
• 5:15 to 7 a.m. Unpack show materials and begin arranging them on working trays; professional makeup (an hour).
• 7 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. Tape all three segments, two of them twice.
• 10:15 to 10:45 a.m. Lunch.
• 10:45 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. Repack all suitcases, then catch up on e-mail and a little work.
• 1:45 to 4 p.m. Cab to airport, check-in, and security. Buy a salad to take with me because the availability of future food is not at all certain. (Yes, I carry Luna Bars, apples, and other compact, security-friendly emergency fuel.)
• 4 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. Fly home, changing planes at one airport or another, very glad that I have the salad (run from first gate to second, and make it on board as one of the final four passengers).
• 8:45 to 9:50 p.m. Disembark and reclaim the one checked bag. Miss the 9 p.m. shuttle by about 8 minutes. Grab a chai as the airport concessions are closing their accordion barriers for the night. Drink chai and do some reading while awaiting the shuttle.
• 9:50 to 11:45 p.m. Shuttle ride home.
• 11:45 p.m. to 1 a.m. Dinner, shower, bed.

Next day: in bed with a cold! Likely the result of not being able to dodge secondhand smoke (to which I'm allergic) while in the shuttle areas outside airports. I need to get rid of the congestion and start packing for SOAR, in addition to doing enough work at my desk that the office won't collapse while I'm gone again.

Packing for events other than KDTV involves a lot more fiber, but much easier clothing options: t-shirts, jeans, whatever sweaters I want to wear. And no makeup at all!

 

Falkland Islands wool

I'm way behind on blog posts. I have several in the works. I just got back from The National Needlework Association trade show in Ohio (great conversations surrounded by super yarn, terrific tools, and so on). I have pictures. They're coming.

___

Meanwhile, a couple of groups on Ravelry, the site for yarnaholics, have been wondering about Falklands wool. There's information in The Fleece and FIber Sourcebook, although not the full treatment because it's not a breed. (Not because it's not fascinating.) I responded, but might as well put the information here, where I can find it again, too. No pictures. No time. Plus this topic is a hard one to photograph on the spur of the moment. I have some Falklands top, but I don't have enough variety to illustrate the points I'll make.

Falklands wool is grown in the Falkland Islands. That's it. The name is a geographic indicator, not a breed designation—the indicator does tell you something about the wool, although what it tells you is a story with several parts.

The Falklands are located off the coast of South America. They are a U.K. overseas territory, and sheep raising has been by far the most significant economic activity, although fishing is being added to the mix. The shepherds are really serious about their wool, having had more markets for fiber than for meat, and they are creative in developing and maintaining its quality. They generally work with crosses to improve the productivity of their animals. Each shepherd's view and results are individual, although they definitely work together so the entire clip is of high quality. Because of the environment (challenging), they raise sturdy sheep and there are few pests to contend with, so pest-preventive measures that are necessary in many other parts of the world aren't required.

Defining what Falklands wool is, then, is a moving target. Thus the range of micron counts and qualities. It should be, regardless of those particulars, a very white, somewhat open, easy-spinning wool. SOME will be appropriate for use next to the skin. SOME will be better (and more durable) for making outerwear. If you find a source that you like, get more. Don't assume that Falklands wool you get elsewhere will be the same. Each mill run will be consistent, but from one to the next may not, especially if you put some years between your acquisitions.

Historically, according to Michael Ryder (not this one), the foundations of the Falklands flocks were built on Corriedales and Romneys. The Falkland Islanders have also brought in Polwarths (sometimes referred to in that part of the world as Ideals), and there are now experiments with infusing bloodlines from a couple of strains of Merino.

As you might gather from that information, the overall progression is toward finer wool. That's true for wool as a part of the global commodity market, not only in the Falklands. In the industrial sense (and for the bottom lines of medium to large producers), finer is definitely a better income-generating prospect.

For handmade textiles, that's not the case. Qualities of fiber other than diameter have great value to us. For example, we may gravitate toward luster, a variety of crimp patterns, different textures, and natural colors. (There are natural-colored sheep in the Falklands, but their wool is not incorporated into the commercially processed top that is generally available.)

When you come across the designation "Falklands wool," you can know it is a high-quality fiber that is almost certainly white.

I'm going to fail at not including a photo. I have fiber. I have a handspindle. Here's some Falkland Islands top:

This particular top remembers its Corriedale ancestors. Staple length is about 6.5 inches (16.5 cm). It has nice body, a bit of luster, and pleasant but not obsessive crimp. You could spin it a lot thicker than I did, and more loosely, too, and end up with a lovely yarn. This was just what I felt like spinning in the moment, plied back on itself, straight off the spindle.

(The ruler isn't bent. That's a distortion that happens with the camera.)

Falklands wool. Worth exploring, for sure.