July, as it were

How are we doing today? Today it is July, next week it will be August. This time of year is hardest for me typically: I’ve experienced all the best that summer has to offer (cool water on a hot day, fresh tomatoes, fireflies, a getaway, a celebration or two) and my heart starts to wonder when the heat will subside and the cool relief of the fall will arrive. The days where the hottest it will get is 85 degrees are over and we are in heat indexes nearing 100 which makes it hard to feel good about doing anything out of doors.

And yet! There is gratitude in each day. I’m home after a week with family, the first week I’ve spent with them all since November, and it filled my heart so full. It was a lot of travel and way more levels of stress than any of us were thinking with the virus still rearing its ugly head in the areas where I was destined, but it was also 100% worth it. For a long time I think I expected to get into more of a rhythm with living far from home but honestly, each year is still a bit of a heartache. My nieces and nephew are the most special little people I know and photos are not the same as being with them. (How far away are the holidays now?)

The highlights of my week this week are the ten pounds of heirloom tomatoes that Nash insists on munching whenever he gets the chance that will turn into the best tomato sauce and my weekly bouquet from Bluebird Meadows Farm. I’ll get a photo soon, because everyone needs to know how amazing these flowers are. Having a pitcher of happiness in my dining room never meant so much to me as it does this year. I’d take celosia and zinnias and black-eyed susan over most things.

The Paeonia Shawl testing is also complete and will be launching this week! Check out my Instagram for more information and photos today. I’m so so excited to share this with you all. Wishing you joy (and air-conditioning) in the meantime.

shearing day

Shearing Day, at Rising Meadow Farm in Liberty, NC. You could feel the excitement in the air - the culmination of months of waiting is this morning, when the 75 beautiful rams and ewes of Rising Meadow lose their fluffy winter coats and usher in spring. And the weather did not disappoint! Cloudy, but nearly 60 degrees. This is why we live in the South, for Februaries like these. 

The rams are being shorn today, and one by one they move from a holding pen inside the barn to their stage, a wooden platform where two strong shearers take on between 4 - 10 pounds of fluff. It is magical - seeing the outside of the coat be slowly snipped away to reveal, sometimes, completely different colors and textures underneath. The rams are atypically calm during this process, lying on their backs in strange angles, and yet totally at peace with this process. It's amazing to witness. The whole fleece gets picked up and carried out to the skirting table, where the fleece is picked over, weighed and bagged, to the delight of spinners and fiber enthusiasts roaming around, checking out all of the beautiful fibers for sale. 

There are CVM Romedale, Corriedale, Navajo Churro and Dorset, all with different locks, crimp, staple length, smiling eyes, and personalities. How am I supposed to just pick one fleece?! I decide on a heathery grey Corriedale, with flecks of tan, brown, black. I love the way that the lanolin feels on my hands, and at the same time I can't wait to get it home, wash it out and card it up to see what it will become. 

For lunch, we have lamb chili and homemade bread, sweet conversations and strangers becoming friends, neighbors reuniting. It was fun to experience both as someone new to the area and the community, and someone who felt instantly at home, even amongst folks I had never met. After saying goodbye to the llamas, alpacas, ewes, chickens and cows, hauling 4 pounds of Leah's fleece to my car and driving home with sheepy smells and fond memories in tow. For me, the banner displayed proudly on the shearing barn says it all: great wool grows in North Carolina. I am so happy to call this place home. 

natural dyes: goldenrod & harvesting color

The past few months I have really been loving our local library. Not only is it beautiful, with whole walls full of windows and perfectly positioned armchairs and self-check out, it is full of the most amazing knitting/weaving/crochet/craft books you could think of. It has been a source of much inspiration, especially following my somewhat failed dyeing experiment.

One of my favorite books that I have read is Harvesting Color by Rebecca Burgess. I love it because it not only has simple-to-execute recipes and gorgeous pictures, but it gives great references and maps of where to go to harvest the materials included in the book. A lot of them were based out of California and the west, where the author lives, but quite a few were spread over the east coast up to Vermont and down through Florida. Success! 

In late September around here driving through country roads I kept seeing fields and fields of goldenrod. They showed up for about two weeks, and last weekend when we got buckets of rain across the state thanks to Joaquin, they just as quickly made their exit. Luckily, in that window I had some free time to go and cut a large pile of these lovely fronds from the farm, and that evening, we dyed! 

The night before I dyed, I soaked these two sad non-mushroom skeins in water and mordanted in alum. I boiled the goldenrod for about an hour in my dye pot, extracted all of the plant material, re-wet the yarn in warm water and let the yarn sit in the dye pot for another hour at around 180 degrees. It was raining that night, so when I took it out of the pot I just let it sit on my porch for an hour to rinse. :) 

I could tell within 10 minutes of the yarn sitting in the dye that it was going to take, which was so exciting. And in addition to the most vibrant yellow it has lovely undertones of green as well. 

I have a few powdered natural dyes that I've purchased, but the thought of going out into the neighborhood that I live and work in, collecting these natural materials and extracting their beauty for yarn was such a cool feeling. I see many more experiments in my future. 

Carolina Fiber Fest

A few weeks ago, the day was completely perfect, not a cloud in the sky, and I drove my Civic out past Chapel Hill towards the Carolina Fiber Fest. My first and only other experience with fiber fests being Rhinebeck, the queen of all festivals, I didn't know what to expect. But I'm so glad I went!

I showed up around 1 PM, just in time for the sheep herding demonstration, which was crazy! The border collies were so incredibly well trained, even the smallest changes in the intonation of the whistle and they knew which way to go. I was hoping for a chance to get up close with some sheep, but it was still a really fun experience. 

There were about 30 vendors in two different warehouses so I went and perused, not really sure what I was coming for but knowing I was going to leave with something! ;) I finally made it all the way over to Heelside Farms' tent and on a whim, decided to buy a drop spindle. The sweet woman who sold it to me asked if I knew how to use it, and when I replied that I didn't, she had her son sit down with me to show me how. 20 minutes later, I knew how to spin! It was such a thrill, and I was so excited, I went by Echoview and picked up some alpaca fiber, and then to another vendor (that I can't remember, ugh!) and bought some Shetland roving. 

I finished off my frankly WONDERFUL afternoon with a chocolate-covered cheesecake on a stick. I kid you not. (And it was awesome, and I should have bought 20 of them.)

If my knitting was going slowly before, it has gone half speed recently because of all of this lovely spinning. I first finished 2 oz of single ply Borderlecister that came with my spindle from Heelside, and have been alternating between the alpaca and Shetland roving whenever my spindle fills up. And though it's wonky and uneven still, I'm getting the hang of it and it is so beautiful and fun.