The Independent Stitch

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.

Experimenting with bike saddles, or seats

We have our new bikes, and we are beginning to make them our own. This means adding a few things, like lights front and rear for night riding, and a back rack for my daughter's bike (mine will get one, too, but I need to find the right one), and adjusting whatever is adjustable—the front stem, the height of the seat post, and . . . the saddles.

Bike saddles are challenging. Chip Haynes, who wrote the marvelous The Practical Cyclist, says this about bike saddles, or seats:

• "If you ride your bike every day and never, ever, even so much as think about your bicycle's seat—then you have the right seat. Congratulations."

He also points out, as many people do, the difficulties of finding the right seat, with this observation:

• "Just one ride is not enough to really tell if a seat is going to give you trouble. Sometimes seats can be devious little things that wait to turn on you when you least expect it. Ride the bike every day for a week, and if you're still happy with the seat, then you've got the right seat. If not, back it goes!"

Okay. We have the goal. Now how to accomplish it?

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The seats on our new bikes are good quality and look just fine. We didn't know much about bike components when we started this process of finding what's turning out to be our new primary mode of transportation. We've learned a lot in acquiring our bikes. We do have frames of the right size, and bikes of the right style for us. Moving along to seats. . . . Here's what came with the bikes:

They are WTB Comfort V seats. I'd link to information on the seat, but bike saddles seem to be infinitely morphing. When I search for information on the seat—even with a full set of model descriptors from the bike catalog—I get things that look similar but not identical. Anyway. My daughter and I find that they are not comfortable for very long. We keep feeling like we're sliding forward off the front of the seat (regardless of the angle it's set at or how far forward or back it's resting on its rails) and that we're trying to sit off the back end to compensate. Essentially, the first sit-down is fine, but after a half-mile (1km) or so, we'd rather ride without putting any weight on the seat, which isn't the goal.

The seats on the bikes with the too-small frames were great. We never noticed them.

The seat was an Avenir Cross Comfort and it came with the bike. Raleigh USA distributes Avenir saddles (these were [Raleigh OOPS] Diamondback Maravista hybrid bikes [Raleigh owns Diamondback, thus my choice of the wrong word], and as I've mentioned the only problem we had with the bikes was that we were sold too-small frames, which over time resulted in much inconvenience and some discomfort, because we could never get the seats in the right position and our knees hurt).

The seat on my old Motobecane was horrendous, but I didn't know I could replace it. I rode the bike a lot anyway, but I would have ridden it even more if I'd been more bike-savvy and known what to do about the seat. The two bikes I had before that were in the dark ages; I was also ignorant about having any choice, but their saddles worked just fine.

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The good news is that most manufacturers of bike saddles appear to have 30- or 90-day "comfort guarantees"—they don't guarantee the saddle will be comfortable, but they do give the purchaser the option of returning a saddle during a speciic time period if it isn't. You still have to figure out which saddles to try; lay out the money at least temporarily; spend a lot of time with allen wrenches putting seats on and off your bike (and adjusting the position of each seat, fore and aft, up and down); and remember to return what doesn't work. But the system does help.

We have discovered that there are "men's" and "women's" saddles, just as there are "men's" and "women's" frame styles, although who rides what happily (in frames and seats) may correlate to gender and may not. We were interested to note that my bike frame (17", women's styling) and my daughter's frame (19", men's styling . . . they don't make a 19" women's frame, or she would have preferred one, for ease of mounting and dismounting) came with the same (men's style) seats.

Here's a comparison between the (men's) seats that came on the bikes (left) and a women's style seat (right), which is slightly wider at the back and shorter at the nose:

  

The correct seat for a given bike depends on the rider, the type of bike, and the style of riding, so we can't just try to locate seats like the ones on our old bikes. We are both riding in more "aggressive" positions than we used to, now that we have frames of the right sizes and can get the seat heights set correctly. That means we're sitting differently on the bikes and what worked then probably won't be right now.

So the quest for comfortable seats has begun.

