The Independent Stitch

Certificate of excellence, part 1

A question from Meg Caulmare (whom it looks like I will finally get to meet this year!):

I keep meaning to ask you if you have already earned the COE in handspinning. If not, is your work with rare breeds a base for that (which you would, of course, do in your spare time)?

COE stands for Certificate of Excellence, and she's referring to an extensive self-study program in handspinning skills devised and administered by the Handweavers Guild of America (HGA). 

Meg suggested that I could either answer privately or in the blog. The temptation is to drop her a quick e-mail, but I think it's a legitimate question. It will take three posts to answer in stages.

I have not earned a COE in handspinning, nor a certificate in any other textile craft. While my work with rare breeds might be a base for the focused study required as the final stage of the COE process, I won't be traveling that road in the foreseeable future. As Meg suggests, this choice concerns how I use my so-called spare time. While I do have time and I constantly consider how best to invest it, I can't say that any of my hours (or minutes) qualifies as "spare" {wry grin}. But there are deeper issues here, and a lot of history.

The thought of participating in a certificate-focused program has certainly crossed my mind several times, beginning in the 1970s, shortly after I began to weave for real, when I became aware of the Handweavers Guild of America's Certificate of Excellence program in handweaving, and then again when HGA started to formulate the criteria for the now well-established COE program in handspinning.

Thirty-five-plus years ago, I was spinning and exploring on my own, and with a group of friends. We gathered in my living room almost every Tuesday night and figured out among ourselves how to spin. We did not have access to classes, workshops, or readily available sources for tools or prepared—much less dyed and prepared!—fibers. Our guides were such books as Elsie Davenport's Your Handspinning (a quietly delightful piece of work, now almost completely overlooked) and Marilyn Kluger's The Joy of Spinning, one for techniques and the other for spirit. Our primary suppliers were a handful of mail-order companies. We placed a wholesale-quantity order with Ashford in New Zealand for a dozen spinning wheel kits, which was the easiest way at the time to get a wheel. We made our way forward through a lot of experimentation.

My copy of Marilyn Kluger's book appears to have been lost in the flood that hit this area in 1997. It destroyed most of my textile library, and my Glimakra loom. I'm very pleased that Elsie Davenport's book survived. I've been able to replace a number of the items destroyed by the flood, but The Joy of Spinning is not on my bookshelf right now so I can't take its photo.

In 1977, when an ad for the first (annual) issue of Spin-Off magazine appeared somewhere, probably in Interweave magazine (which I don't think had yet become Handwoven, although I've been digging in enough boxes that I don't think I'll check that fact right now), I immediately ordered it—oh, the wonder when it arrived in the mail! A magazine dedicated to this craft we had rediscovered! I read it cover to cover. I couldn't even have begun to imagine that only a decade later I would assume responsibility for editing the magazine, a role I would fill for forty-nine issues' worth of content.

 

The value of pursuing a certificate seems to me to be devoting one's energy and time to a systematic and careful exploration of an area of interest, of stretching one's capabilities and experiments beyond what one would naturally pursue, and of then putting together materials that represent the studies and having the presentation of words and samples evaluated by other knowledgeable folks.

My work has allowed me to do this in many respects. In other significant ways, my work has channeled my energy into contributing to the spinning community (as well as the general textile and publishing communities) in ways other than those provided by investing my time in earning a certificate.

To be continued in part 2.

A pilgrimage to see the Two Grey Hills/Toadlena weavings

On March 15, Penny Tschantz dropped a couple of comments on my January 17 post about recording the rare-breeds DVD set for Interweave. In one, she told me about a book, Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country by Marsha Weisiger. I now have a copy, although I haven't had time to start reading it. In another, she mentioned an exhibit of Two Grey Hills/Toadlena-style Navajo weavings that has been installed at the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe but is closing April 17.

