shop update for the weekend!

Since March was such a crazy month, not too many updates in the shop. But last week I put together another shop update and I love the yarns and fiber that got listed. Handspun loveliness with yak, sari silk, and American Finn wool, as well as some hand-carded batts! If you have been thinking about trying your hand at spinning and want to know where to start, I highly recommend batts. They look beautiful thin or chunky, and draft beautifully. I love 'em. 

I've started weaving this month as a way to distract my mind from some stressful life circumstances...let's just say the housing market in our area is a bit insane! It makes me even more excited to start spinning yarns for weaving and using these batts in chunky tapestries this spring and summer. I've never liked spinning or knitting with much other than wool or alpaca, so weaving with these yarns might be my answer for using these warm materials in the summer months! 

the month of march

Radio silence in March was not something I was anticipating! It was a much busier month than I was clearly prepared for, but for many good reasons. I've been going through some professional transitions, and the Mr. and I found out that we'll be here for his residency training at the University of North Carolina. We're ecstatic! We are also in the process of looking for a home to buy, and the market has been one of the craziest our realtor has ever seen. It's caused a lot of anxiety and feelings of uncertainty and has been VERY time consuming! 

During all of this we also got to take a half-week mini vacation to NY, which was so so wonderful. We ate our way around Brooklyn and Manhattan and managed to make it to Brooklyn General Store and Purl Soho (pure magic). Being a long-time follower and fan of the blog, it was so great to see a lot of the samples up close and personal, and the ladies there were so nice. Of course, I came home with yarn, including some of Brooklyn General's own NY raised Brooklyn Barnwool, and Purl's Worsted Twist and new Linen Quill (it's so wonderful). I also got to meet the wonderful, talented, lovely Gina Rockenwagner for brunch one day, she's been an IG crush of mine for a long time and I have loved getting to know her! 

As much as you can anticipate certain seasons being times of transition, there's only so much you can do to prepare for them. We are definitely in one of those seasons and I hope you can be patient with this blog of mine while we're figuring it out. Lots of wonderful things are ahead for this business and I can't wait to share them with you. 

Weaver's Packs and a new logo

As warmer months are approaching and I'm thinking about my fiber practices as I try to keep wool off of my lap, I have put together some natural weaving packs for Goodstitch Fibers! These were so fun to put together. Each one has three mini skeins included, a natural gradient pack, natural texture pack, and a love & chocolate pack. They contain handspun, naturally colored or naturally dyed yarns and come ready to gift tied with a ribbon. 

The raspberry-dyed yarn is beautiful and variegated, and no two yarns are alike. I can't wait to do more solar dyes this summer and experiment with different fruits and dye plants, and am creating a list of the dye plants I'd love to grow in my garden. In the natural texture pack are a few mini skeins of some Corriedale wool that has been raised and processed all within a 50 mile radius of my studio! They're the first products from the fleece that I am working with from Rising Meadow Farm in Liberty, NC, and are crazy textured, variegated grey. I love them. 

I have also been working recently with Julia of WoodFolk Knits to design a new logo for the shop. Her artwork is incredible, organic and expressive, and when I found her I knew I wanted her to work with me on this project. You should absolutely check out her work on Instagram and her online shop. Even her sketches seem like gorgeous works of art. 

Have a wonderful week!

Leah's fleece

Sweet Leah, the ewe who gave me this beautiful fleece! Unwashed, it weighs in just under 5 pounds. The majority of the fleece is grey, but it's speckled with brown, black and tan bits that I've been carding to make a gorgeous heather. I've been working through it slowly and deliberately, savoring the feeling of lanolin on my hands and taking the time to admire every perfect lock. They're still so connected when you pull them out and away from the fleece, all bundled up in a ball in its bag, you can still see the clear lines of where the shearer cut the fleece away from the sheep and how it all was laid out in one huge motion. It's as close as I can get to this farm without actually living there! 

When I step back to think about it, working with these fibers sometimes seems crazy. I live in suburban North Carolina, and much of the processing that I do happens not in a farm yard in work boots amidst flocks of animals, but on my 10x10 back porch and in my kitchen sink. My fleece dries in our spare bedroom. Moreso, though, it makes me grateful for where I live, that my husband can pursue his passions at a major medical center 15 minutes away, and I can drive less than an hour out in to the country and bring back treasures like this one. Farmers are closer than you probably think! And to get to experience their way of life and the fruits of their labor is why I'm so passionate about this work. It's a really amazing thing.  

I hope this Wednesday, you get to work on projects that bring you joy! 

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. 

handspun & naturally dyed: blackberry love

I want to start out this post by saying that this might be one of my favorite yarns I've ever made, and the pictures truly do not do it justice. A couple of weeks ago I started experimenting with solar dyes. I wanted to keep my fiber soft, and removing heat from the equation seemed like a good way to achieve that. Once again, I was surprised and delighted. Natural dyes are the best! 

This particular batch of dyes were made with local blackberries interspersed with the Rambouillet wool in a jar for about 3 days. The water turned this crazy, vibrant purple, but the fiber itself turned pale lavender, with pops of grey and bright purple and even a bit of pink. So wild! I love the patterning in this wool, the areas where the blackberries rested created this beautiful painterly effect in what would have taken many colors to dye chemically. After the fiber had time to dry, I spun it and plied it with a heathered grey eco wool blend. The subtle shifting shades of the blackberry dyed yarn pop out so beautifully against it, and I couldn't be more happy with how it turned out. 

The resulting yarn is drapey and smooth, you'd guess that it was a wool/silk blend, and not the 100% wool that it is! I'm so tempted to keep this skein for myself, but instead I'll hopefully have it listed in the shop sometime tomorrow. 

More solar dyeing is definitely in my future, and gives me a hope for spring during the freezing rain that is hitting North Carolina right now; the last bitter storms of winter that we'll likely see as March quickly approaches. 

a birthday sale!

On Friday I'm turning 25! All jokes about a quarter-life crisis aside, I'm so grateful to be where I am in life right now, even in the midst of a lot of transitions, and am excited for what is ahead this year. 

My poor Mr. has been sick with pneumonia the past two weeks and we are finally getting to the end of it (hooray!) so I haven't updated the shop this week like I had planned (including these two bulky beauties!) but for my blog readers I wanted to give an extra day's heads up about a birthday sale I'm having this weekend! Starting today, take 15% off your order at Goodstitch with code 'BIRTHDAYGIRL' and get an upgraded free priority shipping for your normal shipping rate (US only for the shipping upgrade). The sale is good through Sunday, 2/14, so I hope that you show yourself or a crafty person in your life some love with sustainable yarns this weekend! 

Wishing you lots of love, today and all year round <3

happy friday!

Hey friends!

Just wanted to pop in for a quick second and wish you a happy, crafty weekend. I finished plying this beautiful Shetland that I washed and carded from a lovely woman in Missouri today, and I think this weekend it's headed for the dye pot. Valentine's being just two weeks away, I'd love to get this into your hands so soon. And hopefully next time you see it - it will be pink. :)

What are you working on this weekend? :)