Hand spun and hand dyed yarn has always had a place in my
heart. Learning how to weave a few years
ago gave me a reason to purchase a skein or a handful of small samples. Not only at local markets, but also when I am
traveling, this gives me the excuse to stop, look and talk with local makers.
It was with delight that I read about Crux Fibres “Low Mileage Make Along”
which was the perfect excuse to bring out all my treasures and decide how to
put them together in one story. The
structure of this book is all the reasons for wanting to spend time by the sea,
but it’s the wools that are the stars in this tale.
Confession here, I’m a townie who lives in Alberta with
no practical experience with sheep (or the ocean). But I keep bumping into them
on my travels and they fascinate me.
I’ve learned about the prima donnas, chiefly Merino (from Spain to
Australia and South America) and Corriedale (a bit more hardy, bred in New
Zealand by crossing the Merino with other breeds to improve meat quality) who
need care and attention from shepherds and their dogs. But along the way, I also met the more
independent heritage breeds – North Ronaldsay and Icelandic as well as a
variety of breeds in the UK that trace their origins to the Viking sheep who
had to be able to fend for themselves while their people were off doing other
things. These sheep are primarily bred
for their meat because the wool is not beautifully soft and silky like the Merino
and Corriedale. But you can find people
who are rescuing the wool, spinning and dying it and enjoying the qualities
that make the sheep so hardy. I love the
story of bringing in the North Ronaldsay sheep for sheering in the fall – no
sense in sending a dog because they know he is danger and will scatter to the
farthest edges of the beach (they feed on seaweed on a tidal beach). Instead, the fit young men have to sneak up
on them one at a time, hoist them over their back and carry them to the
paddock. A similar story was told to me
of the Icelandic Sheep. The wool is two
layered, one for warmth and the second is waterproof. A bit scratchy, but perfect for outer layers. Victoria Findlay’s book, Cloth, has the story
of why you won’t find Merino sheep in the UK.
Politics back in the day meant that the Spanish jealously guarded their
wool industry. Instead, the beautiful local wool is Corriedale. Or imported Merino from Australia or New
Zealand. In Iceland as well, “made in
Iceland” means the wool is Merino from Australia because tourists want soft not
hardy. “Made of Icelandic wool” will get
you the heritage wool. The other interesting thing I learned is that all wools
have their special purpose. So, the
sheep living on the outer Hebrides are best suited for making carpets and
Harris Tweed is actually made of Corriedale fleece from the mainland that is
spun, dyed and woven on Lewis and Harris.
Turkish carpets are actually made from Iranian wool because Turkish sheep
are better suited to clothing.
While sheep were being domesticated in Europe and the
Middle East, the people of South America were doing the same with Alpaca and
his relatives (Llama, Guanaco and Vicuna). When the Spanish brought the Merino
sheep to the Americas, they fit right in. Traveling in South America, it’s very
difficult to find Low Mileage wool because wool as well as alpaca is sold to
the major mills in Peru and Uruguay for international distribution. Locals are often seen knitting or crocheting
with acrylic yarn dyed in bright modern colours. So, like catching the heritage sheep in
Europe, I had to sneak up on sources and be prepared to toss a sample over my
shoulder to bring it home.
I’ve also included some silk embroidery thread in this project because it feels like it meets the criteria of local and traceable, hand processed and dyed. I was privileged to visit the Khiva Silk Carpet cooperative while traveling in Uzbekistan. The silkworms are all raised in community houses, harvested and processed at the coop before being spun into carpet strength threads for hand making the carpets. I still smile at the interaction to get some of these thread samples. Our guide, who I believe had government connections, translated for me and negotiated that I could have some of the “waste threads” – 5 to 10 meter pieces from the end of the spools. Perfect for what I had in mind and I suspect that they were reassured that the government didn’t need to know about this small unauthorized sale. When I got back to Canada, I borrowed “A Carpet Ride to Khiva” to read the whole story of this cooperative.
