Susanne, and Fibernetters:
Yes, everything has gone up,especially since the gas prices in the U.S.
went up since the last hurricane (Katrina?). And if you think about
spinning wheels, some of the less expensive ones are Babe and Columbine,
but also on eBay where they're selling old Russian, Ukraine and other
European spinning wheels (and these have real history to them and even have
the old accessories like distaffs, etc.) for inexpensive prices, but even
those have gone up because of the gas prices. Just look at the grocery
stores and look at the prices of produce... One pomegranate is over $5 for
one in Walla Walla if it's a big one, but mainly their tiny and cost
$3...that's too bad because I love pomegranates not only to eat, but to use
as dyes (both the juice and the peels). We have to look harder to find the
good deals we need, and if that means by old magazines or second hand,
well-used wheels, then that's how we will have to do business.
I haven't heard of it, but if you've seen Spanish Moss hanging on the trees
in the South, you can see how they might use it. If it's a Friar who's
talking about this, they could have used the Spanish Moss as a form of
"hair shirt" to help them feel more holy, so they'd want it pretty
course. If women are spinning or weaving it, they probably had to process
the heck out of it to make it soft enough to make clothing. Look at how
much work you have to do to get Nettle, Hemp, or Flax to be wearable. I
read something about it, but nothing about processing the moss.
I love knitting with my handspun as well, but I have friends and relatives
who are allergic to wool (even what I've hand-processed and I'm not sure
why, but they get hives from it--seems to run in their family), so I only
send them items made from acrylic...but I do enjoy knitting/crocheting with
my handspun so much better. It is fake--it's plastic yarn. Rayon yarn is
not fake but has been created with wood pulp. "Plastic" yarn (nylon,
Orlon, Acrylic, Olefin, etc.), feels just like making something with carpet
fibers. I know the beautiful fibers that are created with different
synthetic fibers (glitz, the Mod Dea yarns, the holographic yarns) are nice
to work with because it brings a different look and feel to the natural
fibers themselves, but sometimes the feel of them is not worth it.
I belong to the Ashford Club also. I have an Ashford Traditional wheel
with a Woollee Winder on it. I just love that my wheel all the more
because of the Woollee Winder--it just winds up the yarn without having to
move the yarn from hook to hook. Best investment I ever made, except for
my Strauch Fricke drum carder...
Now, what I want to get a Patrick Green Picker... If anyone has a used one
they want to sell for a good price (I'm trying to get my fiber business
going and am still rather broke), please contact me at email:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] If I can get one for around $150, I'd appreciate
it and I can trade part of the cost for some hand processed wool
(Icelandic--gray, white, brown, ivory, charcoal; Finn--bay black, white;
Finn/Icelandic cross--black or white; Shetland/Lincoln cross--charcoal
gray; or Alpaca--white, rose gray, dark brown, cinnamon) for part or all
of the cost. They are lovely fleeces and hand scour, hand pick, and card
the natural colors. You can dye or use them as they are and do what you
want. If you want raw fiber to trade for the picker, I can do that
also. Just a thought.
Regarding putting fine fiber into coarser fiber...I didn't realize that the
coarser fiber would completely take over the finer fiber. I will learn
this less this way, rather than do it by mistake. It seems like this could
be an expensive lesson to learn and one I'd prefer not to make. Thank you
for this discussion. So, was the Romney the 70% or the 30% of that blend?
Is Romney always coarse? I have a registered Romney ram I got for free
from a local person along with two registered Finn ewes, and all their
fiber seems very soft, not coarse at all. Is this unusually for a Romney
ram? He's got so much fiber on him right now that he looks like that
merino who had not been sheared for 7 years...except in a nice light tan color.
Holly, you go, girl! I'm knitting one out of silver gray Icelandic for
Lance for the same reason. You can get some really cheap wool sweaters,
but they are not nearly as nice as the hand spun, hand knit or crocheted
ones. Again, since gas went up, the prices on any kind of hand made goods
has nearly doubled and even store bought, manufactured goods are about 1/3
more expensive because of gas prices in transporting them from countries
like China, India, Pakistan, etc. Besides, it's so much more rewarding,
especially if you can find a nice pattern or create one on your own.
I add my waste wool to my bird nesting supply projects or to my
compost. It eventually breaks down and becomes part of the ecology after a
time (not a real fast breakdown, but it adds fertilizer and keeps moisture
in the soil), which plastic yarn does not. It just feels better to me and
keeps you much warmer. Wool has been around a heck of a lot longer than
plastic yarn has and plastics do not break down very easily at all and if
you burn plastics, you get a very harmful smoke depending on what plastic
they used to create the yarns. Some doesn't even feel good at all.
I stopped buying commercially processed/spun wool yarns because they are
almost always scratchy. That's why I make my yarn and garments from hand
processed, hand spun wool that I've grown myself or I buy raw fiber from
someone else, then process it myself. It just feels better and I love
being that involved in the whole process. It's hard to explain, but it
makes me feel better in the end...like in a way I'm part of that pioneer
spirit. It is such a spiritual feeling. I've tried explaining this to my
FIL and he just doesn't get it, but then he can't even fix a light switch
without putting the wires in wrong and blowing up the electrical panel (he
did that to the house they lived in down in SoCal before they bought the
house up here--but he had to pay to get the house re-wired). I've firmly
figured out that some people get fiber from scratch and some do not. He
keeps telling me I'm wasting my time, but that's not how I feel. It's a
matter of quality over quantity and spirituality over not being part of the
answer.
