The Independent Stitch

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.

Playing with yarn

I'm acquiring and preparing fibers and yarns for upcoming workshops. The amount of up-front work, and its complex nature, is one reason I only accept a small number of teaching opportunities each year. (Over the course of 2012, I'll be teaching in Washington, Maryland, Minnesota, California, Alberta, and Michigan.)

First up is the Madrona Winter Retreat, from February 16 to 19 in Tacoma, Washington. At Madrona, some of my classes have filled, but others have a few openings; there are sessions for both spinners and knitters, as well as for people who are interested in publishing their fiber work. I'll also be doing an informal clinic, and giving a talk on Saturday night at the banquet.

Here's what I've been up to in getting ready for just two of my seven Madrona offerings. These are yarn-based classes (rather than fiber-based ones). One is Understanding Breed-Specific Yarns and the other is Introduction to Rare-Breed Wools.

My first challenge is to determine which breeds will be covered—in other words, what I can find appropriate yarns for. I want to make sure that each class has a variety of types of wools, and, in this case, that the breeds covered in the two classes are all different, in case anyone wants to take both. (There will be no repeated breeds.) Although I ask people to bring a variety of sizes of needles for swatching, I try to find yarns for sampling that are within a fairly narrow range of weights. This can be challenging, because these artisan yarns often only come in one or two weights. I aim for sport or DK, and I settle, when necessary, for worsted or aran.

With one exception, all of the yarns are undyed, because I want to keep the emphasis on the fiber qualities. We are so easily seduced by lovely colors! They can obscure our perceptions of what the fiber itself is like. (The one dyed fiber wasn't available undyed at the moment when I ordered, and I decided I wanted to include it anyway. As it turns out, the dye effect—which happens to be lovely—will offer a chance to include an extra instructional point. It will earn its keep.)

I order the yarns and they start arriving.

I wind skeins into balls.

I go back and forth with one producer about what's been happening with her production runs, which are not meeting her standards, and she sends samples and we converse at some length before making decisions about which option I'll obtain for the classes. Because of the issues involved, I need to redesign part of the class plan and figure a different way to demonstrate the point I wanted to make. Her yarns will be there. My point will get made. Those two goals just won't happen in conjunction with each other.

Another source never replies to my inquiry, although that's unusual. I do have to find another supplier for that breed's yarn, because I'm determined to include it.

More yarns arrive.

I wind more skeins into balls.

When it's time to visit family for the holidays, I take yarn with me and during in-between moments I begin to prepare the sample kits for class participants. When I'm ready to fly home, I have a duffel that doesn't have anything but yarn in it, and all of that yarn is workshop-ready.

Unzipping it causes a minor explosion (the packs below those on the surface are still compressed).

There's more yarn waiting for me at home.

I count the samples. I count the breeds. I compare the lists of what I have to the lists of what I meant to have.

The participants in Understanding Breed-Specific Yarns (workshop is full) will be treated to:

• Black Welsh Mountain
• Border Leicester
• Cormo
• Corriedale
• Gotland
• Herdwick
• Icelandic
• Romney
• Suffolk

Those in the Introduction to Rare-Breed Wools (which has a space or two! - edited to add: full again; one of my  followers on Twitter, where I'm @effortlesszone, snagged what was apparently one spot released by someone with a change of plans—it had sold out on the first day) will discover:

• Cotswold
• Karakul
• Leicester Longwool
• Manx Loaghtan
• Navajo-Churro
• North Ronaldsay
• Shropshire
• Tunis
• Wensleydale

The only problem with this type of work is that for every breed whose samples I prepare, I not only want to keep the yarn for myself but to order more and make a whole project. However, I remind myself what a delight it is to introduce other fiber folk to all the possibilities that breed-specific yarns open up for them. Still, with each option that runs through my fingers I find myself imagining all the things I could make with it. . . .

Those are just a few of the bags of prepared yarn. I have just over 400 samples wound and ready to go, and last night I printed out the corresponding information cards that I'll give to the people in the workshop to help them keep track of what they're experiencing.

