Dana: On (and off) my needles+ (October 2017)

Omgoodness it has been awhile, and I can't claim to know why. I can give a bunch of excuses, some of which are 'good' and some of which point to me being lazy...

I thought I'd share a quick on (and off) my needles post with a few additional updates of what is going on here in Ithaca.

On my needles:

Contour Lines by Laura Aylor in Malabrigo Rios ,Cumparsita colorway
This yarn was gifted to me by my good friend Anna, from Buffalo. While her and her husband were in Maine this past summer she was kind enough to think of me when passing a yarn shop!!! I, of course, thought what better way to say thank you than to knit a little gift for her from what she had given me!

I've made a few changes to the pattern, since I am a big fan (now) of button bands. So instead of using the long-tail cast-on I did a provisional cast on so that I can easily add a knitted on band later. I also decreased the stitch count since I don't have the required 300yds, and my gauge was a bit bigger than the given.

Vivid Mitts by Jungmi Ryu, in my homespun 'Spring Highway' colorway

I'm taking a little break from knitting socks (my walking knitting) to knit these mitts using my hand-dyed, carded, spun yarn. I'm really curious to see how these knit up. I noticed when doing the gauge swatch that the yarn, when knit up, has a slight blue hue to it (which I love)! This is due to the blue I carded into the grey, I was afraid it had disappeared but it is nice to see that it is there and plays such a role! Here's hoping it continues through-out the project.

I made a change to the pattern by using a tubular cast on opposed to the long tail cast on. I'm not sure if I like it, but I'll go a bit further before I decide...

Stole: Print-o-the-wave by Eunny Jang, in Juniper Moon Findley color #28 (silver)
The saga of this stole continues... I finally got around to picking up the stitches around the edge and was so excited to see the stole reach completion and then.... I ran out of yarn!!!! ugh. I really want to see this stole finished, not because I'm tired of it but because it is going to be so beautiful and I think it might become part of a Christmas gift. The only catch is finding a good match of the Juniper Moon Findley #28...

Off my needles:

Another pair of socks using Adirondack Yarn Company sock yarn

As you know, or not, I knit while walking and my walking knitting is usually socks (though currently it is a pair of mitts). I love that I do this because about once a month I have a new pair of socks which I end up wearing every day for the week after their finished! These were fun ones since I used a cheating method to do simple cables. It took a minute to get use to but made cabling so much more enjoyable! I've also learnt, in my many socks now that my standard is: toe-up, short row toe, heel flap and gusset, and interlock bind-off! (Note: to take this picture I had to take them off for a few minutes...)

Talmadge Cloche by Romi Hill, in Madeline Toshsock

I love this cloche!!!! I had hoped to have a picture of it on, maybe I'll add one later. It is a fantastic knit with a great finished product! I highly recommend this pattern to everyone!!!

In other news:

This past month I have been hard at work for LocalFiber, a organization I have founded in hopes to find solutions to the fragmented sheep-to-shawl infrastructure specifically in the NE with small flock farms. In doing this I have been meeting and working with a number of local farmers in and around Ithaca! In fact a few weeks ago I had the opportunity to help Karen Stern from Windsong Farm on Shearing Day.

Karen raises Wensleydale and Cotswald sheep, as well as beef and poultry on her 175 acre farm in Burdett, NY. Needless to say it is a picturesque place, but a lot of work. The farm is Karen's full time job, having left her previous career as a small animal veterinarian to attend to the farm full time. I had heard she was going to be shearing that weekend and asked if she could use a hand...

 

I got there at 1:30pm and left at 7pm. All in all ~50 ewes and rams were sheared. Also on hand was Jackie Harp, a professional wool grader/classer/sorter (these are her photos) and the shearer was Aaron Lux from Aaron's Sheep Shearing out of Western Massachusetts. He travels all over the NE shearing. He is amazing! No second cuts and beautiful care in his work!