It's amazing that this exhibit has been up for most of a year (since May 15, 2010) and I hadn't heard about it. That just goes to show how intense the book project has been. (Oh, yeah, I remember May 2010. And the months following. Sort of.) I guess I can forgive myself for having missed the news about the textile installation. And thank Penny for letting me know in time to make a quick, not altogether responsible, trip! (Not responsible because the undone work piled up here is deep and needs all the shoveling time I can give it.)

Last night I got back from a four-day trip that involved 1302 miles of driving (really? that's what the odometer says) and two days of visiting the Wheelwright. My brain got full both days. I had thought I'd go to the Wheelwright one day, and maybe see something else the other day. Nope. Had to go back and spend more time with the textiles.

What I can't show here is the weavings themselves. No photos permitted in the exhibit, and, alas, no catalog. I can talk about the trip, and give some hints about the rugs and tapestries.

First, Two Grey Hills/Toadlena weavings come from a certain part of the Navajo Nation, in its eastern portion. They emphasize the use of handspun yarn in natural colors, much of which comes from Navajo Churro sheep. Within an exquisite textile tradition, they are some of the most extraordinary works. They are associated with two trading posts, the Two Grey Hills Trading Post (about ten miles off US highway 666) and the Toadlena Trading Post, which is about six miles farther toward the Chuska Mountains. You can see photos of Two Grey Hills-style weavings on both posts' sites.

I've been fortunate to have visited both trading posts, more than once, and have seen work by some of the weavers featured at the Wheelwright. I even had the incredible opportunity to accompany trader Mark Winter of Toadlena on visits where I met two of the weavers and saw their work in progress. These were top-of-the-heap life experiences.

Second, I've woven a Navajo-style textile. A fairly long time ago, using information provided by Noel Bennett that reflects the teachings she received from Tiana Bighorse, I made an upright, Navajo-style loom, warped it, and beat the weft into place. Some time I will write more about that experience. Mine is not, of course, in any way a Navajo textile: and as always when I work to learn with my hands the ways of traditions that are not a direct part of my own heritage, I designed my rug (it's a rug, not a tapestry) in ways that make it clear that it's neither a copy of a Navajo work nor an attempt to imitate one directly. The colors are different and the ways my patterning goes together are different. No one would mistake my work for a "real" Navajo textile, even though I wove it on the appropriate type of loom; it has four selvedges; and so on. By making it, I learned the techniques and developed an intimate understanding of the interplay of work and creativity in the creation of masterpieces like those that the Navajo weavers produce.

Third . . . I just had to go to Santa Fe. Even though the trip made no rational sense. I remembered my experiences from my travels within the Navajo Nation in the mid-1990s. I thought about timing. I calculated fuel costs. I researched inexpensive lodging, and the presence of a hostel began to bring the trip into focus. Then my friend Susan Tweit forwarded me a coupon that allowed me to book a stay at the Sage Inn for just a bit more than the hostel would have cost and with a superb location. The Wheelwright is open both Sunday afternoons and (very unusual for a museum) on Mondays. I cleared a space from a Saturday morning through a Tuesday.

Here's part of the sunset on the drive down:

It's only appropriate that the place where I stayed was enhanced by relatively very simple, yet still warming, Navajo (rug) and at least Navajo-influenced (pillows) textiles.

There was even room for yoga, which might have been iffy at the hostel.

(My yoga strap dates from about the same era as my Navajo-style rug, which my mother now owns. The strap is cardwoven, from 5/2 perle cotton.)

While I was planning the trip, I located a wonderful bikeways map of Santa Fe in PDF form. Its only drawbacks were that it is LARGE and the color is absolutely essential to using it. My printer handles 8.5x11 sheets of paper and prints in black and white. I wrote an e-mail note to "Project Administrator, Bicycle and Trails Committee," asking how I might be able to get my hands on a printed copy of the map.

The tricky part, of course, was that I would be arriving in Santa Fe about 8 p.m. on a Saturday night, and would want to bike Sunday morning, well before the museum opened for the afternoon. I learned that the map is available at bike shops, but much web-surfing revealed to me that almost all of Santa Fe's bike emporia are closed on Sundays. Robert Siqueiros, Projects Administrator of the Engineering Division of the Public Works Department, came to my rescue and helped me connect with the right map at the right time. Because of his help, my car rested at the motel from the time I checked in to the time I checked out.