That's just for two classes, and short ones at that. Next I need to be sure that the fibers for the Madrona spinning workshop are ready; get moving on washing two fleeces (and making final selections for two more) for Explore 4 (there's another note about this event below); and begin the selection and acquisition processes for Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, which will follow before long (I've been completing paperwork for Maryland this week: lots of details).

Oh, and now that I know which breeds will be in the Madrona line-ups, I can start putting together the background material: the slides and the handouts.

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Internet radio interview

Meanwhile, yesterday I was interviewed on an internet radio show about the article that I wrote for the November/December issue of PieceWork magazine, called "On the Edge: How a Handful of People Have Preserved Some Rare, Valuable Sheep and Their Wools." The show, broadcast live, is Creative Mojo with Mark Lipinski. Mark is an energetic, opinionated, outspoken host and I only hoped I could keep up with him! The show is two hours long and I was the second guest, beginning about 45 minutes into the program. It was fun, and the results are available now as a podcast.

____

Early

Veering toward a completely different topic, Tuesday morning shortly after I got up I noticed that the light outside had a very warm quality to it. I looked out the window and noticed we were having an especially beautiful sunrise, so I grabbed my camera and ran out front in my pajamas to see if I could catch it to share.

This was 7:20 a.m.:

And by 8:30 a.m., just over an hour later, the same view had acquired its more normal winter coloration:

I'm glad I didn't miss the show!

Come to think of it, that's sort of how I feel about breed-specific and generic wool yarns. The generic ones are lovely, reliable, and nice to work with. I wouldn't be without them.

But the breed-specific ones are something else.

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Explore 4

A month after Madrona comes the Explore 4 Retreat in Friday Harbor, Washington (March 10-16). It's a fiber-based event, for spinners at all levels beyond the basic skills of spinning and plying.

Most of the workshops I offer are surveys, in which we cover a lot of ground really fast. They're fun and energizing.

Explore 4 will will be quite different, providing an unusual opportunity to relax and go into more depth with fleeces from four carefully selected breeds. I'll share more of the process of preparing for that event as we go along here. Registrations have been arriving in clusters as people hear about it through various channels (all word-of-mouth, in this case), but there are still some spaces available.

___

And now it's time to make another checklist.

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.

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):

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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.

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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.

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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.

Spotlight on four rare breeds of sheep

The November/December 2011 issue of PieceWork magazine has arrived! The issue's focus is wool, and editor Jeane Hutchins and I talked early in the planning process about what I might contribute to it. The result is "On the Edge: How a Handful of People Have Preserved Some Rare, Valuable Sheep and Their Wools," which starts on page 34.

Jeane asked for rare sheep. Then we had to figure out what aspect to focus on. She also was thinking about a related project or projects in addition to an article, and because of PieceWork's readership any hands-on components had to be based on readily available yarn. In other words, we couldn't ask people to start by spinning their own. Materials available by internet were okay—a specification that made the whole endeavor possible, because most people's local stores are unlikely to stock breed-specific, much less rare-breed-specific, yarns.

One thing that has fascinated me in my study of sheep is the pivotal role often played by one or two individuals in a whole breed's survival.

So we came up with the idea of an article about a few breeds of rare sheep

• that are still with us today in large part because of the actions of identifiable individual human beings, and
• whose fiber is available as spun yarn that readers can get their hands on.

Sorting through the possibilities took me a while, and some research on the web to augment what I already knew about yarn suppliers. We ended up with four breeds that fit the criteria we aimed for. In addition,

• two of the breeds originated in the British Isles and two originated in North America (I like that balance), and
• Jeane found four people, each of whom agreed to design an original project using one of the breeds' fiber.

What fun!

And now it's here.

