I seem to have totally missed April. I’m still working on my two sweaters a month challenge and am nearly done with my sweaters for April. The photo of the sweater above is the hand spun sweater from March. The fleece is Dorset fleece from Clark Farm in Carlisle. The design is a reknit of the first sweater I attempted on the knitting machine that came out too small generally and with some other sizing issues. I liked the design so I decided to reknit the sweater in another batch of hand spun yarn. The blue was dyed with acid dyes. This was the hand spun sweater for March. I hope to post about the sweater from commercial yarns from March and the hand spun and commercial yarn sweaters from April soon.
Happy new year! I’ve been spending time converting some of our accessory patterns to commercial yarn so we are able to offer yarn that goes with out patterns. At the same time I’m still spinning. The photo above is my most recent handspun sweater. I purchased the fleece at the Fiber Festival of New England. The fleece is from the Northampton Smith vocational and agricultural school. It came with a note letting me know that the ewe’s name is Pumpkin and her lamb is Pie. Pumpkin is a Romney ewe with a pretty consistent grey fleece. I’m a sucker for a grey fleece but often the color has many shades making if difficult to spin an evenly colored yarn. Pumpkin it turns out it a pretty even grey. She’s also a pretty dark grey. I originally had planned to knit a sweater that was grey and over dyed grey with mustard but the over dyed grey with mustard didn’t create enough contrast. Even the navy over the grey is still fairly muted but I was pleased with the level of contrast with this pattern which is fairly busy. The photo shows the fleece to finished object with the washed fleece to the left, the carded fleece at the top, the handspun yarn to the right and the finished sweater. With my designing focused on commercial yarns I’ve decided I will try and spin and knit a handspun sweater a month to make use of the yarn I’m still spinning. We’ll have to see how this goes, especially when you add new design work and re-knitting. Always good to have a goal though!
I have been working on a sweater in exchange for the fleeces I got from the 2018 shearing at Clark Farm a local organic farm in Carlisle. The sweater is made of handspun Horned Dorset yarn from Clark Farm. I dyed the yarn with natural dyed from my yard. The grey blue is buckthorn berry skins. The yellow is buckthorn leaves and the pinky purple is pokeweed berries in a cold acetic acid dye bath that should prevent them from fading. The pattern is a highly modified version of Jen Steingass’s Telja. It doesn’t get anymore local than this. Everything from the fleece from the sheep to the dyes and the labor to create the garment came from Carlisle.
Christmas brought snow so we dug out the cross country skis and went out for a short ski in park next to our house. There was ice still left from the ice storm a few days before so it was snowy and sparkly all at once. Hope everyone has had and is having a wonderful holiday.
[su_dropcap style=”simple” size=”4″]B[/su_dropcap]elow is a photo of a Clark Farm Hat and cowl that I made in exchange for fleeces from the 2017 sheep shearing at Clark Farm. The wool is from the 2016 shearing. The colors from from the buckthorn dyeing I did this past summer and the designs are mine.
[su_dropcap style=”simple” size=”4″]L[/su_dropcap]ooking forward to vending at the Wayland Winter Farmers Market Fiber Days at Russell’s Greenhouse. We’ll be there with some new gradient patterns and yarn and all of the other things we usually have.
[su_dropcap style=”simple” size=”4″]S[/su_dropcap]heep Shearing at Clark Farm. I came home with 6 lovely fleeces from the sheep shearing at Clark Farm in exchange for a new hat and scarf. I was able to give Olek the sampler I made for the birth of his daughter made from wool from his sheep and dyed with buckthorn berries.
