Interested in Mohair yarn or roving? Well we have you covered. Find it in our online store.
September is for shearing!
Tag: mohair
Yarns Perfect for Fall
What are you planning to knit for the fall? Socks? A shawl? A sweater? Something smaller like a hat or mittens?
These farm yarns are perfect for all of those garments. We have colors that are great for all your needs, whether that’s a young one who loves pink or camouflage or if you are trying to match your wardrobe. We have farm yarns that are fingering weight (Trasna Light), worsted (Livily) (Polypay and Fibershed Polypay) and DK (Trasna). We just got a sport weight back from the mill, so that is coming up before the fall shows!! We also have mohair yarns that are mostly natural color right now. So head on over to the shop here and choose the Farm Yarn tab to see it all!
These yarns will be available at the following fall shows: Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival and Rhinebeck Fiber Festival.
Want to know when more colors will be added to our online shop? Click here to get our email blasts that will alert you to shop updates.
24 days until tour de fleece 2021
We’re getting closer. I’ve been dyeing up combed top and I pulled out some mohair roving too. This mohair is really silky and shiny. It would be a great addition to an art batt. Or you could blend it in with other fibers. So far I have a lot of semi-solid colors and I’ve got a few variegated pans going too. Here’s what it looks like:
These are a minimum of 5 oz. Some are even 6 oz. They sell for $20 each with shipping! Get your’s here.
Thoughts about cost of local farm yarn
Recently I bought a back issue of TapRoot Magazine. I was intrigued because the issue’s theme is: Wear. And since I’ve been spending the first part of the year thinking and studying and planning in a fibershed, local fiber kind of way, it was a perfect fit. The article that drew in my attention is by Tamera and Char White of A Wing and A Prayer farm.
They write about all the costs in raising and feeding the sheep that is making that yarn all the way through shearing, processing, dyeing and selling farm yarn. They really drill down in to the costs of hoof trimming (in time and money), the vet costs and the shelter for the animals. They chose one ram’s fleece which yielded about 12 pounds of wool. It became 33 four ounce skeins. The total cost for those skeins is a little over 1500 dollars. The wholesale price would be $46 and the retail $67. That is a LOT for a skein, right?
They also write about the emotional costs of raising sheep for local yarn. And also the rewards of raising your sheep to make yarn. We are a community and we love our sheep. We hope that you love our sheep and yarn as well.
With your purchase of our local farm yarn, you are supporting those sheep and goats whose fiber you are using to make a garment or a household item. Think about buying from a producer of good wool yarn. It comes in all colors and all textures. It is not all scratchy. It can be smooth and soft. It can be squishy like our Livily and Trasna yarns. It can be durable for socks and slippers like our Stratus and our mohair. We are working with our mill to make more weights of farm yarn so that we will have a farm yarn for every garment or other handmade item that you want to make. Click on any of the photos to be taken to our website to find farm yarn for your collection.
new sweater in the works
I need a warm and really sturdy sweater for this winter. The yarn I’m using is Cacao that I made into a 3 ply so that it is more of a bulky weight. I tried, believe me I tried to get the half brioche stitch correct in the raglan areas. I finally gave up and did a PKP rib there. Because this is going to be a outside sweater and barn sweater, I’ll probably make it longer than the pattern suggests. We’ll see how it goes.
What are you knitting this winter? Reply here or on Facebook and Instagram to let me know.
thought provoking book
I’ve known about the California Fibershed movement for quite some time. I long to have a movement like that here in the Mid Atlantic. Have you heard of it before? It started as a local indigo project and grew to a movement to source one’s clothes responsibly and preferably with 100 miles of your home. This can be really hard to do.
The first part of this book details how Fibershed got started and also the really alarming cost of our clothes to our health and the health of the environment. The fashion industry has brought us fast fashion. Clothes that are popular right now for a very short period of time. The 2 biggest manufacturers of fast fashion produce one billion items per year. Most of which are worn a few times and thrown away. Most of these clothes end up in our landfills, becoming more than 5% of all of the municipal waste each year. Over 80 billion garments were sold in 2017 which equals a $1.3 trillion industry employing 300 million people from nearly every country. The majority of those jobs pay a very low wage.
I didn’t realize just how damaging washing your clothes could be. Of course the detergents an be unhealthy for many people. And these synthetic clothes shed microfibers in each and every washing. These microfibers make their way into our water, where up to 40% end up in rivers, lakes and oceans. We know what these plastics are doing in our environment.
What can you do? Well, you buy clothes that will last for a long time, those made from natural fibers and not made from petroleum by-products. You can recycle your clothes by mending them or repurposing them into quilts or other textile items in your home. You can wash your clothes when they are soiled but probably not every time your wear them. And as knitters, crocheters, sewers and makers, you can be part of the fibershed movement. Consider making a wardrobe for yourself or others. Of course wool, alpaca, mohair and cashmere grown locally is sustainable and renewable. We fiber farmers are happy to help you build a wonderful, colorful wardrobe.
I encourage you to read this book and consider the impact of choices we all make in clothing ourselves and our families.
last minute gifts
Are you feeling the holiday crunch? Or are you trying not to think about it? Well knitting up a quick hat or mitts could be done in the couple of weeks that is left until the holiday week. We have kits for fingerless mitts made with our own 2ply mohair yarn. Click here to see the choices.
Do you sometimes have to point your loved ones in the right direction to what you really, really want? We are offering gift cards for the first time this year. Click here to go to our secure gift card provider, Squareup. Your family and friends can pick any denomination. And you can use it in the next year for all kinds of beautiful skeins or even a class or two!
quick and functional mitts to keep you warm
This is my cutest cup and it’s full of Mexican hot cocoa. Yes I’m inside today and it is still so nippy outside. I let the fire go out in the stove and until I restart that fire, I’ll be keeping these beauties on. This is from my Fingerless Mitt Kitts. You can grab one here.
The pattern is one of the featured free patterns that will be given away during our Fiber Art Studio Tour on December 7 and 8. You can find out all about this tour and how to get a set of free patterns from each of the studio stops here.
what does that colorway look like?
I’m asked at every show what a particular colorway will look like when it is knit or crochet. There isn’t a simple answer. Even if I did a swatch for every base and every colorway I have made, when you use that yarn, it will look different than the sample.
It all depends on the number of stitches. A yarn that will stripe in a sock of 62 stitches will might have sections of pooling and striping in a shawl where the stitches are constantly changing row by row.
Here is a good example. Both mitts were knit from the same skein. The smaller mitt on the right has bigger areas where the deeper blues and greens will pool and stripe. The larger mitt is less dramatic as the areas of deeper blue and green are more spread out and therefore have a more subtle look. There is only a difference of 12 stitches between the two mitts.
These two mitts are the samples for my new mitt kitts. The yarn is my 2 ply mohair yarn from our animals. It is lofty and has a nice halo that you can actually brush to make it even more pronounced. The kitt includes the yarn and pattern for a mere $15. It is a fast gift for the holidays. These will be available during the Holiday Fiber Art Studio Tour on December 7th and 8th. Find out the details here. And I will be adding these to my online store in Monday’s update. Check back here to find them.
another successful mohair shearing in the books
Interested in Mohair or Wool roving? Well we have you covered. Find it in our online store.