The breeds are Manx Loaghtan and Leicester Longwool (British Isles) and Navajo-Churro and American Tunis (North America). The projects are:

• Manx Loaghtan Boot Socks to Knit, by Ann Budd (with Blacker Yarns Pure Manx Loaghtan, DK weight)
• Leicester Longwool Pillow Cover to Tunisian Crochet, by Carol Huebscher Rhoades (with Row House Farm Leicester Longwool, in two natural colors)
• Navajo-Churro Mittens to Knit, by Alexis Manzanares, working from her grandmother's pattern (with Shepherd's Lamb Certified Organic Churro, blanket, or worsted, weight) (I can't find a web reference for Alexis, but there are a number of links to information on her family's sheep and wool)
• American Tunis Hat to Knit, by Kristi Schueler (with Solitude Wool Tunis, worsted weight)

These are all designs my fingers are itching to knit! What a wonderful way to showcase the fibers. I feel like we've gathered at a party to celebrate the survival of four superb and valuable breeds by using their wools. I'd love to see what other people make with these fibers, whether from these patterns or others.

Meanwhile, let's get some more pictures into this blog. There are super photos in the article, but the ones of the swatches are nicely decorative (i.e., a little small), and since they're my samples I can supplement by providing them at a bigger size here. I might as well add photos of sheep and of locks of wool, for the spinnerly and otherwise curious among us.

All photos not otherwise credited are mine.

Manx Loaghtan

Here's my swatch, worked in Cable and Band pattern from Barbara Walker's Charted Knitting Designs (Pittsville, WI: Schoolhouse Press, 1998, p. 133). The yarn is Manx Loaghtan from Blacker Yarns, Cornwall, England. (On the Blacker Yarns site, the Manx Loaghtan yarn is listed under "Welsh" breeds because there's only one breed from the Isle of Man, which is its own sovereignty—and the yarn would likely be overlooked if it had its own category.)

Manx Loaghtan locks are all brown, although they come in a variety of shades of mid-brown—as you can see in the yarns below the locks. The lefthand yarn was spun from a darker fleece. Manx Loaghtan fleeces often have light-colored tips, from sun-bleaching, although the tips in my experience so far have not been fragile (as sun-bleached tips sometimes are).

On all of the lock photographs, the inked-in line is 4 inches/10cm long.

And here's a robust Manx Loaghtan ram with a gorgeous set of four horns:

Photo © British Wool Marketing Board. Used by permission.

Check out the Navajo-Churro horns below, too.

Leicester Longwool

This next swatch is Diamond and Rib, also from Barbara Walker's Charted Knitting Designs (p. 22), worked in Leicester Longwool singles yarn from Double J Ranch, Oregon City, Oregon. (There are two Double J Ranches in Oregon. The link goes to the right one.)

The high luster, open crimp, and generous length of the locks are typical of the breed. The lock on top is unwashed, and the one on the bottom is clean. Longwools invite a variety of spinning techniques. Lower left is singles, spun for texture, and lower right is a loosely spun and plied two-ply.

And here's a Leicester Longwool sheep, fairly recently shorn: the breed's fleeces get exquisitely long in a fairly short time. They're often shorn twice a year to keep the fiber to a manageable 5- to 6-inch length (12.5 to 15cm).

Photo © British Wool Marketing Board. Used by permission.

Navajo-Churro

Another swatch in singles yarn, this time Navajo-Churro obtained from Gypsy Wools, Boulder, Colorado. Yet another pattern from Barbara Walker's Charted Knitting Designs (I love all of Barbara Walker's treasuries, but this one just might be my favorite): Waterfall (p. 151).

Here are some of the breed's gorgeous natural colors, these grown by Connie Taylor's sheep in southern Colorado:

Navajo-Churro wool combines softness and durability in a unique way. The rare breeds are delightfully distinctive. That's to their benefit, in the realm of genetic variety and delight for us, but it's a negative attribute in an industrial world that prefers its fibers anonymous.

Here's a Navajo-Churro ram: he's got a superior set of four horns, too. Not many breeds of sheep are polycerate, or capable of producing horns in multiples. The fact that we're seeing two such rams on this page is because we're in rare-breed territory. These guys are remarkable even in that realm.

Photo © Tanya Carte and Greg Shore/McKenzie Creek Ranch in California. Used by permission.

American Tunis

Changing books to Hitomi Shida's 250 Japanese Knitting Patterns (Tokyo: Nihon Vogue, 2005), this is pattern #132, worked in American Tunis yarn from Solitude Wool, Round Hill, Virginia.