I could not have done the riding (or car-resting) without the help of the map. It got battered because I kept having to pull it out of my back pocket and unfold it to read it under what were pretty windy conditions.

I got lost a number of times, but because of the map I got found again quickly enough and could continue on my way, whether I was just exploring or whether I had a destination, like the museum, the entrance to which looks like this if you bike up Camino Lejo just past Corrales:

The museum itself isn't visible in that photo. Here's how I knew I had reached my destination:

Open at 1 on Sundays. I arrived at 1:03, without really intending to . . . I'd taken the long route, simply setting out on an exploration and still with half an idea that I was going to drive the car to Museum Hill, because it is uphill, and I wasn't sure how I'd deal with the wind, the extra 2,000+ feet of altitude, and the wrong turns I took on the trails ("Bikeway ends" and "No access except by government employees" required backtracking). Yet one mile after another, I kept going, and then . . . I was there! At exactly the optimal time!

The docent who was serving as gallery host, Judith Beery, is knowledgeable and enthusiastic, and we had a great conversation. Then I spent two and a half hours in the exhibit before I needed to take a break.

There are 37 textiles (I counted on Monday; Sunday I was just too enchanted to be analytical), representing 31 weavers, including:

• Bessie Manygoats (c. 1900-1964), 4 weavings
• Daisy Taugelchee (1911-1990), 3 weavings
• Clara Sherman (1914-2010), 2 weavings and a video of her spinning process

And one each:

• unknown (weaving from about 1910)
• unknown (weaving from about 1910, a second one)
• unknown (weaving from about 1950)
• Blind Man's Wife (? - 1914)
• Mrs. Police Boy (1865-1965)
• Frank Gould (? - 1944)
• Mary Yanabah Curley (1877-1977)
• Yellow Moustache's Wife (c. 1885 - c. 1955)
• Esther Silentman (1903-1991)
• Susie Tom (1903-1985)
• Helena Taugelchee Nez Begay (1904-1965)
• Katherine Nathaniel (no dates; weaving c. 1950)
• Yazzie Blackhorse (1913-1965)
• Cora Curley (b. 1916)
• Elizabeth Billie (b. 1920)
• Rose Mike (b. 1925)
• Virginia Deal (b. 1926)
• Mary Ann Foster (b. 1926)
• Evelyn George (b. 1928)
• Julia Jumbo (1928-2007)
• Rose Curley (b. 1929)
• Margaret Yazzie (b. 1929)
• Elizabeth Mute (b. 1932 or 1933)
• Salina Dale (b. 1935)
• Emma Benally (b. 1938)
• Mary Louise Gould (b. 1935)
• Barbara Ornelas (b. 1954)
• Angeline Silentman (b. 1955)

I have listed the weavers in the "one each" group not in the order their work was presented in the exhibit, but according to recorded or approximate birth dates. I took down their names and dates when I went back on Monday.

I could have spent many more hours examining these works of art, which were hung and lit in ways that made them glow like stained glass.

With the time I had, I looked closely at the weaving techniques, and admired the absolute mastery and individually inventive ways of approaching the geometry of the loom: the right-angled intersection of warps and wefts, and each weaver's intensive discovery of how to work with that geometry, doing Olympic-level backflips and perfect landings with pattern elements, and in some cases to also create curvilinear forms that adroitly escape the grid.

And I explored the use of color, mostly the natural sheep colors (with only occasional, very small, accents of red or turquoise). Some weavers chose to blend the colors completely, smoothing out any variations within particular color areas. Others, of equal technical skill, chose to blend more roughly, but then used the varying shades in ways that create an exceptionally lively quality. The approaches were equally breathtaking.