Together with the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County, and a number of farmer collaborators, I recently submitted a SARE grant proposal to research and address solutions to the fragmented  fiber processing infrastructure her in the Finger Lakes... Fingers are crossed (but we don't find out until March 2018). It is amazing the things I've learnt about the difficulties of raising small flock breed specific sheep (and other fiber producing animals). The people that bring us these beautiful yarns and fiber really do go through quite a bit to get them to us! I hope we can find some solutions and make the process a bit more sustainable along the way.

With that LocalFiber has been given the opportunity to host a pop-up shop at SewGreen Ithaca for the month of December! So exciting (and a lot of work). We have 6 farms committed at the moment. They include: Windsong, Laughing Goat Fiber Farm,  Ironwood Hill Farm, Trinity Farm, Shepherd's Creek Alpaca & West Creek Family Farm. I'll give updates as time goes on. If you are interested in find out more send an email to localfiber.ny@gmail.com and ask to get on our listserve!

A Visit to Prado de Lana Sheep Farm

A month or so back I mentioned that I met Amanda and Alberto Barcenas of Prado de Lana Sheep Farm at the CNY Fiber Festival, and that I would eventually have more to say about them and their operation. Well.... Last weekend my mother and I took my nieces for a visit to their farm in Chester Co. PA (my parents live less than an hour away from them, lucky me!).

I had really enjoyed meeting and talking with them at the festival and hoped for an opportunity to meet again. Since hoping only gets you so far, I sent them an email and asked if they would be up for a visit. (I also expressed that I would pay for their time of course, the farm life never ends and time spent socializing is time away from all the work that has to be done to keep all the fuzzy critters happy and healthy)! They were more than happy to oblige.

We arrived at 10 am on a Sunday morning, Alberto met us at the car and walked us around back to where Amanda, her daughter Noelia and son Sammy, were waiting with a feeding bottle at the ready. We were going to feed the lambs!!! As soon as Sammy opened the gate Casey (a CVM/Romney mix) came running, ready to be fed.

While my nieces and I were feeding Casey, Amanda told us all about the breeds that they have at Prado de Lana: Romney, Lincoln, & CVM's (California Variegated Mutant), of which the CVM's and Lincoln's are rare breeds. Their original intention was to solely have the Romney and Lincoln (long-wool breeds), but they found themselves, through a series of unexpected events, adopting the (short and fine wool) CVM's along the way. 

They started 3 years ago with just three sheep. Amanda, at the time, was still teaching, but as the flock grew, her time grew short. Just a a year or two in she gave up teaching and began to tend the farm (and their two children) full time. Prado de Lana is now a farm of ~66 sheep, including a handful of rams. Working with a small scale PA fiber mill they produce an array of yarns in a variety of natural colors and weights. (They had a beautiful table set out that I regret not taking a photo of, but you can look around and get a taste here.) They also sell core spun rug yarn, roving and beautiful curly Lincoln locks!

Amanda and Alberto have kept busy attending fiber festivals all over Eastern US including: 

• Vogue Knitting Live, NYC
• CNY Fiber Festival
• Waynesburg Sheep and Fiber Festival
• Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet
• Delmarva Wool and Fiber Festival

...to name a few, and have their eyes set on attending some of the larger festivals in the near future.

I ended up leaving with two skeins of 100% Romney wool, 2-ply DK weight, worsted spun. On every tag they includ the name of the sheep the yarn originated from. While I don't remember meeting Cara, I know I met her sisters and am excited to turn her wool into something warm and soothing, and full of memories (made and to be made).

By the time we were preparing to leave we had gotten the grand tour of Prado de Lana Sheep Farm: We had wandered the pastures, feed the weening lambs, sunk our fingers into the Hazel's deep coat, sat in the dirt and talked about sheep and knitting and plans of sheep and knitting, gazed at gardens full of color (both in bloom and in dye), ogled at yarns and woolly stuffs, and made some new friends. A great morning, with great people, in a beautiful place that they get to call home.

Following are some more photos of our morning...

(The Rams)

(Keeping cool on a hot day)

Wool Washing (a.k.a. removing the poop)

The Crooked Creek Farm adventure was a couple of weeks ago, at which I got just over 2 pounds of gorgeous, grey, white, and black wool. My fiance is not too fond of the smell of sheep poo (I'll admit it's not my favorite either), so I had to get through the washing "quickly" (if within about 2 weeks counts as quickly, hah).