Tunis locks have a lovely open quality to them (except the tips, which often need a little gentle opening). They spin up into a versatile yarn that works well for color definition and (as you can see above) good body in texture patterns. It's darn sweet.

The lambs are born cinnamon-red, and they lighten up as they mature to a creamy-white color, although they retain the warm tones on their faces and legs.

Photo © SVF Foundation. Used by permission.

In conclusion

Here are locks of the four breeds, all together:

Left to right: Navajo Churro, American Tunis, Leicester Longwool, and Manx Loaghtan.

Aren't they pretty? All the things we can make with these splendid, renewable fibers—!

Check out the new PieceWork. There are a lot of other great articles about wool in it, including Charlotte Booth's exploration of ancient Coptic socks, Lithuanian beaded wrist warmers by Donna Druchunas, a section by Evelyn Clark featuring Icelandic wool, and more. I just need more knitting (and spinning) time.

For more rare breeds (and not-so-rare), there is, of course, The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook.

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!

 

Part of why it's been quiet here on the blog

I have many half-written posts. Getting one finished is a challenge right now. Here's an inkling of why:

Well, rats. The photo I need is on the other computer. I'll add it later. (I wonder if one of the advantages to Apple's new Lion operating system may be the ability to sync photo libraries, and their labels and keywords, between computers. Haven't had time to find out. Haven't upgraded yet; no time. Mostly I keep files accessible to both computers through Dropbox, which is a blessing, but loading all the photos up there hasn't seemed feasible.)

SOAR preparation

Here's that photo I wanted to find:

I'll be teaching at the Spin-Off Autumn Retreat in a little under a month. I'll teach a three-day workshop, a one-day workshop, and four retreat sessions (half days). All are on rare-breed wools.

1. I've made up the handouts, three separate versions for the three separate formats (one handout is in the middle of the picture). I've sent the PDFs to Interweave, and the very on-top-of-it SOAR coordinator Maggie Reinholtz has already duplicated them and has them ready to ship to New Hampshire and deliver to my workshop space!
2. I prepared files for, and had printed, additional materials that I'm supplying instead of asking SOAR to prep. These items require more than straight photocopying. The photo shows just one stack; there are 18 more just like it. I've packed the box and it's ready to ship (20 pounds / 9kg), as soon as I get information on when and where to send them. Other boxes of materials will be going, too.
3. There are also 900 (yes, nine hundred) fiber samples to be prepared for workshop and retreat participants, representing 19 (nineteen) rare sheep breeds listed by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy and Rare Breeds Survival Trust. Folks in the three-day workshop will get 15 breeds; those in the one-day workshop will get 8; and those in the retreat sessions will get 6. (Longer workshops get larger fiber samples, more background information, and more time to get to know each fiber. EVERY session will get a solid grounding for future explorations, and a carefully chosen selection of fibers that demonstrate different qualities.)

We'll be shipping between 35 and 40 pounds of wool to use in these workshops. Every bit of that has been acquired from a shepherd who keeps rare-breed sheep. Every bit of that has been washed—a bunch of it by hand, and some of it at a fiber mill. Every bit has also been measured and packed into a labeled bag, ready to be distributed in class. (Prepackaging improves the likelihood that fibers will be divvied up pretty evenly, and . . . if we didn't prepackage, we could easily spend two-thirds of our workshop time on administrative matters, rather than discovering things about wool and spinning.)

I could not be doing these workshops at all without the amazing help of

• Beth Pink Smith, at The Spinning Loft in Michigan (who is also teaching at SOAR)
• Jennifer Tepper Heverly, at Spirit Trail Fiberworks in Virginia (who will be at the SOAR market)

Before I agreed to teach at SOAR, I contacted both of these wonderful people and asked if they'd be on board to make sure we had the right fibers in the right quantities. When they both said "yes," so did I. We've all been working since last December to coordinate all of that prep work. (We warmed up by doing the same set of tasks for the Conference of Northern California Handweavers in May, which involved one two-day workshop, a dozen breeds, 12 pounds / 5.5kg of wool, and 192 packets. Everything went beautifully. Now we get to ramp that up by more than 5 times.)