Of course, I also looked intently at the quality of the wool and the spinning. Some of the yarns, and I think this is characteristic of Navajo Churro, have a silk-like shine and seem to glow. I know the resulting yarns are durable as well as beautiful. The sheep produce an exceptional type of fiber, and the weavers whose work is on display at the Wheelwright have worked over generations, as a lineage and as individuals, to create an evolving and inspiring body of work that depends on, and makes the most of, that material.

I sat on the floor and looked and looked.

On Monday morning, I went back again and spent more time with a handful of rugs, sketching motifs to remind myself of some of the details. I had to leave far too soon, having done only a scrap of the observing and note-taking and sketching that I wanted to do, after having been in the presence of these 37 works for a total of four and a half hours. Not nearly enough to be "done" with seeing them, but as much as I could physically handle in the available time and plenty to reward the decision to get to Santa Fe while the exhibit was accessible to me.

Outside the museum's entry is this sculpture, "Heading Home" by Allen C. Houser.

Here's how I felt about the trip (one of a long series of painted walls seen from the the multiuse path as I rode my bike):

And here's one of my favorite buildings on the highways I took back north:

It's located in La Jara, Colorado, between Antonito and Alamosa.

Thanks, Penny. It was an absolutely amazing trip. And I never would have known to take it if you hadn't told me. Thanks, Susan, for the Sage Inn. It's right across from the bike path, next door to a healthy grocery store, and a few blocks from Body, where I ate my only Santa Fe restaurant meal, and a fine (and reasonably priced) choice it was.

Wow.

Now I need to deal with some of that piled-up work. It waited for me (and multiplied a bit while I wasn't looking).

Pondering that exhibit in Santa Fe. SO tempted.

Typepad has gotten a little too efficient. I thought I was posting a response to a comment, and the system made it a new post, which I can't figure out how to delete. However, I can figure out how to expand what I said, so it makes sense without its original context.

So what I wrote was this: "Pondering that exhibit in Santa Fe. SO tempted. Turns out I need to be at a meeting that's about a third of the way there, and that there *is* a hostel in Santa Fe. It might actually work."

In a series of comments on a previous post, a kind reader told me that there is an exhibit of Toadlena and Two Grey Hills weaving (a specific style of Navajo tapestry and rug weaving) at the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe. The exhibit is up through April 17, which is not a whole lot longer. I have likely seen some of the weavings (I've definitely seen the work of a number of the weavers being featured), although it's been more than a decade, so there are probably new pieces. I'd need to check my records, but I think I was in the area in 1997 and 1998. Some of the work that I saw on looms when I visited that part of the Navajo Nation may be in the show. One tapestry in particular that I saw being woven was so exquisite that it seared a permanent image on my brain cells. How wonderful it would be to see those pieces, if they happen to be there, as well as what may be some "old friends" that I saw before—likely, because the sources of the work in the show are the same as the sources of what I saw when I was at Toadlena and Two Grey Hills trading posts.

Going to Santa Fe to see a museum exhibit is not something I would normally do. Yet it's possible, and this is not just any exhibit. The weavers from that area produce exquisite pieces, and are known for using natural-colored Navajo Churro wool.

Yes, I do have a meeting that requires me to do a good chunk of the drive toward Santa Fe. And yes, there is a hostel in Santa Fe that looks clean and is definitely reasonably priced. Weather permitting on the appropriate days, it might actually be possible. . . .

Stirling, the castle, and the tapestry project

UK Knit Camp was held in Stirling, Scotland, which is just north of, and pretty much equidistant between, Glasgow and Edinburgh. It's an old town steeped in history.

There are swans on the lake at the university, where the Knit Camp was held.

The castle itself sits on volcanic rock overlooking the area.

I spent a chunk of time there learning about the project to weave replicas of the Unicorn tapestry series now located in New York City, at The Cloisters (Metropolitan Museum of Art). I'll be writing a short article for Handwoven magazine including the answers to some of the questions I asked. Four of the seven tapestries have been completed. This is their temporary location within the castle; they will be hung in the palace, a portion of the castle that is being restored. (The information on the tapestries here is a little out of date, but gives an introduction to the work.)

