Author: Lisa Check

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the joy found in abundance

I told you I was re-reading Joyful by Ingrid Fetell Lee. In her 2nd chapter, she writes about the joy of abundance. I think this is a particular importance to use yarnie and textile pieces. When I think of abundance, I think of sprinkles, candy stores, yarn stores, multicolored quilts and my very own stash.

Earlier this year, before this pandemic was on the horizon, I went through my fabric stash. I wanted to “Kondo”ize it. I went through each piece of fabric and kept only what gave me joy. And I can honestly say that my fabric stash now gives me so much joy. I ended up giving away 3 trash bags full of fabric, elastic (I know…I wish I had that today) and seam bindings (yes I wish I still had that too).

5 mini skein gradient

When I walk into my studio, I also feel the joy of abundance. All those colors are chaotic and evocative. They inspire me and they thrill me. I think that’s why it’s so fun and overwhelming to go to a fiber festival.

Even with all the festivals going into virtual mode, you can still experience joyful abundance by visiting our website, watching our Instagram stories and watching our YouTube videos.

Be joyful now and forever!

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Have you started something new?

As we start week 8 of the quarantine, I feel like people are starting to get antsy. There are more people out and about. There are more people in stores. More people on the street. And we still don’t know where this is going, how this is going to end.

These times have been trying. There is a new normal of telework and teleschool. And tele-yarn buying. It was just the virtual Maryland sheep and wool festival. It was a great success. Even with some glitches with websites, we all came together to see yummy yarns and fleeces and pottery and jewelry. While is wasn’t what we were used to, it was a good substitute.

For me, I’ve been starting new routines, healthy routines that I hope to continue after this. I’m spending more time outside, taking morning walks. Observing the changing seasons with beautiful trees and active birds. I’ve also carved out time to learn some new techniques through online classes and continuing to read and study color, wool, clothing construction and doing deep work. I’ve started meeting with friends on Zoom, showing our current projects and seeing the scenes on their farms. And even last week, we had a surprise retirement party on Zoom with participants from Oregon to California, Geneva to Mexico City, Colorado to Maryland. It was fun to see friends and family from around the globe.

What I’m really excited about is my new online dye class. It is a 5 week class that will lead you from blank white yarn to the self striping yarn that you’ve only dreamed of finding. This is a class for the absolute beginner. I’m nearly ready to open registration. If you want to be the first to know when you can register for it, just sign up for my special Learn with Lisa email list here.

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almost viral

WOW! I was blown away the last couple of weeks with pre-orders and dye to orders during the MD Sheep and Wool Virtual show. I was so worried that I was the weird one, the almost blasphemous one. To have a colorway inspired by the Corvid Pandemic, was a crazy idea…it’s not sweet, it’s not “nice”. And yet, it resonated with so many people.

Corona colorway

So I’m keeping the listing alive. It is still dyed to order, because I just don’t know how many people want to have some “souvenir” of this time.

Antibody Colorway

With dyed to order, I will continue to dye daily. You may get your order quickly because I happen to have some already dyeing. Or you may have to wait up to a week (with dyeing, drying and priority mail).

Find the yarn page here.

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book I’m re-reading

Yes, it’s that good. Actually I’m re-reading it and also listening to it as I work in my studio. What’s the book?

Joyful by Ingrid Fetell Lee

Read this book!

Why is this book resonating with me? I think because I can see so many textile, yarn, color, dyeing connections. I also think that with all that is happening in the world around us, I need to find some more joy. I need to savor what brings me joy. Bring more of it into my life. I want to examine what brings me joy and do more of it.

Lee organizes the joyful world into 10 aesthetics:

Energy (vibrant color and light), Abundance (lushness, multiplicity and variety), Freedom (nature, wildness and open space), Harmony (balance, symmetry and flow), Play (circles, spheres and bubbly forms), Surprise (contract and whimsy), Transcendence (elevation and lightness), Magic (invisible forces and illusions), Celebration (synchrony, sparkle and bursting shapes), and Renewal (blossoming, expansion and curves).

So for the Energy chapter Lee tells us that it is impossible to separate color and emotions. Just think about blue Mondays and having a sunny disposition. Having a red hot temper and looking for the silver lining in a hard situation (social distancing, perhaps?)

Pandemic Colorways L to R: Antibody, Corona and Vaccine

Color is energy made visible. If I go into my science geek again, well this is proven. Each color has it’s own wavelength. It is energy. And it is color.

And what about Chromophobia? That’s the fear of color, especially seen in our houses. People love colorful spaces but it is really hard to make a choice on a wall or room in your house. I see this fear all the time. I think that some are so afraid of making a mistake that they either decide to pass on the choice, or more likely they rely on their more color confident friends. Do you have to live this way? No you can train your eyes and build your color confidence. It takes looking at lots of colorful art or photos. You can do this in an art museum. You can do that in Pinterest. Get to know what you like. What makes you say “Ahhhh” or what makes you smile.

Pinterest color board

I will be blogging more about this book because it is just so full. So full of interesting ideas and “Aha” moments for me and I think for you.

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goal attained!

This year one business goal was to widen out my farm yarn line. I have lots of choices in the Worsted weight yarn. I have Synergy: the marled yarn that looks hand spun. I have LiViLy that is from my fine wool Cormo Sheep. I have Trasna made from the long lustrous fleeces of my BFL Cormo Hybrid sheep. I have Fingals which is from my pure bred BFL sheep. That’s a lot of yarn in one single weight.