So there's that.

Fibers are being prepared and shipped. Somewhere between $1000 and $1800 has been invested in materials and their preparation. ( Do I want to know the precise totals right now? No. Do the materials fees people pay to workshop facilitators matter? YES!) Boxes are packed. Handouts are ready.

Now I'm working on the slide shows. I like pictures. So I have pictures of sheep, and pictures of wool, and pictures of places where sheep live, as well as some different ways of looking at the information on the handouts. (All the nitty-gritty numbers people would be tempted to try to write down while I'm showing them pictures are already printed on the handouts, so they can make personal notes but don't need to transcribe the basics.)

Lots of the components of the slide shows are already in my files, but I'm upgrading some of the sheep photos (which involves finding alternatives and writing to request permission to use them). I've also discovered that a few photos of locks are missing, so I've pulled out my samples and taken snapshots.

As you might have gathered, there will be three slide shows, one for each format. . . . They work off the same basic material, but it's selected and combined differently.

By the time October comes around, I'll be close to ready.

____

Knitting Daily TV

SOAR is still a few weeks away. Sooner than that, however, I'll fly to Cleveland to tape three segments for Knitting Daily TV (KDTV).

Although each segment is only 5 to 6 minutes long, the day requires significant preparation. There's the segment outline, defining the key concepts to be presented and how they will be made to work for the camera. There are the samples to gather and prepare (more raw wool to be found, locks to be washed, sometimes yarns to be spun, and definitely swatches to be knitted or woven). There are the clothes: We're supposed to have a different "look" available for every segment, along with a couple of backup options. Detailed specifications guide clothing choices: no white, red, or black; jewel tones and pastels are good; no stripes or large patterns (basically, solid colors); garment design must accommodate a microphone and must go on/off without messing up makeup. My daughter suggested that I not wear exactly the same one or two outfits for all the DVD and TV appearances that I ever do. I thought it was a good idea because it would be much simpler. I've been to the closet and to the resale stores. I think I have some possibilities, although I haven't had time to really try them out.

I wish I had time to knit a bunch of alternatives. Last year I tried to get that done, but didn't have time. No time this year, either. The kinds of things required aren't in my usual knitting repertoire, although there's no reason they couldn't be. Except then I'd want to use the same handful of options repeatedly. . . . There's something to be said for radio and podcasts, at least in terms of wardrobe requirements. . . .

Add to list: steam out wrinkles, and/or press, and carefully pack. (I have already washed all the clothing to freshen it up.)

This afternoon I need to wash a few locks of wool for one of the demos. That's today's step in making progress toward this event. After that: wind four more skeins into balls, and knit a few more swatches.

For one of the segments, I had planned to knit a demo object but the yarn hasn't arrived, so I need to figure out Plan B for what to show on camera to make the point. The positive side of this is that I don't have to iron the shirt in the background of the photo just above (it shows up at the lower corners), which would have gone with that now-nonexistent idea.

____

There's more . . .

but I'm not thinking about it right now. I did go for a bike ride this morning, to get to the coffee shop that was open on this holiday and could accommodate some writing time (most of this blog post).

Now it's time to wash wool, make sure the bank accounts are all okay, and do some freelance work.

It's not boring around here!

Traveling fiber emergency

I've been insanely busy. I'm stealing time for this post.

While driving 3400 miles in August, I also knitted about 18 swatches (more on that later). I also had a traveling fiber emergency. It led, as such things do, to memorable experiences en route. In this case, those experiences involved almost no panic and several unexpected, pleasant interludes.

Just before I left on the trip, I finished writing an article that is scheduled to appear in the November/December 2011 issue of PieceWork magazine. The topic is four rare breeds of sheep. PieceWork's criterion for breeds to be included was that yarn had to be available for people to work with—not just fleece. My criterion—my reason for selecting these breeds and featuring them together—was that there had to be at least one pivotal moment in the breed's history when an individual, or small handful of people, made a crucial difference in its survival. Additionally, I wanted them to demonstrate a variety of types of wools.