Dana and I did a test run just a couple of days after the adventure, to get started and figure out the kinks together. Overall, it went really well, and I'm excited to work with the result! We forgot to take pictures then, so I figured I'd show what I've been up to now.

The first step from raw wool to clean, gorgeous garment is to pick any gunk out of the wool (poop, second cuttings, leafy vegetal matter, etc.). Sitting in a tub listening to podcasts, or on Dana's front porch with beer and friends, and it can go by quickly! Also, much of the vegetal matter is removed in the carding and washing process, and the poop dissolves in the wash, so I wasn't too picky about picking out the gunk, just got the largest bits.

Next is the washing. For this, Walmart buckets and dollar store laundry bags are super helpful. I started filling the buckets with the hottest water my bath could run, and adding in a few generous squirts of dish soap for the first couple of washes. The water is added to the bucket each time before the wool is introduced, since agitating the wool increases the risk of felting it. Each rinse was left sitting for 20 minutes, and the rinses weren't done until the rinse water ran clear.

The laundry bags were removed from the rinse water, squeezed to remove water, rolled up in a towel to further dry, and lastly the wool was laid out to dry in a sunny window. Once dry, it's ready for carding, spinning, and knitting!

Just across the border

My friend Cathy and I have been fiber friends for... hmmm... going on 4 years now.  We sat across the hall from each other during one of my internships in undergrad. I was not yet a dedicated knitter (in fact I think I was trying my hand at tatting at the time). It was apparent she was, from tea cozies to shawls her work was 'on display', and being a crafter, I struck up conversation with her about her knitting, we've been friends ever since.

Cathy is about 15 years older than me, this is a large part why I love knitting so much (and anything fiber related) there are no barriers. They break down as soon as one see's a fellow crafter, it is the shared experience in making that is the only thing that matters. In fact it wasn't until recently we even addressed our age difference, and really it was more of a comment about how we never even notice it. All we know is that we knit and chat, and that is all that matters (and we chat about everything)!

Since getting to know each other I moved a few hours away (to attend graduate school). We were both glad that it is only a few hours, since that meant we could still meet up on occasion, go to yarn stores, grab a bite to eat, chat, and knit. A few months ago Cathy came to Ithaca to visit me and explore the finger lakes, at the end of that trip we agreed that I needed to return to Buffalo for a weekend and we could revisit some of the places we had already or been or, better yet, go explore some shops across the border in Canada.

One of the many wonderful things about Buffalo is that if you wanted, and it is not unusual, one could just pop over to Canada for a bite, or a bike ride, or to got to the beach (the Lake Erie shore in Canada is rather nice). Yes; you do need a passport, or enhanced license, and sometimes the lines at the border are long (though I've yet to encounter anything unbearable), but it is fun to think "I went to a different (cheaper) country for an afternoon". So with that exploratory nature in our back pockets we planned a visit that involved going to a couple shops in Canada and a stop off at Niagara-on-the-Lake for gelato.

Our first stop was Rose's Fine Yarn of Niagara in Fonthill, ON. What a fun and unique shop, and not just for their selection and variety of yarns. Walking in feels like walking into a curiosity shop, antiques, trinkets, souvenirs... it is easy to get distracted by a porcelain pie bird, or sterling serving tray in the main (entry) room. Quickly the proprietor gave us some direction pointing out the different rooms and what they hold: The acrylic room, the cotton and linen room, the Canadian yarn room, the room of notions and buttons, the sock yarn room, and the wool room.

I LOVED this shop! What an amazing variety, and not just in yarns, I saw 6x0 dpns here, think about that for a moment size 000000!

I also found a number of yarns I wanted, a really springy turkish wool/polyamide blend, it was so bouncy to the touch I just wanted to have it to squeeze, and Jawoll Aktion cotton stretch color. I learned about Jawoll watching the Dunklgrun podcast. It is a sock yarn that is a specially spun cotton wool blend. I love the idea of being able to knit socks using cotton, but cotton has no memory and gets really stiff. This blend is suppose to 'fix' that. I am super excited to give it a turn (as soon as I finish everything that is currently on my needles)!