The cover is a “low mileage painting”. I bought it at a small market on the harbor
at Cavtat in Croatia. It’s the last
point in Croatia where you and your boat can check out of the country on the
way to Montenegro. And it reminds me of
an incredible experience with our guide/ship’s captain who used his knowledge
and experience to read the weather and know just what needed to be done to keep
us safe and provide a great experience. The fact that he invited me to sail as
the only passenger from Dubrovnik rather than wait for the land transfer for
the new guests was an incredible message that he trusted non sailor me to take
orders and not be a hindrance. “There’s
a storm coming and I have to get the ship to Cavtat to meet everybody so we can
get into the bay at Kotor tonight.
Otherwise we stay in Dubrovnik for the week. Do you want to sail with me, or wait and take
the bus with the others.” Heck yes, I
wanted to sail with him. I bought this painting (and a number of others) from
the artist while waiting for the rest of the group to catch us and had a lovely
conversation about the fact that all the paintings I chose were hers not her
husband’s. In her life, the ocean is
just outside her window. The Aegean Sea,
that is.
Sailboats and the ocean go together perfectly and remind me of some stellar small group cruises in Australia and Croatia. The embroidery thread comes from two Low Mileage sources. The black birds are silk carpet thread from Khiva. The other colours are from The Outside www.theoutside.org.uk who are a couple who focus on heritage materials and processes. They raise Shetland Sheep near Oxford, but these threads are all from Swaledale sheep, a heritage breed related to the Viking sheep who live on the Yorkshire Dales. The reason being that if you are creating heritage garments or embroideries from the 1000s then your wool has to be as close to the original as possible. I met them at a medieval market just down the road from Salisbury Cathedral (the new one, started in 1220)
A fishing net goes perfectly with the ocean theme. It’s crocheted with the Peruvian wool and the found object (a fishing net has to catch something) is a handmade seed earring from Flores, Guatemala (so, it too is Low Mileage). And there’s a great memory of buying this earring, talking with the shopkeeper, giving a pen and being gifted with a hand carved (by the merchant out of local wood) coatil. The red seed is for good luck and to protect from the evil eye. These seeds are also found throughout South America.
This is the first of several dry felted backgrounds from Canadian Low Mileage rovings to feel like an ocean scene. I started with black roving from Northern Roots Family Farm just up the road from me in Peace River (Clover, who is probably an Icelandic/Shetland mix), then added some wine coloured alpaca roving from Twisted Sisters Mill www.twistedsistersmill.com. The top layer is a mix of Crux Fibre’s www.cruxfibres.com custom roleg (the greys and blues and sparkles) and the Ontario wool from the sample pack (ocean and seashore colours). I added a selection of items from my seashell collection. Included are pearl bits and my last paua button from New Zealand. The embroidery is wool thread from The Outside and coloured with madder and cochineal grown in their garden.
A fisherman’s sweater using Low Mileage fingering wool from Crux Fibres, generously crocheted by my daughter Kati. Kati gave the bottom some ribbing like the bottom of a sleeve or the waist of the sweater, but I think it looks like a cup of tea or coffee to be shared with friends. The legend I heard in the Shetlands is that these sweaters actually got started by the fishermen themselves knitting a warm sweater to wear on the boats and with time on their hands they would start to get creative with the stitches.
Another dry felted background to represent the seashore. More black from Northern Roots Family Farm, with the middle layer being whites and greys from Crux Fibres. The top layer (the teal and the earth tones) is Corriedale tops from the Handspinner Having Fun www.handspinnerhavingfun.com, a shop at Broadford on the Isle of Skye. They use local sheep and process the yarn for sale in their shop. Along with all the skeins of beautiful wool for sweaters and such, there was a bin with tops dyed in a rainbow of colours and sold by the gram. The shop is not open in the winter as the family travels to Peru each year (which is why a quilt about my travels in Scotland includes a silver decorative spoon made in Peru). The feathers are from Northern Roots Family Farm’s chanticleer chickens, gathered by the children from the farmyard. They may not be seabirds, but the feathers are reminding me of all the beautiful birds I’ve watched on my ocean adventures. The embroidery wool that sews it to the page is coloured with weld and woad.
