Check out Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em, “a program that will recognize fiber artists for using wool from breeds on our Conservation Priority List while connecting shepherds of heritage breeds with customers.”

In other words, buy stuff from people raising rare breeds, to lend your economic support to keeping this breeds alive!

So, it’s a passport program – witness my fondness for collecting brewery passport t-shirts and snapshots for my VT 251 club page – and I’m all in.  I’ve spun my first “rare” (actually “recovering”) breed, Shetland…  I bought it as roving, and just spun it up, and it was almost too easy.

The last one on the right is the one I just finished.  Looks a lot like his sibling next to him.  Well, you go to war with the mohair you have, not the mohair you wish you had…

One corner of my office… yarn I’ve spun, a weaving a did, yarn I’ve purchased… the weaving is useless but pretty.  I’ve made it my phone wallpaper, so I guess I found a kind of use for it.

 

I just love this color.

First project from Xmas gift:

It was supposed to have decorative tufts sewn on, but I had trouble making that happen.

It’s from a very local (Jericho) Navajo-Churro handspun (not by me).

 

Exhibit A: Viking Socks.  And do they ever look like Viking socks, i.e. something out of the 6th century.  The author of this pattern needs to bone up on 17-th century heel-turning technology.

Exhibit B: More of my (should-be) patented multi-color homespun 100% mohair yarn.

 

 

Working on a multi-colored yarn.  I’m not happy with how it feels, coarse & sticky.  Garbage in, garbage out.  Somehow I thought some of the coarse, sticky fleece I was using would magically feel OK in the yarn.

Fiber arts are just a way to kill time between meals and work.  The only things I’m passionate about really are food and work.  But one definitely cannot eat all the time, and I hear tell that working all the time is not desirable either – at minimum, I would risk running out of work.  So this.

 

I bagged up all of the mohair locks unsold from the Fair – first painstakingly going through each lock, removing debris, rejecting outright any really cruddy pieces.  I ended up with 13 4-ounce bags and sold them all outright to a new-ish local yarn shop.  I thought I was going to do consignment, but, this works too.  Go me!  This could be a serious business one day.

It was a little hard to part with.  Some of Janet’s is really soft and beautiful.

Spinning wasn’t my priority this year, so I only made five skeins of yarn.  Pretty though!