Not far from Stirling is New Lanark, a World Heritage Site and location of a social experiment that took place concurrent with the industrial revolution to improve the quality of workers' lives.

This is part of one of the mill wheels at New Lanark.

 

Here's a view of part of the community (mostly workers' housing) in the valley, from the hill above it:

 

 

Trading up for Ireland: a bunch of handspun yarn

Writer Rosemarie Colombraro lives in Vermont and wrote a recent post about how much she wants to go to Ireland and how that's not a practical thing for her to have in mind. She especially wants to go to the Galway region (I was spinning Galway wool for The Project just yesterday).

She heard about an event there and it got her thinking. She said:

This area of Ireland had called to me for the better part of my 50 years on this earth. It was on my "Boxcar List." That’s like a bucket list, but much bigger and harder to ignore. I had written about the female pirate queen, Grainne O’Malley, and recognized her castle immediately among the pictures on the workshops web site. There was a strange need to visit, to walk the countryside and find spiritual sites I knew but could not describe, to breathe the air of a country that I recognized only through genetic memory, through the drops of blood that came from my Irish ancestors.

She decided to see what she might have around that she could "trade up" into a trip to Ireland, like the guy who traded a red paperclip up until he owned a house. She made a list of several items she could easily spare:

1. 6 AAA batteries. Not new, but a few of them might have a little bunny left in them.
2. A wire hanger, used.
3. My wig, used this summer during my bald period.
4. The hair of a dog. Really. The hair of a dog.
5. A Virgin Mobile Kyocera phone , with chew marks and a battery that is still fairly good.
6. And, if I find it, I will offer a four-leaf clover, found by me. This is surely worth an entire trip, flight and all! Let me know if anyone is interested in this one and I will look harder.

Here’s more:
JUST ADDED: My high school class ring, circa 1975.
My voice: Got an advertising project that needs a female voice?
My skill: Blog content? A story…on Ireland? Want me to tweet about your Irish wolfhound?

Grainne O'Malley, about whom Rosie had written, is the subject of Molly Lyons' exquisite one-person play, A Most Notorious Woman (with fine original music by Martin Stillion). I thought that if Rosie did not know about the play, she certainly needed to. I dropped a comment on her blog:

Okay, no trade from me yet (though I may think of one), but a question: have you seen . . . A Most Notorious Woman? It’s about Granuaile (Grace O’Malley, pick your name: the pirate queen). It is EXTRAORDINARY. I saw its world premiere—and have seen it three more times, and will see it again when I have another chance (and I don’t tend to do things I’ve done before).

Rosie responded:

Thanks for the info on the Grainne play, Deborah! And…um…this hair of the dog…beautiful spinnable Belgian Tervuren hair. A manilla envelope stuffed full. Want to trade for a sample of your yarn, to be put up for further barter?

Okay, THAT's interesting. Spinnable fiber. She's got my number. I figured I could find a sample of surplus handspun, probably even a whole skein, to trade for it.

Then I got to pondering. To make a long story slightly shorter, here's my trade for the dog hair (I like Belgian Tervurens, and I would love to hear that Rosie, whom I have never met, gets to go to Ireland):

Here's what I wrote about my trade:

Handspun yarn, I’d call it “rose gray,” a medium gray with a warm cast to it, plus a knitted swatch and a small piece of the original fiber: 2 pounds 4 ounces (1 kg, not a typo) of two-ply, light sportweight, moderately thick-and-thin, 14 wraps per inch, suitable for knitting or crochet, and strong enough to be woven (warp and/or weft).

This is a former UFO (unfinished object), about two-thirds of a sweater that I have disassembled and turned back into skeins of various sizes: most are good-sized, a handful are quite small. I’ve just washed the skeins [note: retrieved from semi-sweaterdom, skeined, and bathed in a hurry, as I was packing to head for the cabin], but they still have a bit of crinkle from their previous adventures, which were nearly successful. The skeins got slightly disoriented while I was spinning out the water in the washing machine (despite three skein ties each), but will be easy to ball.