Low Mileage yarns of the world representing all the lines
you see along the harbor. The background
is white cotton hand dyed with saffron from Spain. The orange line is from a
visit to a very high end hand weaving shop near Cuenca in Peru. While our guide was trying to impress us with
the lovely intricate shawls being woven on a loom I had first seen in Asia and
using specially imported silk linen fibres from Uzbekistan (yes I have an
embroidered cloth using those fibres but bought from the artist in Samarkhand)
loved by the upper class local ladies, I was more interested in this hunk of
bright orange chunky yarn hanging on the wall.
It turns out that one of the weavers had been playing with wool from one
of his own sheep, had spun it and then dyed it with carrots. Just playing around. No where near fine enough to weave anything
up to the standards of Peru. But I loved
its lumpiness and negotiated to bring it home.
The ground is two strands of lopi spun Icelandic
yarn. I was exploring a pop up market
(literally a van parked in the parking lot by the entrance to a park) and the
young lady explained that she had spun her own sheep’s wool and then knitted
all the items for sale. Yes, ten years
later, the touque still gets worn regularly and the two skeins of yarn have
found their way into many projects. In Iceland, most fleeces are sold to the
cooperative that processes the yarn and either sells it internationally or
offers it for sale to locals at the shop in Reykjavik so it was very unusual to
find Low Mileage yarn.
On the line from left to right:
-
Sheep from Tierra del Fuego hand spun in
Ushuia. I was delighted to bump into
this yarn in a small shop off the tourist beat.
I’d explored a number of yarn shops as we traveled through Chile and
Argentina, but none had local wool. It
was mostly acrylic in modern colours.
Any wool would be from the international mills in Peru or from Europe or
North America.
-
Alpaca from Bolivia. I found this at the Museo National de Bolivia
in La Paz. The government supported cooperative
works with local indigenous groups (Aymara and Quechua) to continue their
traditional weaving. The tags indicated
the community and the spinner.
-
Sheep from Bolivia. Traditional highland sheep in the Andes are a
mixture of Merino (brought by the Spanish in the 1500s) and Corriedale.
-
Sheep from Bolivia.
-
Corriedale tops from the Handspinner Having
Fun on the Isle of Skye
-
Hardwick sheep wool from Grasmere Weavers in
the Lake District of England.
-
Blackfaced Connemara. We had been traveling the back roads of
western Ireland exploring the hills, the lakes and the sheep and stopped at a
village on Lake Connemara for lunch. In
the shop/restaurant was a large selection of Irish wools. My eyes were drawn to a small selection of
white curly wool and I asked the shopkeeper where it came from. He smiled and mentioned that the fleece all
came from the sheep out there on the hill, and it was spun by the lady who
lived next door to the shop. Can’t get
much more Low Mileage than that.
Although most of the sheep in Ireland are Scottish Blackface, the
Blackface Connemara is actually its own breed and comes more directly from the
Viking ancestors. It is raised primarily
for meat, but locals will also use the wool.
-
Welsh rare breed (Balwen) sheep who live near
Hay on Wye. The local market was just closing down for the day as I stopped to
explore.
-
Irish sheep (so probably Scottish Blackface)
from the same shop in Connemara. These
would have been the more domesticated sheep I saw in the hills. Hand dyed with local plants.
-
Donegal Tweed yarn from the Blarney Woolen
Mills. Lovely yarn with the iconic spots
to indicate Donegal Tweed. Made in
Ireland. But the wool is merino from Australia
or South America. Sigh (not low mileage
at all).
-
The Low Mileage wools of Canada. I’m thinking of this as the seashore (the undyed colours on the bottom and right side) with a glorious sunset.
Bottom to Top:
-
Imagine Yarns www.imagineyarn.com
Cotswold sheep tops (Oprah) from Saskatchewan
-
Northern Roots Family Farm (Peace River).
They raise Shetland and Icelandic sheep
-
Imagine Yarns Gotland sheep tops (Mica) from
B.C.