We started by trying the Serfas Women’s RX (RX-922L), 16 oz., 454 g., 10 x 7 in., 25 x 18 cm, lycra covered, which my daughter likes better than I do, although I like it better than the original-issue WTB seat:

We also got a similar model, the Serfas Women’s Dual Density (DDL-200), 16 oz., 454 g., 10 x 7 in, 25 x 18 cm, fabric cover, which I like a little better than the RX, although it's still not comfortable enough to forget about (it just got installed on my daughter's bike last night, so we don't know what she thinks about it so far):

It was the demo seat in the photo of the men's/women's differences. After reading a bunch of online reviews, I'm trying out the Bontrager InForm R, which comes in three sizes, set to match different people's posteriors:

  

It's obviously less cushy-looking than the other seats. In fact, it has enough less padding that I have to extend my seat post an extra few centimeters to get the correct seat-to-pedal length. Yet so far, it's the best saddle for me of the group we've tried, but I haven't quite forgotten it's there. It's also true that this is a new design and I've read that it's optimized for road bikes, so the design might not be correct for my riding style (closer to mountain-bike positioning).

The quest continues, although I'm not sure where to take it next. I'd really just like to ride my bike and not have to think about whether the seat is working or not (mostly not, although the Bontrager's gotten me to "okay").

Maybe I'll install the bell today.

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We are riding a lot more than we did on our old bikes: I missed a ride yesterday (my daughter did 15 miles (28km)), but I'm usually getting at least 7 miles (13km) and usually 10 miles (18km) or more. And that's just getting to and from places I need to be.

Bicycles

The garden: starting pretty much over at the end of July

After we built and filled the new raised beds for a kitchen garden, we got pummeled with hail. Repeatedly. We even had another hailstorm last week that knocked out one of the largest providers to our farmers' markets. The Community Supported Agriculture farms have been hard hit, and have been helping each other out, depending on who just got bombarded and who didn't.

This makes our miniscule backyard efforts look both insignificant and more important than ever.

Here is what our new garden looks like at the end of July, nearly eight weeks after the final frost:

It only looks this good because last night my daughter planted the replacement herbs we bought.

Inside the mesh walls at the back of the tallest bed are the tomatoes, doing their best to put out leaves and fruit despite the weather and the squirrels. In front of them are basil plants, one of which has made it through from the earlier planting and three of which are new. The marigolds have been trucking along fine since the start. It's been nice to have their cheerful color survive day to day. In front of the marigolds are some beets (you can actually see their green tops) and, nearly invisible, starts of carrots.

In the other four-foot bed, my daughter just added sage and parsley, and she is hoping her zucchini will make it before winter . . . and that the squirrels haven't dug up the seeds. There's chicken wire over the bed because the squirrels do love to dig around and kick the dirt out into the lawn.

We haven't planted the small bed at the back yet—too busy reworking and protecting the others.

Bicycles

Yesterday we picked up our new bicycles. We have two cars, both of which we drive a lot less than we used to, each of which is capable of hauling one bicycle. Taking two cars downtown seemed silly. If one of us drove both people downtown and brought back one bike, the other one would get to ride her bike home. That didn't seem fair.

So we decided to take the bus to the bike shop and both ride home on our new bikes. It's a medium-long distance, but there are good bike routes covering almost the entire stretch.

The bus was really cheap. My daughter has a student pass (grad students can have them, too) and when we checked the fares it turned out that city transit considers me a senior. Nice. Sixty cents to get across town.

Here's my daughter's bike:

And here's mine:

With the information from the fitting measurements, we were able to determine why our old bikes had worked for us as well as they did—the top tube lengths were not right but they weren't too far off and the stem dimensions were right on. We were also able to see clearly what the problems were: because the frames were too small, the seat-to-pedal length was a mismatch for me, and a serious mismatch for my daughter (hers was a whole 10 percent too short; mine was about 7 percent off).

We used to have frames of the same sizes (we're within an inch of each other in height, so that seemed logical). Now we don't. In specific bike-related bone measurements (torso, upper leg, shoulders) we're quite different. She was told she has perfect body proportions for cycling.

The shop is (as we figured later) just over 10 miles (16km) by bike path from home. That's enough distance to get a solid feel for how the bikes handle and how we want to work on refining the fit. I'll be back at the shop today and my daughter's going back tomorrow to get the seats and handlebars set up just right. The frames feel great.