I think the fiber was an Ashland Bay multicolored Merino top . . . that’s what it looks and feels like. Spinning quality: this was some of my intermediate yarn, the sort that a beginner aspires to and that gives a spinner with much experience an opportunity to feel good about her or his own yarn. It knits or weaves up to a nice, supple, lightweight fabric, or it can be worked double for more body (and quicker working).

A spinner could also uptwist the two-ply and turn it into a cable.

I actually like this yarn a whole lot. It's got great karma. It's sort of tweedy, like Ireland, and sort of rosie, like Rosie. I have no idea why it has not wanted to become something for me, other than yarn. I'd love to know what it becomes for someone else! (Whenever.)

Here's what I'm getting in return:

Traded to Deb: hair of the dog
This is a manilla envelope full of clean soft Belgian Tervuren hair from the coat of Richelieu’s Faelhan of the Land, the only surviving puppy of the last litter of American and Canadian CH Richelieu’s Exeter D’Allante, CDX, PT. This hair will spin into either a soft brown or gray yarn. “Fae” is my best buddy!

I'm thrilled. Fae's hair might make a special appearance in The Project, too. We'll see.

If you want to know more about this trading-up sequence, just started, there's a special page for it now.

Anybody else want to play?

 

Yes, all of it.

Genghis Khan exhibit, Denver Museum of Nature and Science

I'm about six blog posts behind what's in my head. I'm also spinning and writing on a serious deadline (and putting together a Ravelry ad campaign in the hope of picking up enough income to float Nomad Press and me through this time of non-paying, absolutely must-do-for-many-reasons work).

However, I was just writing a quick Facebook note on the exhibit on Genghis Khan that I went to last night at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, courtesy of friends who are members and invited us to join them, and thought I'd put a short recap in here.

There will be no photos, because taking photos was not allowed. We all left saying that we have to go back, and walked to the car planning how to do that. We also all have different interests: I was the only textiles person, supported in that by my daughter, who took a comprehensive path through the rooms in the hour we had before closing. We had to make the trip to the city after a full day of work all around, so our time there was too short. (We also enjoyed a delicious and varied members-only opening-special buffet supper of Mongolian foods.)

We got a pretty thorough look at the first half of the exhibit, and as the staff was announcing the museum's imminent closure we skimmed the second half to get an overview and plan our return trip. Most textiles are in the second half of the exhibit, with enough just in the first half to have made yesterday's trip a stellar event for a fiber nut.

In that first part, there are some sleeper-but-gorgeous silks (noblewoman's burial series). There are two gowns, extremely faded and damaged—but look closely at the brocade work, and see the way the hems are faced with coarser fabrics, and what graceful shaping there is on the sleeves! (As I look closely and in relative solitude at the cloth, large numbers of people walk past me and the fabrics to see the mummy herself, resting in a secluded area, and then out again to the explosions that demonstrate Genghis Khan's invention of the modern army and of sustained warfare. I experienced those, too. . . .)

In a flat case in the armor area there's a fortified vest made primarily with what looks like a couple of yards of blue heavy chambray. . . . Most folks move around this case with a quick glance down: they've seen things like this on the rack or the bolt at Walmart. Oh, but no, and oh, my: all handspun, and if I had a strong magnifying glass I might be able to see clearly enough through the low-set case to confirm my guess that they are singles. The lining is coarser than the outer shell of the vest. Indigo-dyed. Not only handspun, but made with either handspindle or driven spindle: the timing predates flyer wheels, which were not prevalent in this part of the world in any case (all the Egyptian cottons also predate wheel-and-flyer technology by a long span, of course, as do many others of the world's most exquisite fabrics).

Great pottery, too. Not much time to look at it on this trip.

And some absolutely breath-taking calligraphic pieces, some in Mongolian script (Genghis Khan introduced writing in his home region), and a Chinese version of an earlier Mongolian book that was lost, and then a comparatively very recent piece that is also remarkable, a 19th-century genealogy of Genghis Khan (ink on cotton) that belongs in one of Edward Tufte's books, if it isn't already there: unusual and clear visual presentation of information. As my daughter noted, it's much more effective at conveying its content than the customary-to-us family tree.