The breeds that fitted all those requirements?

• Leicester Longwool
• Manx Loaghtan
• Navajo Churro
• American Tunis

As a bonus, I liked the symmetry of two "Old World" breeds (Leicester Longwool and Manx Loaghtan) and two "New World" breeds (Navajo Churro and American Tunis). I wrote the main text and consulted with PieceWork on where people could locate yarn. We chatted together about designers who could develop projects using the breeds' wool. Fun! I love collaborations.

I thought I was done with my part. (When have I thought that before?)

At approximately mile 1239.8 of my trip, I connected to the internet through one or another of the many wireless networks that kept me marginally up-to-date and found the following e-mail:

You noted before that you could provide photos of locks of clean fiber and perhaps small swatches of knitting. Are you still able to provide these images? . . .

If we can have any other photography—or swatches to shoot here, by 8/25, that would be fabulous. Our photoshoot is . . . on 8/26.

Those dates were soon enough after my intended return home that I needed to come up with solutions while traveling. I checked the hard drive of my laptop. I FOUND and sent photographs of:

• Leicester Longwool locks: yes
• Leicester Longwool swatch: NO
• Manx Loaghtan locks: yes
• Manx Loaghtan swatch: yes
• Navajo Churro locks: yes
• Navajo Churro swatch: NO, but I happened to have a ball of yarn with me
• American Tunis locks: NO
• American Tunis swatch: yes

I sent along the images that already existed. The American Tunis lock could be dealt with as soon as I got home. I could knit a Navajo Churro swatch during my trip, using the yarn in my portable project box.

The Leicester Longwool necessitated a creative solution, one that I could implement while transient. Leicester Longwools are, for the most part, found in the British Isles and the eastern United States, but . . . there might be a yarn shop in Oregon or Washington that might carry breed-specific yarns. . . . I knew it was a long shot.

But I'm part of an online group that has a disproportionate number of folks from the Pacific Northwest, and they're all into fiber. With my intermittent access to the internet, I sent out an SOS:

I'm traveling . . . and it turns out I need some Leicester Longwool. . . . I have a spindle with me, but it would be great if I could find spun yarn, because . . . well, it'll be faster, and for this audience, commercially spun is ideal.

I'm near Wenatchee, WA. . . . I'll be driving west on route 2 to Seattle. . . . Then south on I-5 . . . [to] southern OR . . . (not much time for straying from the path, although I'll need short breaks . . . I know that Woodland Woolworks is no longer available). Mid-next-week I'll be heading back east, possibly via . . . Crater Lake . . . then I-90 through Wyoming.

Anybody know of sources along this path? ONE SKEIN (or equivalent fiber) of Leicester Longwool will suffice.

Twenty minutes after my e-mail went out, one friend, Leila Wice, offered to forward the message to Portland-area spinners. Thirty-six minutes after my inquiry was sent, Janel Laidman responded with this:

I have some leicester longwool fiber in my stash and could spin you enough for a swatch in a pinch, however I also found this resource for commercial yarn . . . not far off the I-5.

If that doesn't work, I'm . . . also not far off the I-5 and would be happy to spin.  Let me know if either of these options helps...

YES!

Two and a half hours after Janel's e-mail arrived, I had arranged to meet a shepherd—one who breeds Leicester Longwools in the Pacific Northwest—at a freeway exit and get some yarn that she'd had millspun, my choice of singles or two-ply (BOTH). I said I might need some fleeces as well, if she had any that would suit my purposes. She did. (These fleeces are for a class I'll be teaching next spring.)

I stopped a little farther down the road to show Janel what she'd facilitated (two skeins and three fleeces).

The wool was so pretty that Janel took photos of it, too.

And I knitted swatches on my way east (although not while driving, so progress was slow but steady).

Soon after I got home, I opened my e-mail to find this message from PieceWork:

I hope you’ve returned from your travels safely and that you had a great time.

I’m following up with you about the possible lock and swatch that we still need a photo of—either your photo or the items themselves for our photoshoot Friday in Ft. Collins. Did anyone respond to your [appeal] for yarn?