In the evening, we biked over to the university's presentation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." To get to the play, I rode my new bike, and my daughter rode her old bike for the familiarity. That was another 7 miles (11km) or so. I know what I want to talk to the bike shop about today, but I'm very much enjoying not having to stop several times on every ride and re-set the old bike's seat at a higher level (above the safe extension line, and at a place where it wouldn't stay put).

Now about the play: it was the best performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" I've ever seen. (Our favorite barista at one of the coffee shops where we write did a fantastic job as Titania. Walt Jones directed.) The casting and staging and costumes were all inventive and appropriate.

The play is potentially one of my favorites, and I've seen it in on stage and in films more times than I could count. At the end of the performance, I feel like I've had a good time, compare the recent presentation to others, and yet I have always felt that there was something missing. Not last night. NOTHING was missing.

It was not, obviously, the only way that a fully satisfying presentation of the play could take place (for one thing, it was a short version so it would be "family friendly," although the basics were all there and it was playfully risque). It was, however, an absolute, laugh-out-loud delight. Everyone involved (all volunteers, because funding was cut this year) made magic.

Overall, a great day. Having started it at 6:30 a.m. and ended it at 11 p.m., I even got some work done.

Organizing fibers for the big project

There will be two versions of this post. I hit the wrong button and published it at the note-taking stage. If you're reading this note, you likely have the full post.

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Keeping the fibers for this project organized and constantly identified is a job in itself. Having edited Spin-Off for so many years, I knew how challenging it can be to try to remember which of several closely related fiber samples the one you set on that table over there was, expecting that of course you could remember what it was . . . oops, that was day before yesterday, something came up that needed to be dealt with immediately, and was that the Dorset from project A, or the Hampshire from project B? Dang.

Anyway, I started off with what I hoped would be a flexible, strong organizing system. It evolved slightly. For example, instead of trying to economize to the penny on labels, as I did at the start, I now print plenty in both sizes and keep coming up with ways in which they're handy to have.

So the first large chunk of work to be done when I receive new fibers involves entering them in the inventory sheets (two separate databases), printing up their labels, and making the bags and cards that will keep everything sorted from receiving through photography, and perhaps beyond.

I print two sizes of labels. The large ones go mostly on the bags, and the small ones go mostly on organizing tools. Extra labels are top center. To their left, a tag for a sample skein (there will probably be at least one more skein label, which is a reason to have extra small labels, but I start with one). The large card next to the tag stays with the wool during washing and other processing. The small card goes at the edges of photos so we don't have to keep massive notes about what fiber was in which photograph. We shoot the tiny card at the edge of the image and it can be cropped out later. Small labels also get used when I pull a sample for OFDA testing (scanning for the physical fiber qualities, including length and micron counts).

There are two large plastic bags, one that will stay with the bulk fiber supply and one, marked "samples," that will go in the file that will be transported to the photo shoot. There are two small plastic bags, one for raw wool locks and one for clean wool locks. All of the labels on the plastic bags have to have clear tape put over them or they won't stay stuck to the bags. (There's one more larger card with a large label that goes in a card file, a physical inventory record, which comes in very handy despite all the computer database information.)

Once the fiber's checked in and the organizing tools are prepared, it's time for washing. This is when fibers will most likely get confused, so I need to pick batches that can be distinguished from each other and that fit my various colander-and-bowl configurations, which have different capacities.

In this morning's first batch, I have three black wools and one white. The three blacks are easy to tell apart, even though two are Soays. My larger cards from the photo above (they're old business cards) stay in the room with the fibers being washed, then travel with them to the drying racks and stick around until the fibers are dry and back in their labeled bags. I've already pulled the grease locks on all of these, of course.

Here are the pots of water on the stove, heating up to supplement the tap water for getting the wool clean.

And here are some of the washing-related systems: the baggies in the white not-a-wastebasket are the fibers currently in the tub. The box contains a few of the fibers next in the lineup (there is another large box to its left, out of sight . . . I'm pretty well caught up, but got five new samples yesterday). The post-its on the outside of the box have small labels on them. With more than forty file boxes in action, it's good to be able to tell easily what's where. The bright yellow means the sample started as grease fleece. Light yellow means it started as clean fiber. There would be a black checkmark on those labels if they'd been washed already. I'll have more shots of boxes later.

Okay, I'd better get this really posted. The truncated version would be pretty funky.