So this year, I wanted to add a fingering and a sport weight to my wool yarns. I also wanted to replenish my yearling mohair that is a fingering weight yarn. And I have a LOT of PolyPay wool that I bought from a shepherd in Virginia. I really want it to be a bulky yarn.

So yesterday I unboxed my yarn shipment from the mill. And I was sooooo happy.

I have a beautiful fingering weight wool from the hybrids. there are over 400 yards in a 4 oz skein.

Fingering weight fine wool yarn

I have a lovely sport weight yarn with the cormo wool that has over 300 yards in a skein.

Sport weight fine wool yarn

The yearling mohair came back perfectly matching the previous run.

Fingering weight mohair yarn

The polypay did not come back as bulky. It came back as worsted. But it is lovely. The wool “tells” us how it wants to be spun. And it really didn’t want to be bulky.

Worsted Polypay yarn

Time to get to the dye pots and see how these babies do. I usually don’t list my farm yarns in it’s natural form. But if you see something you really need, just shoot me an email.

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A few crafty things to do while in quarantine

Free Blueprint classes here https://shop.mybluprint.com/a/shop/free-preview

Good Housekeeping magazine has a nice list of museums, zoos and even theme parks offering virtual tours here: https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/travel/a31784720/best-virtual-tours/

Our own Kitchen Studio in Frederick has great recipe videos that you can follow along with here: https://kitchenstudiofrederick.com/grab-the-kiddos-and-lets-make-french-toast/

Are you or your children fascinated by origami? Here is a great video to follow along with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScbyB8XxX1I

Making a sketchbook journal of this time of quarantine? Frederick Book Arts has a few great videos showing really creative journals here: https://www.frederickbookarts.org/post/the-sketchbook-project

Happy Making!!

This class is almost ready to be released. Want to know more and be the first to be able to register? Click here
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fiber farmer in the time of corvid

First of all, I want to thank all the wonderful knitters, crocheters, spinners and felters who are coming to our online store and finding just the right yarn or roving to express their colorful selves. I hope you are feeling your creativity fill up and overflow. As we are all slowing down, getting out of the traffic, having more time to explore, to take more walks and to play more games or solve more puzzles with our families, it is also time to let our creative juices going.

We have hand dyed roving, yarn and farm yarns from our own fiber flock

This coming weekend, Maryland Sheep and Wool will be managing a virtual marketplace where there are hundreds of vendors. We will be online to answer questions and to fulfill your orders. AND you can also be looking at what we all have to offer right now. Here is the link to our online store.

I just had to do it. Corona is gold/cherry/grey, Antibody is purple/green/spreckles and Vaccine is orange/red and grey

Many of us are offering discounts and free shipping, some are offering special extras in your bag too.

What do you need to do? You need to be a member of the online community. Find it here. You also need to look at this page….the posts will not come through your own feed.

Have a question? Just ask it and one of us there will be able to help you by answering. So see you there! Have a question now? Just reply to this blog and I’ll find you an answer!

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FO/WIP Friday Sock Edition

9 pairs minus one that I gave away

I really love knitting socks, but I don’t spend a lot of time knitting. I always think I will spend the time. I’m at the lightning speed of 1 pair a year. I know, I know….most people do 1 pair per month. Still I love my hand knit socks!

I have 2 pairs going now. One, the bright pink and orange from a sock blank and the other from our chinook yarn…a luscious blend of SW Merino, Cashmere and Nylon in my Nautical colorway.

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color inspiration in a book

Palette Perfect by Lauren Wager is a book all about color. It’s really more of a lookbook. I think it took me less than 30 minutes to read, but I have spent a long time studying the palettes that Lauren has put together.

The book concentrates on the moods of your life. Colors that represent those emotions and moods. She then makes palettes of 3-5 colors that represent the mood.

She presents 15 different emotions such as tranquility, curiosity and trendy. Within each chapter she gives images such as paintings, photographs and textiles. Each of these has a “color wheel” of colors shown in that image. The size of the pieces of the wheel represent the amount of color in that image. And then for each color she gives the CMYK percentages and the RBG percentages.

CMYK is used for printed materials. Dyeing can use the CMYK numbers too. But the numbers aren’t a direct % of each color, as the numbers add up to more than 100. But lets say that if the number is 14/0/35/80 You would have a color that is mostly black with about half as much yellow, no magenta and a small amount of cyan. So the color is a deep green color. If you aren’t a math nerd, that’s OK.

I love this book for it’s pure inspiration. Looking through it you can find some combinations that you may not have thought about before. Get yourself a copy here on Amazon. This is just a link, I haven’t received a fee for reviewing or promoting this book. It is merely a good book for those who want to hone their color sense and widen their creative use of color.

If you’ve always wanted to learn to dye, I’m working on a dyeing ecourse that is almost ready to be released in the world. You can find out more here .

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viral colorways on sparkly yarn

I’m loving these colorways and so I’m making them in many of my fingering weight colorways. Our Sparkly yarn is 92% Superwash Merino and 8% Lurex (the man-made sparkly factor). There are 414 yards in each 4oz skein.

Here is the yarn in Sparkly:

Corona Colorway

You can grab these here. I’m dyeing to order and will let you know when to expect your yarn.

Antibody Colorway

Think you want to make a shawl with these? Here are a few suggestions:

Road Trip shawl

Free Your Fade

Jacinta Shawl

Rainbow Wings

Of course there are more than 5000 shawls on Ravelry using this amount of yardage. These are just a few I thought might work well.

Happy Knitting!!