My response:

Funny you should ask! I got the second new swatch finished last night, and those two missing ones (Leicester Longwool and Navajo Churro) got washed/blocked last night. I checked them this morning to see if they were dry, and they're close enough to be photographed this afternoon. I'll also pull the American Tunis and get a lock photo--plus I was thinking I'd set up a single photo with all four breeds' locks in it, to give you an alternative.

So I did.

Thanks, Janel!

I suspect that Janel may still be smiling about all this. I definitely am!

A week away

Following the Colorado Art Ranch artposium over Memorial Day weekend, I was offered the blessing of a place to remain longer in Salida and get some (relatively) uninterrupted work done.

I've done this before, while working on the book portion of The Project. (The Project continues, by the way; it's just finding its next expression.) Since the book has just been released, my work needs to flow into new vessels, and my "concentrated time" lacks the strict (nearly rigid) focus of previous retreats. This is more challenging, and I feel less productive. So at the end of the week, I took stock.

I'm going to interleave a few more photos from the workshop I took with Dean Dablow, along with some more normal images later in the post. I had a great time in that workshop.

___

Week's planned tasks and accomplishments, completed:

• Article for PieceWork on four rare sheep breeds that are still around because of the actions of one or two people, 2500-3000 words. Due 7/15, finished and submitted at 3331 words, plus supplementary info. I will trim later. The concept is complicated and will include four accompanying projects that other people will design and make, and my contributions include source recommendations for yarns, leads for photos, and ideas for appropriate projects (an extra 977 words). That's a lot of moving parts and the editorial folks need the lead time to get them all synchronized, so I scheduled the basic writing early. The combination of pieces is slated for the November/December issue. Pays on publication.
• Short back-page essay for Spin-Off about writing the book, focused on supplies needed to get through all the associated tasks, 500-700 words. Due 8/1, finished and submitted, 676 words, with photos. Got a jump on this because I have another article due the same date that requires more prep work. Pays on publication.
• Some ukulele, mostly pleasant chord practice just before bed. I had a Homespun video by Jim Beloff out of the library that I listened to and practiced with (I see there's a second in the set to consider for the future; I may buy both, because I'm not proficient with the skills on #1 yet). I should probably not think of how long I've been using Homespun resources for independent music-learning. First there were cassette tapes, then CDs, now DVDs. The medium changes. The message has been constant.
• A bit of reading in Ensouling Language: The Art of Nonfiction and the Writer's Life, by Stephen Harrod Buhner, a book I found by chance one day at the Tattered Cover—one which needs open yet protected mental space to discover. There is nothing like browsing in an independent bookshop to bring a person in contact with treasures that wouldn't have been encountered otherwise.
• A smidge of narrative writing toward a book I've been working on for about eight years now.
• Blog post on Artposium.

 

 

Planned tasks started but not completed:

• Article for Spin-Off on qualities of wool, 2000 words. Due 8/1; sketched concepts and wrote 1300 words, but that's only a brief coverage of 2 of the 10 or so topics I figured I could get into the piece, out of 30 or more that might be included, although there obviously isn't room. I will need to keep going on the writing, see what ideas seem most pertinent and will fit, and then cut a lot. Pays on publication.
• Information sheet for Explore 4 workshop that I'll be teaching next year. Overdue, as is my blog post about this event (March 11-16, 2012). I created the file and got the text about 90% drafted out; layout not started.

 

 

 

Planned tasks not even started:

• Author/client introductory questionnaire for editorial business. Way overdue. It's close to done, but I didn't touch it. (I did get another idea for what it needs to take it to the next level. I keep getting "take it to the next level" ideas on everything. It's both blessing and curse.)
• Article for Spin-Off on Lincoln Longwool sheep, including a project (due 11/1), 3600 words. I didn't even start research—this will involve a lot of work, including spinning yarn and making something. At least I have bought the fiber. Pays on publication (income reduced by cost of fleece).