There are also performers from the Mongolian community featured in the exhibit area daily—their placement somewhat impedes looking at the artifacts where they're stationed, but in the case of the dancer I watched, well worth the trade-off and a loop back through that area on another occasion to check out the walls and cases. I'm guessing the dancer we saw was Dugluun, based on brief conversation with her after her performance—how many highly skilled, seventeen-year-old contortionist dancers who have been training since they were seven are likely to be in Denver? She is like an extremely graceful and flexible yogini, her poses accompanied by a traditional Mongolian fiddle player of similar youth and equally distinct, of quieter, beauty. Seeing the young people so adept in these traditional arts was an extra treat. (P.S. An older man asked the young woman after her dancing what, basically, she thought the long-term negative effects to her body might be of the flexing she's doing. My guess is that she'll be in a lot better shape in forty years than most football players, ballerinas, or computer-based office workers.)

If you're within driving distance of this museum, or elsewhere that this exhibit travels, check it out. The textiles are not the big draw for most visitors, of course, but they're abundant and worth a pilgrimage to investigate. The cases around them are far less crowded than other parts of the show, too.

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.

More license plates from Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival this year

I don't go out of my way to find these license plates at Maryland. I just notice them as I go about my business.

I find them in both the vendors' and the attendees' parking areas. It's interesting to note the states they're from and the types of vehicles . . . from very workhorse to very upscale.

People who come from far away may have snap-worthy plates at home, but they're stuck here in rental cars or came in chartered buses (there's a specific parking area for the buses, but I haven't found any license plates there that I needed to photograph).

I followed this car out of the fairgrounds when I went to get the things I left at the hotel.

I love this one:

Lots of the vehicles are set up to haul sheep. You'd be amazed what can be fitted into a minivan (which this, of course, isn't).

This is the sort of minivan that is not leaking hay. It probably holds a bunch of skeins, though.

The weavers were well represented this year.

I'd bet the owner of this car can fit more than one skein in it.

Might be pushing it to get six alpacas even in a relatively big truck.

And my two favorites this year:

And. . . .

That's all until next time.

A few ways to help save rare breeds and species that produce irreplaceable fibers

I got interested in rare-breed conservation when I realized that the animals that produced most of my favorite handspinning fibers were on the watchlists posted by organizations like the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.

That was a number of years ago. Because of the ongoing support of a number of people, some of those breeds are in much better shape now. Some are still very precarious. They all need our interest and help.

Here are some ideas and actions that can make a difference:

• Experience rare-breed fibers for yourself. Some are even clean and ready to spin, knit, crochet, weave, or felt! Check out sources like (in alphabetical order) The Spinning Loft and Spirit Trail Fiberworks.
• Join and/or donate to organizations like the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC), the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, and other organizations (list here). ALBC publishes an annual directory of breeders who may have yarns, rovings, or fleece you can buy. (Google searches can also be interesting, as can careful browsing of the booths at fiber festivals.)
• Support people who are raising rare-breed fiber animals; this includes individual farms as well as historic sites like George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens and  Colonial Williamsburg; help a nearby living history site with its livestock program (help it develop one if it doesn't have one already). When you make contributions, make sure people know you are especially interested in the fiber animals!
• Wear your heart sheep on your sleeve shirt. (With a rare-breed sweater on top for warmth.)
• Learn about the conservation of biodiversity in domesticated, as well as wild, animals; discover and support the work of the SVF Foundation and the National Germplasm Project (through ALBC).
• If it suits your lifestyle, make room in your life for some rare-breed animals. (For genetic conservation purposes, cross-breeding doesn't count. It has other uses. Just not in keeping rare breeds around.) Or help someone who does have them.