I bought some of that silk remnant yarn from Tibet through SWAK or
whomever. I hated it. It hurt my fingers to knit with it because of that
overtwisting. Within the last four years ago, Spin-Off had a great article
on how to not overtwist fiber. I remember my first excursion into spinning
alpaca and I overspun it and it was so harsh all I could do to salvage it
was to create a new product called "Soft Scrubbees (TM)," which are
tightly, over spun alpaca fibers that are used as a dermabrasion
cloth...and it works because once the over spun fibers are wet, they work
better at debrading the skin than those plastic scrubbers do and don't
leave your face feeling raw. Those are some of my biggest sellers at the
farmers' market, so now I have to over-spin at least 1/3 of the alpaca
fleece crop so that people will have their Soft Scrubbees (TM). The nice
thing is that they don't leak fibers when you use them and eventually they
will felt but that doesn't affect how well they work. So, my thought on
make mistakes when you spin, is that you have to find a way to salvage your
mistakes. I did with my over spun alpaca yarn and came out with a product
that I can sell on POS stands at the local bath and body shops as well as
at the farmers market.
Holly, don't forget that it's great to keep at least one ball of your first
handspun yarn so that you have it to show other beginner spinners you teach
to use as both a tool to show them what not to do, and to show them that
even an accomplished spinner once spun just like they did. It is a great
teaching tool and gives the beginning spinner incentive to keep
going. Some of those beginners are really hard on themselves and give up
when they cannot spin like you do and not taking into account that you've
been spinning for a long time. I've seen too many perfectionists do things
like this in other crafts, not just spinning, but in knitting, crocheting,
felting, etc.
Gabrielle, just remember that when people live in an area their whole life,
many people have not seen some of the most visited landmarks. I have a
friend who lives in Brooklyn and yet he's never been to the Statue of
Liberty or to Coney Island. I have a friend who lived in CO (now lives in
Costa Rica) for his whole life and never went to the top of Pike's
Peak. Another friend who grew up in SF and never went to Coit Tower,
Fisherman's Wharf, Ghiaradelli Square or down the street of flowers or even
to China Town or Oakland. I think the saying about "familiarity breeds
contempt" is probably more true than you'd ever guess is possible. I grew
up with people in WI and they have this wonderful city called Wisconsin
Dells where they have a MUCH better amusement park than Disneyland (at
least it used to be) and there are tons of people who've never been there
(I can't tell you how disappointed I was in Disneyland--not just the rides,
but the fact that they lines were so long it took nearly all day to get
into places to see what you wanted to see). The whole city is the
Amusement park and I'd recommend it to anyone who lives in or in any state
surrounding Wisconsin. So, it doesn't surprise me at all that he had never
been there. I grew up in Wisconsin and 1/2 of my family still lives there
and only 4 of us (I have nine siblings--three younger sisters, four steps,
one adopted, & one deceased--he's traveled further than any of us),
including cousins, have moved outside the state and only 1 sister and I
have actually travelled to other states though she still lives in
Wisconsin. The rest haven't traveled but maybe about 2-3 hours away from
where we all grew up--maximum! I loved living in big cities until we
bought 16 acres of land just outside of Nevada City, CA, and then we moved
to Walla Walla. Nevada City had under 3,000 people and Walla Walla has
approximately 30,000. I liked Nevada City better because there were so
many creative types there and I would have fit in a lot better. Walla
Walla doesn't have the amount of creative types here as did Nevada City,
but it's still not too bad for peace and quiet.
In a short time, we're going to be moving from our 2.3-acre farm to a
20-acre farm with water rights, of course. I want more animals and we have
about the maximum right now, but there's no place to grow and this is going
to become city limits soon because they need to expand their tax
base. We've had a severe drought here over the last few years and it's
getting worse. I had to start feeding the animals hay in July to make sure
they were healthy and happy because they cut back on watering even for
farmers to once every 3 days...if that tells you anything. I have 21 sheep
and 5 alpacas, so things are going well, and I've been selling the sheep
for both spinners, butchering the culls for our own meat or to sell the
culls outright. I'm learning a lot about selling as much as I can and
using every bit so the pelts, the horns, the bones are going for buttons
and clothing or for rugs (not necessarily in the correct order), but it's
nice to be able to stretch things as much as you can.
I hope that someday I can say I've been to all the United States, all of
Canada, Mexico and the rest of the world, both in big cities and in
small. I've wanted to do this since I was a child and have been, so far,
to 33 US states, 1/4 of Mexico and 1/2 of Canada, so I've already gotten a
good start. I want to visit the rest of Canada on the next vacation we
have, as well as all of the NE states. Then all I'll have left are the
Gulf states, Alaska and Hawaii. I've already been to both Virginias, both
Carolinas, Georgia, and up through Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and over
to Texas. I love traveling to not only see the sights, but to sample the
culture, how people talk (their accents are so fun) and the
sites/sights. It's too much fun to travel and it's what I want to do. I
want to visit Ireland and Kiss the Blarney stone and go to England to see
Stonehenge, and visit places of power (not necessarily governmental power
but lei lines, etc.). There is more to this world than the physical
aspects, and I want to see and experience everyone and everything or as
close as I can. Those are my major goals though I have lots of minor ones.
I just finished a nice shawl out of Romney for a Xmas gift for my sister
back in WI. I've got almost all the nieces' and nephews' hats finished. I
have my mothers and my other two sisters' gifts left, then my steps and my
adopted bro. It's getting awfully close to Xmas already. They had the
Xmas decorations and cards in the stores already... I can't believe
it. When I was a kid, that stuff wasn't in the stores until just before
Thanksgiving...and now it's so early.
Oh well...
Take care and keep fibering,
Jet
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