Driving through burn zones

It's been amazingly busy around here. I'm prepping a pattern for two sock designs by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts to be printed in time for Sock Summit, which is only weeks away. I finished the interior last night, and heard back with Priscilla's approval this morning. We work really well together—it's an absolute delight—and it's also a relief to put in a whole bunch of work and then get word from my collaborator that I haven't messed anything up in the process of moving it toward its final presentation!

Anyway, I need to design the cover today AND get it to press. Meanwhile, many other things have needed attention, including a friend whom I'm going to keep company this afternoon during a chemo treatment.

I've been wanting to post these photos since I got back from my work with Carol Ekarius, which is almost two weeks ago.

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Driving to and from Carol's, I passed through parts of the mountains that reminded me of the way Colorado looked when I was young, in the 1950s, which was a delight. Some photos at the end of the post look like the places I remember.

Mixed in with those impressions were sections that have recently been burned over by three wildfires, including the 2002 Hayman Fire, the largest in Colorado history. The Hayman incinerated more than 137,000 acres and 600 structures (including 133 homes) and destroyed large portions of some of my favorite landscapes. It was started by someone who knew better and didn't pay attention to what she knew. Natural burns are one thing. Burns caused by human carelessness are another thing entirely.

When I see the aftermath of most burns closer to home, I am astonished at how quickly the vegetation comes back. In this case, I was stunned first by how slowly the growth is returning: after seven years, the roasted areas remain stark.

The reason, I discovered, is that the underlying granite is highly erosive and there isn't much organic matter to support the return of grasses and other reclaiming species. Here's some of that rock:

It's gorgeous, but it's also amazing that anything grows here, ever!

Second, I was stunned that I drove for a full hour and a half through charred terrain. That's a long time, even at two-lane speeds.

I kept expecting to come to the end of it and I'd round a curve and see yet another expanse.

As usual with fires, the damage was quixotic: some trees still lived although half-burned, some trees remained fully alive even though surrounded by black skeletal trunks.

Here's what nearby unburned areas look like:

And. . .

That's more like what I remember from way back when (when Glenwood Canyon was one of my favorite places of the many that we traveled through).

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On the drive back, I picked up a couple of other photos. One was of the early part of the hailstorm I drove through (it got deeper, but I didn't stop to snap a picture):

I saw a guy on a bike and was thinking it wasn't great weather for that mode of transport, and then the next view I got was of a guy out for a run, shirtless and wearing skimpy shorts. Colorado weather isn't predictable. It'd probably looked fine when he'd left home not long before.

The following photo shows Adeline Hornbek's homestead, which she settled in 1878 as a single mother of four:

What an amazing place I live in. I love going out and learning more about it, even if some of what I learn about—like the lingering fire scars, and the many changes from fifty years ago—can be hard to take.

The Big Project: hints can be revealed (pertains to fiber, surprise, surprise)

Last weekend I drove south and into the mountains to spend a couple of days working on The Project.

(I've finally got the energy to see if I can cover the information the computer powers-that-be evaporated on me just as I'd finished writing a post on Monday. This time I am working in an offline composing program called Ecto. I don't know much about Ecto, so we'll see if this goes better than Monday did!)

I stayed in a cabin courtesy of Carol Ekarius and her husband, Ken Woodard. Ken went off to spend the time playing music with friends, leaving me and Carol to work on The Project. Yep, The Project requires two of us, and we both are the sort of people who are challenged, rather than daunted, by large, complicated tasks. Still, we haven't felt comfortable talking about what we're thinking (and working on) previously. Even though we've been working on it for a lot more than a year already. It's big. We do, now, suspect we will be able to pull it off in the foreseeable future.

Here's Carol at the cabin with Red, one of our weekend companions.

Chickens are not allowed inside, although Red forgets that from time to time in her quest for yummies.

Carol is passionate about livestock and small-scale farming. Her books include Storey's Illustrated Breed Guide to Sheep, Goats, Cattle and Pigs: 163 Breeds from Common to Rare (Storey), which just won the Colorado Book Award in the general nonfiction category; How to Build Animal Housing (Storey), which won a Colorado Authors' League award; Storey's Guide to Raising Sheep (Storey), written with ground-breaking handspinner Paula Simmons; Storey's Illustrated Guide to Poultry Breeds (Storey); Pocketful of Poultry (Storey); Small-Scale Livestock Farming: A Grass-Based Approach for Health, Sustainability, and Profit (Storey); and Hobby Farm: Living Your Rural Dream for Pleasure and Profit (Bowtie).