We then made a stop at Bee Sew Busy on our way to Niagara-on-the-Lake. This shop is a sewing and yarn boutique, everywhere you look there is eye candy in terms of prints and colors. The yarn selection was not as plentiful or varied as I had hoped, but it was a pleasure to wander through and imagine all the sewing projects I could dream of doing (and I do have a few I hope to get to someday). I was able to find the knitters pride needles I had been looking for here (3mm, US 2.5), and was happy to make a purchase and support a local yarn shop (LYS), especially one so pleasant.

(the days plunder)

Our final stop, before heading back to Buffalo was Niagara-on-the-Lake for gelato and a wander about town. I love Niagara-on-the-Lake, this was not my first time here (it being only 45 minutes from Buffalo, but a world away). The Niagara Peninsula is Canada's wine country, and therefore dotted with vineyards and busy with tourists. While I've yet to indulge in any wines from this region or tour the vineyards I have come to Niagara-on-the-Lake for the Shaw festival.

(photo by ihs Holiday Ads:
https://s.iha.com/0018830906/Niagara-on-the-lake)

The Shaw Festival is a theater festival that runs from April to October of every year. With three theaters and ~13 plays (and very affordable price options). We had come for our anniversary one year, spent the day wandering about town (a very picturesque town) had a bite to eat at one of the many options for dinner, got an "obligatory" gelato at Nina Gelateria and Pastry Shop (WOW!). We ended that day at an amazing performance of The Philadelphia Story. I cannot recommend a trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake enough! (an added bonus is it is a short, and picturesque drive down the Niagara River to Niagara Falls, ON).

Needless to say, when Cathy and I made it back to Buffalo we were ready to call it a day.  A great, wonderful, fun day spent with a dear friend. (Thank you Cathy!)

Central New York Fiber Festival 2017

The Annual Central New York Fiber Festival, hosted by Central New York Fiber Artists and Producers, was this past weekend in Bouckville, NY (about 1 1/2 hrs NE of Ithaca NY). Since the weather was going to be in our favor we, my husband Jeremy and I, decided to make a weekend out of it and went camping the night before at Charles E. Baker State Park (just 1/2 hour away from the fiber festival) with our friends Nilay, Zach, Ela, and Sandra.

This is where  the adventure began: We didn't get on the road until much later than we had anticipated (arriving at the campsite at 9pm), the last 4 miles to the camp site was a rutted gravel/dirt road, and then minutes after arriving Ela got bit by a dog. ugh... While the rest of the crew set up camp in the dark, Ela and I drove back down the rutted gravel/dirt road to the nearest hospital about 1/2 hr away. While in the waiting room my husband messaged me saying he couldn't find our tent poles and I immediately started wondering what else could go wrong, poison ivy? Luckily...

Ela didn't need a rabies shot (I did have my whits about me enough to get the tag information from the dogs owner), Jeremy found the tent poles, and there was no poison ivy to be seen. Surprisingly everyone was still awake (at 12.30 am), and the fire was still going, when Ela and I returned to the campsite.

The rest of our time at the State Park was spent as hoped, a few minutes at night by the fire with a beer and friends, and a lazy morning with pancakes and camping coffee. I was even able to get in a few minutes of sitting by the fire with the fleece I had brought with me, to pick through for vegetable matter, before everyone woke up in the morning.

By noon Saturday everyone was packed and ready to go, our next stop: Bouckville, NY and the CNY Fiber Festival.

This was my first time to this festival, and I was truly pleased. It was small, as I expected, but it had such a wonderful mix of vendors. The focus this year was spinning, and sure enough in every tent (~7 total) there was a spinning area of wheels and stools and anyone could pop down for a spin (wink).

