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? :)

knit year resolutions 2016

We're nearly 1/12th of the way through 2016 and here I am, just now getting to publishing my new year's resolutions. As they say, better late than never!

This year I'm very excited to not only grow Goodstitch a lot and grow as a fiber artist, I want to leave a lot of room for experimentation, new techniques and crafts, while also diving deeper. 2015 was a lot of "What is it that I want to do?" and so for 2016 I'm thinking a lot more about, "How can I do what I'm doing better?" I know this year will bring so many surprises and changes, with the Mr. finishing up medical school and finding out where we'll be for the next 4 years for residency, and I'm excited to grow through those changes and also, to leave room for surprises and new desires because of those changes. As far as skills and techniques go, here are some things I would love to accomplish this year: 

• Sew 5 pieces by the summertime for my wardrobe. Part of this has to do with skill development, and part of it has to do with making clothes that fit the way that I am comfortable, and embracing my body for however it is!
• Sew a lap quilt. We are a ways a way from thinking about kids, but I'd love to be able to sew and quilt as one of my life-long goals for my children someday. So baby steps! (No pun intended)
• Knit my 2nd sweater. It's hard to believe that it was last summer that I made my first one! I have 2 sweater's quantities of yarn in my stash right now that I'd love to dig into!
• Knit Brandon a sweater. Because once you're married, the boyfriend sweater curse gets lifted, and also because this guy is the greatest and deserves a handknit sweater!
• Knit socks for exercising. Perfect short little projects, exercising motivation through knitting. Hoping this will be a way to trick myself into running more often. :)
• Keep building relationships in my fiber community. One of my biggest blessings in 2015 FOR SURE, and I'm excited to keep on connecting with new makers and getting to know the ladies in my knit group more, building community with people who share my passions near and far. 

I'd love to hear about your maker's resolutions, share if you have one that you're really excited about in 2016! 

sewing stitches: fen dress

Pattern: Fen by Fancy Tiger Crafts, View B with optional pockets and sleeves

One of my first finished makes of 2016! Fen is a beginner's sewing pattern that has options for a top and a dress, long sleeves or short sleeves, rounded top or v-neck, so I knew I would get a lot of use out of purchasing this one pattern. A few weeks ago I got the help from some lovely women at Downtown Knits in Apex, NC and after much deliberation, picked out this beautiful chambray (because I definitely don't have enough chambray in my closet already). Being a beginning sewist, I wanted to make sure my lines looked sharp, but didn't pop too much, so a coordinating blue cotton thread was what I chose to sew with it. 

Sewing, unlike other crafts, is not something that has come particularly easy to me. My lines tend to be imprecise, and being a lefty, I never developed fantastic scissors skills, both of which are pretty essentials skills when garment sewing. Ha! After taking a full week to trace, cut, and sew this lovely garment, I'm convinced that I'm probably the slowest sewist out there. The pattern was very straightforward to trace and cut, however, and I'm sure someone with better skills or a more experienced hand would fly through these steps much more quickly. The sewing itself was fairly straightforward, the only real problem area being the binding around the neckline. I had a hard time visualizing exactly what I was supposed to be doing with it, and ended up improvising a bit. Amber from Fancy Tiger Crafts was very helpful in describing what the neckline was supposed to look like, and on my next Fen I think I'll be a lot more successful. 

Favorite parts of this dress are definitely the sleeves and pockets. The sleeves are a perfect 3/4 length and the pockets are super sturdy. I just love dresses with pockets! I was able to sew the skirt, pockets, sleeves and finish the dress all in one night, and was so encouraged by how easy the skirt was to make so professional and clean-looking. Not all of my lines were so lucky ;)

This is a dress I hope I'm going to get a LOT of wear out of, and I'm grateful to have finished it during the crazy snowstorm that left me stranded on the top of the hill at our house for the past few days. Spinning and knitting are re-commencing this week, with many fun and exciting projects ahead!

natural beauty

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen my post this morning on a shop update coming up this evening at 6 PM EST. I'm excited to share these with the world and get them into your hands, and on your needles. 

The yarn on the left is a worsted weight, this lovely black, grey and white marl I carded and spun from 75% Rambouillet wool and 25% soft soft llama fiber. It's so gorgeous I almost didn't want to list it so I could keep it for myself! 

The middle yarn is really special because it comes from a farm in Pennsylvania that I purchased when I went to Rhinebeck, The Ross Farm. It's called their "Herd Blend", and is a gorgeous blend of cream and light brown fibers. It's a single ply, but it created a beautiful barberpole effect when it spun, as the core was light brown and the outside of the roving was cream. It's one of a kind and wonderful. 

The yarn on the right is so squishy and soft, a super bulky 100% Rambouillet which is both soft and strong. I loved it so much just off of the wheel, but it completely transformed and bloomed when I soaked it last week. I can't wait to see what it makes. It's a crazy thick and thin yarn but will hold up super well in knitting projects.

Right now I have a couple of other yarns in the shop as well that I love and would love to see make it into your hands, they'd be great for knitting, weaving or crochet. Go check them out and check out these new skeins this evening!

Happy shopping and happy knitting!

handspun: a treat

Over the weekend, I finished a new yarn from another sweet Christmas gift. It was such a treat to spin! The fiber is Hedgehog Fibres 50/50 merino & silk, a roving with these loud, beautiful colors that made for a gorgeous fractal 2-ply yarn. The finished skein is 480 yards light fingering weight, and this week as I have been spinning bulky weight yarn, it has felt so magnified because I went straight from a lace weight single plied together to a bulky singly ply! 

This yarn is absolutely destined for something lacy, the trick is finding a pattern that won't compete with these gorgeous color repeats and the patterning that goes with it. Perhaps a small Lori shawl? Or a delicate Teakettle? For now it is hung in my studio to admire while I'm stash-diving for more pressing projects. Lovely!