Yarn - Flying Goat Farm

Stash Appreciation–Wool Blends Part 2–Cellulose and Synthetics

by Sam Fargo | Feb 13, 2015 | Blog, Stash appreciation, wool, Yarn

Effective yarn designers take many factors into consideration: fiber price, feel, structure, weight, and staple length to name a few. Why make a blend with wool and a plant or man-made fiber? It depends. Each of these blends starts with the incredibly versatile wool...

What It Takes to Make a Farm Yarn

by Lisa Check | Feb 2, 2015 | Stash appreciation, wool, Yarn

I am asked all the time about making yarn from the fleeces of our animals. It all begins with the animals. A fiber farmer chooses what animals they will raise. Some are looking purely at fleeces, others research the general health or thriftiness of the breed itself....

Stash Appreciation–Woolen or Worsted Yarn

by Sam Fargo | Jan 26, 2015 | Stash appreciation, wool, Yarn

Like cousins, woolen and worsted yarns have the same genetic profile, but look and act completely different from one another. Woolen yarns are generally the least expensive industrial yarns to make. This is because there are fewer steps in the manufacturing process....

Swatching and Stash Appreciation

by Lisa Check | Nov 23, 2014 | knitting, wool, Yarn

Do you swatch? I hear all the time that people do not like to swatch so they don’t swatch. I suppose if you are making a shawl or scarf that doesn’t need to be a particular size you don’t need to. Or if you buy the yarn that the pattern says to use,...

Purple Munsell Exercises

by Sam Fargo | May 25, 2014 | color, Yarn

This is the last of my exercises in the Munsell Color book. I have learned a lot doing these exercises. Probably more importantly is that these exercises have trained my color “eye”. There were three exercises, “purple”,...

Magic Numbers, Pooling and My New Pink Cowl

by Lisa Check | Feb 17, 2014 | Hand-Dyed, knitting, Uncategorized, wool, Yarn

It all started with too many snow days in a row. I had this knitting book that I bought last summer and it’s been sitting on my shelf. I had opened it a couple of times but just looked so complicated that after flipping through page after page of beautiful hand...