Okay, that's a lot. Just pick one thing to learn a little bit more about . . . or just pick up a skein of breed-specific yarn to play with, whether the breed is rare or not. Educate your fingers about what different wools feel like (although this isn't just about wools, of course; we've lost cottons, and we need to safeguard our flax quality, and . . . ). "Merino" and "100% wool" are just the entry points to an amazing universe of options. I've been engaged in this process for years. It's fascinating, and extremely rewarding.

A couple of books:

• Handspun Treasures from Rare Wools (out of print, but still available from some retailers; Google finds it): a small book, full of inspiration about what to do with rare-breed wools
• The Encyclopedia of Historic and Endangered Livestock and Poultry Breeds, by Janet Vorwald Dohner: a big book, full of information and stories; borrow it from the library until you decide you want your own copy; she has the best information I've seen on Santa Cruz sheep

Have fun! And surprise yourself, as I just did in the discovery process of the most recent three posts.

News from Estes Park: Keep the Fleece contest

At the Estes Park Wool Market, I learned about an upcoming project being sponsored by Wild Fibers magazine, along with some other folks. Called Keep the Fleece, it pertains to topics I care a great deal about—and I'm working on a related project myself. There will be a web site, but it is not active at the time I'm writing this (at www.keepthefleece.com, when it's ready). So I'd like to share the initial information that I picked up at the Wool Market here. If you want to submit your work to a contest like this, you can't ever get started too early. It's good to have lots of imagining time, as well as working time.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when I was editor of Spin-Off magazine, we sponsored a project called Save the Sheep. It included what turned out to be an international juried competition, a traveling exhibit (on the road for two years), a book called Handspun Treasures from Rare Wools (now unfortunately out of print, but still in stock at some vendors), a slide show, and a trunk show of rare-breed samples. It was an amazing endeavor to be involved with, and. . . .

It's definitely time for the next step! How nice that Wild Fibers is the primary catalyst this time.

Here are the basics:

• 2009 is the United Nations International Year of Natural Fibres.
• There's an international contest, with a deadline of April 1, 2009.
• There will be a book published in September 2009 (fast track from the deadline!) that includes selected winning entries.

Here's the front of a brochure on the contest (many details still being ironed out):

Here's what it says inside:

• "We want people from around the world to be inspired by the versatility of natural fibers, and to understand their importance not only as a natural resource, but to the environment and the people who are directly involved in the farming, harvesting and manufacturing process."
• "Four Simple A's (otherwise known as the contest rules): Anyone can enter. This contest is for everyone—professionals and amateurs alike. There is a separate category for professional designers although a single item may be entered in multiple categories where appropriate. For example, a scarf designed by Pam Allen made from Shetland wool could be entered in both the Island Life category (for the island wool) and Pro-create (for professional designers). Anywhere in the world. "Keep the Fleece" is focused on creating a universal fiber community including women who knit with feverish abandon Down Under and cops who crochet on the beat in Guatemala. Any fiber—naturally. "Natural" fiber includes any type of protein fiber (from animals) or cellulosic fiber (from plants). April 1st, 2009. No fooling—that's the deadline. A select group of winning entries will be published in a book available by September 2009—so get busy!"
• "Contest Categories (this is only a partial listing): Camelot, Fiber from camelids: guanaco, vicuna, alpaca, llama, and camel; Island Life, Any fiber that originates from an island, such as Icelandic wool, or sheep native to North Ronaldsay, St. Kilda, etc.; Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, Plant fibers, including but not limited to cotton, hemp, jute, and coconut; Inch by Inch, 100% pure or recycled silk; Like a Virgin, Any fiber from a young animal (kid mohair, baby alpaca, etc.) . . . "

Because the organizers haven't completed the categories, I'm not going to key in the rest, but that gives the idea. Whatever natural fiber anyone wants to work with, there will be at least one category and probably more to choose from.

Sounds like fun. My time's already committed, so it's extremely unlikely (one chance in a million) that I'll be entering, but many of the activities I'm committed to are related, so some of my posts may be helpful to those who will be participating.

I'm planning, for example, to talk soon about today's task: washing some rare breed wool that sure wasn't raised with handspinners in mind. But now I've got to go tend the soaking bowls again.