Unplanned tasks:

• Connected with The Book Haven about possible signing in November 2011.
• Talked with Organization 1 about teaching there in July 2012 (likely not a fit, but we're still discussing).
• Negotiated with Organization 2 about teaching there, with a potential add-on at a neat-sounding shop nearby, in July 2012. My final schedule may include Organization 1 or Organization 2, not both, because my workshops take a huge amount of prep work (finding, cleaning, and organizing fibers) and I can only do a few a year. Maybe neither of these will actually happen, if the details can't be worked out, but #2 is sounding promising. Pays/reimburses after completion of event.
• Came across an idea for another book that I might want to write, and made initial publisher contact to assess potential interest. (I might publish it myself, if they aren't interested and I don't want to let go of it. Too early to tell.) If someone else wants to publish it, there's an advance (likely small, but everything helps).
• Trip to Buena Vista, Colorado, to visit Serendipity, which has wonderful yarns and all sorts of intriguing stuff to look at. This was totally self-indulgent, but I met Mikki and Joan and it was fun to show them the book. I may do a signing there when I'm in the area again in November. Mikki took my picture with owner Tami's camera, which appears to work although I look a bit stiff . . . I'm not great at posing, and the book is heavy  . . . and then she wrote a blog post, thus revealing that I went shopping in the middle of my work week {grin}. It was fun, and I definitely needed the change of contexts.
• Lots of back-and-forth about a book I'm working on publishing (Nomad Press), including receiving essential files in an obsolete format and figuring out how to convert them when even the nearly-always-reliable OpenOffice refused to open them. (Zamzar rocks!)
• Talked with another writer about her multiple book ideas and helped her focus and prioritize them—a highlight!

Interleaved with:

• Yoga and meditation, daily.
• Visited the Salida Bread Company for the first time (and the second . . . would have visited more, except it took time to eat the bread I bought).
• Lovely dinner visit with Susan, Richard, Kerry, David, and Little (Little is a delightful cattle dog; I got to pat Little on both visits to the Salida Bread Company, too).
• A few bike rides and walks. Nowhere near as many as I would have liked, but getting stuff done requires staying inside and doing it.
• A bit of trash picking along the stream adjacent to where I was staying—I mostly removed plastic bags from the water, plus some old newspapers, a bunch of cigarette butts, and a soda can.
• Keeping up with a smattering of online networks, including stopping in at Ravelry once and answering messages.
• A little knitting of samples to use in teaching yarn/fiber workshops.
• Pleasantly simple meals, a number of them consisting of salads . . . with avocado, which my daughter prefers not to eat.
• Tea and a visit on the last morning there with Sherrie and David, since we'd barely seen each other because everyone was working so hard and it's silly to have traveled that far and be that close for more than a week and not get in a visit.

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Biking interlude

Here are a few photos from my bike ride at the end of the afternoon on the day before I left. It had been hot, and several of the days the air was smoky from the big fires south and west of us, in Colorado, New Mexico, and even as far as Arizona. This day ended quite clear.

This is one of the county roads, with a bike trail next to it. Even when the county roads in this county are paved, they mostly don't have shoulders. (Some are dirt two-tracks.) That's the smooth, straight bike path leading to the west. On this particular day, there wasn't much smoke from the wildfires to the south. Or there was, but the wind blew it on past.

Deer hang out all over. This one was in a subdivision, between the houses and a church. There were three more hunkered down in the shade on the church lawn.

They're pretty acclimated to humans, and eat people's gardens, both flower and food types. If you're driving on the highways or county roads in the area, stay alert. They may cross the road in front of you at any time, often in groups of three or four. That wasn't a concern when I was on my bike.

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Hey! A project really completed!

On the day I got home, the new issue of Spin-Off (Summer 2011) had just arrived.

It contains the article I wrote way back in January on Soay sheep (there was more to say than we could fit in The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, even though we included a lot there).

That sweet ewe on the far left is demonstrating the molting, or natural shedding, of her fleece.

Small samples of several types of Soay wool.

And lots of words. I like words. I also like pictures! The photos in this article came from varied sources, including my own camera, Interweave's studio shots, and Steve and Priscilla Weaver.

So nice to see a piece in print. (And since it's been published, I get paid!)