I'm passionate about fibers and rare breeds, as those who know about my work at Interweave Press and Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot and as a freelancer and as the publisher of Nomad Press are aware.

We've both been involved for years with the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.

I'm doing fibers.

(That's Tuf, one of Carol's dogs.)

Carol's doing critters.

We're both working day and night.

Theresa and Red are doing eggs. They helped out a lot over the weekend.

Even though there is a MASS of work left to do on The Project, we made great progress and feel hopeful that we'll be able to change it from a bunch of separately written pieces into a coherent whole—while continuing to generate still more separately written pieces.

One of the things I like best about working with Carol is that when we get together and compare notes and I show her my research and the charts I'm drawing and the details that I'm endeavoring to condense into useful summaries that take into account geographic and biological variations and all sorts of other random differences . . . she doesn't say that I don't have to do all that and she doesn't tell me It would be faster if I just pulled somebody else's information and got on with it.

No, what she does instead is tell me about the weird and obscure and interesting books she's gotten through interlibrary loan and ask me for a reminder about a weird, obscure, and truly fascinating book that I got through interlibrary loan (because she's going to request the book, too, now that I've returned it). . . . She also doesn't imply that it was silly of me to pay $25 to borrow a book for a couple of weeks from the National Agricultural Library because it was the only copy of that book in the United States and it's not in print elsewhere any more. No, she gets on the computer and finds sources for more fibers and orders them and has them sent to my house.

It's great to be collaborating with Carol on this project. We're both nuts in some of the same ways. We won't ever do as much research as either of us would like to (we would like to finish), but we'll get enough done to have fun and to produce something we think fiber- and critter-appreciating folk will find useful and informative in a way that's unlike anything else that's come before it.

Of course, we also both work full-time at other jobs while we're doing this. Carol is the executive director of the Coalition for the Upper South Platte (we met when she was in this role and I was working on a heritage preservation project in Park County, Colorado). I juggle this project around freelance writing and editing and Nomad Press.

We might get tired from time to time, but neither of us is likely to get bored.

Time to get back to work. I don't think this is as good a post as the one I lost, but at least it is written and about to be published.

More about this project will be revealed as it moves (reasonably swiftly, we hope) toward completion.

THIS is what Nomad Press is all about

I've been catching up a bit on what's happening outside my office while I'm meeting deadlines.

I came across this pattern in the summer issue of Knitty. It's a gorgeous shawl by Kieran Foley, who has called his design "Cold Mountain." His description begins this way:

• "This shawl is based on my first attempts at designing after reading Donna Druchunas’ inspirational Arctic Lace a couple of years ago."

This reminds me how much I love happening across notes about how knitters are expanding their reach and solving problems by using Nomad Press books, and what a kick I get out of it when when they start a description with words on the order of "this was the first time I. . . ."

Here's evidence of a few seeds planted by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' revised edition of Knitting in the Old Way (which I helped out with, in addition to publishing . . . Priscilla herself was going to publish it, and I was "just" the editor and design/layout/production person, but there was a shift at the last minute which moved Nomad Press from her house to mine . . . ):

• Jen at Looking Glass Knits gets over nervousness about steeks and makes a gorgeous Fair Isle baby sweater with a non-felting yarn
• Professional designer Dawn Brocco gleans inspiration for a delightful Fana-style sweater
• Ashley at Postcards from Pemberton makes a wonderful gansey ("my first sweater with a stitch pattern")

These bits of news make sitting here in front of a computer screen with yarn and knitting needles close by (for testing) seem worthwhile.

It takes a while before these remarks start appearing. The books have to go out into the world, then people have to read and absorb them and let the ideas percolate, and then they need to begin implementing. Which makes it all the more fun when I come across the comments.

Knitting in the Old Way has been out in the world long enough to have this effect, as have Priscilla's Simple Socks and Donna's Arctic Lace. Donna's Ethnic Knitting Discovery and Ethnic Knitting Exploration are still in their early stages of finding their way into people's hands and imaginations.