I'm not yet interested in spinning wheels, as I grow more and more fond of drop spindling, so I was on the look out for spindles. This is the second festival now that I found myself gravitating toward the Spinning Bunny booth. Jim is from West Danby, NY, a retired cabinet-maker he took up wood-turning as a hobby after retiring, and  he took up spinning because he couldn't turn in the house. He is talented at both for sure. His spindles are amazingly balanced, it is obvious that the spindles are made by someone who understands the intricacy of their use. All the different bowl shapes, and variety of exotic woods he uses makes it easy for any one to find a spindle they will enjoy using for years to come. Rosane (pictured), a dear friend of Jim and Marie's, joins them at many of the fiber festivals. She is an expert spinner and is more than happy to demonstrate (and teach) any one who is interested and stops by the Spinning Bunny display.

The highlight of the fiber festival was Prado De Lana, a sheep farm run by Amanda and Alberto Barcenas out of Chester Co, PA. They specialize in Romney and Lincoln pure wool blends. Their yarns are not dyed (though Amanda is considering doing some natural dyes), and mostly worsted spun. OMG, the drape is amazing!!!! Holding their yarn in my hands and just feeling the weight, watching it fall. It was so hard not to buy enough for a drapy hap, scarf or a winter-y pull-over. I look forward to buying more of their yarn in the future and keeping tabs on what they are up to.  I am sure I will write a post in the future just about them, their farm, and how they got to raising rare breed sheep. (A taste: Amanda studied animal science, Alberto studied Agronomy, and they are currently care-taking a gentleman's farm in Chester Co. PA where they raise their sheep).

This is what I love about fiber festivals:

• Everyone their is just as in love with fiber and fiber related activities as I am (and we all love to talk about it). 
• All the interesting people, hearing how they got doing what they are doing. 
• Learning through conversations and demonstrations. 
• So many things to touch and new things to see.
• Being outside, on a beautiful day, in a beautiful setting.
• But most of all,  meeting new people, and making new friends through our shared love of all things woolly.

Crooked Creek Farm and our first fleece...

This is the last week of Betsy being in Ithaca, and since early on in our fiber friendship we have been talking about processing our own fleece, with intentions of doing so together. Watching the days on the calendar approach Betsy's departure, we recognized it was now or never (at least while together). So, last night, Betsy, Karen, myself and our friends Ela and Nilay drove over to Crooked Creek Farm in Brooktondale, NY to get us some fleece and hang with some sheep.

Needless to say, it was a picture perfect evening, couldn't ask for a bluer sky or greener grass (it has been raining all week). The owner, Amy (who works full-time at Cornell veterinary school), together with her husband, have five horses, a mule, a bunch of chickens and ~70 sheep, five of which are rams (cormo, rambouillet, and finn blends). We found out about the farm via the website agrilicious, which gave us a listing of local farms that deal in wool, and we truly believe we couldn't have lucked out any better.

Amy's friend Cassie, from over the hill, also came over to talk wool and spinning with us. Cassie has been spinning wool since she was 12, where as Amy learnt out of necessity 2 years ago (the sheep came first and she had a lot of wool on her hands, classic chicken and egg). It is obvious Amy loves not only her sheep, but also spinning. She brought us inside her home and showed us the huge pile of yarn she had spun from her own wool, and was able to name each sheep and ram that specific yarn originated from. In fact as we are picking out our fleeces to purchase, she would say "Oh, that's Axil, he is so soft and such nice crimp..."

When it was time to pick out our fleece it was overwhelming. Dark, white, grey, more crimp, less crimp, fine, medium. We felt like kids in a candy store, and were overwhelmingly giddy with joy. Running our fingers through the staples, comparing crimp, smelling the lanolin and whatever (wink) else there is trapped in that beautiful wool! I can't wait to spin the 8lbs. I got and go back for more.


Amy has big dreams for when she finally retires (just a few years away), and can spend her time focusing on her herd and her aspirations of building a fiber community collective. A place where fiber lovers can come and use equipment they might not be able to afford on their own to process fleece and produce yarn and other fiber products. If you are in Ithaca or the Finger Lakes and are a fiber/wool/sheep lover Crooked Creek Farm is a must visit!

(Karen gazing over the field at dusk)

(Walking to the back pasture)