-
Lazy Ewe Farms from down the road in
Eaglesham (a francophone community). I
bought this yarn at the Dunvegan Family Day market and I like to call it “Inconnu”. The maker explained that all the wool she was
selling was from her sheep or alpacas and that she spun and dyed it
herself. There was a small bin on the
table of skeins with the label “make me an offer”. She explained that these orphans had been
misplaced and she didn’t know which sheep or alpaca the yarn had come
from. I loved the green colour and the
story made me smile, so “I don’t know” is a perfect name.
-
Imagine Yarn Cotswold sheep tops (Beth) from
Saskatchewan. Beth is actually white,
but I took samples of all the white yarns and painted them to give me more
ocean yarn. It was a no measure
combination of assorted blues, greens and metallic fabric paints.
-
Northern Roots Family Farm. Hand spun natural wool from their flock
-
Custom Woolen Mills www.customwoolenmills.com
Field and Forage Yarn coloured with marigolds and honey from their garden. This
is one of two Alberta mills and they process woolen fleece from Western Canada.
-
Twisted Sisters Mill www.twistedsistersmill.com
Alpaca and Wool mix. This is the second
mill in Alberta and processes primarily alpaca fleeces from Western
Canada. What makes me smile is that both
mills use each other’s products. The
alpaca will be from their farm.
-
Custom Woolen Mills Field and Forage Yarn
coloured with coreopsis and perambucco (Brazil wood) which is foraged from a
local violin maker.
-
CJ Alpacas Alpaca and Merino lopi spun at
Twisted Sisters Mill. The Alpacas are
their own. The beautiful colour is from
kool aide.
-
CJ Alpacas Alpaca hand spun on the farm and
also dyed with kool aide.
From Left to Right
-
Made Marion wool hand spun by herself and
coloured with avocado. (two lines, chain
crochet to give the fingering weight yarn some visibility) This local
spinner/dyer’s products can be purchased at Hippy Strings www.hippystrings.ca in Sexsmith, just outside Grande Prairie. She
also has an incredible line of alpaca fibers.
The story is that they used to raise alpacas and she is slowly making
her way through what she has left in the barn storage. Hippy Strings reassures me that Marion will
probably never run out of alpaca fleece.
-
Northern Roots Family Farm. More of their natural fibre – clouds in the
sky.
-
CJ Alpacas Alpaca hand spun on the farm. Another strand for the sunset
-
CJ Alpacas Alpaca and Wool lopi spun repeat
-
Custom Woolen Mills Field and Forage repeat
(two rows)
-
Lazy Ewe Farms Inconnu repeat
-
Northern Roots Family Farm hand spun and dyed
repeated
-
Fluffalo Fiber Company from Caroline in
Southern Alberta. The family raises
buffalo as does their neighbor. Each
spring, the family goes out and harvests the “fluff”. I asked for a package of small samples of her
various products (she was learning to spin and combine various fibers and I was
delighted to receive 5 to 10 meters of various weights, colours and
compositions. This one came with the
label “pure bison fiber unfinished. Dip
in warm water and hang to dry” It went
from a very straight fiber to a kinky soft one.
Sort of like my hair in a rain storm.
Crochet chain to give it more visibility.
-
Qivuit from a friend of a friend. My daughter’s neighbor is an elderly nurse
(she just recently retired at the age of over 80) who for many years would do
relief nursing at the high arctic nursing stations. She’d go for a couple of weeks at a time so
the nurse could have a vacation. She
received a large selection of Qivuit from a local lady who had gathered the
fibre and then processed and spun it. My
daughter’s neighbor made hats, scarves and mitts for all her family then gifted
the remainder to my daughter who crochets.
And there was enough left over for a small ball for me. J It is unbelievable how soft this fiber is
If you look on the next page you can see that this square
was sewn to the page with Black silk carpet thread from Khiva
This time I used a dry felted background to emphasize the seashore and use some of the yarns and tops. The ocean has strands of Corriedale tops from the Handspinner Having Fun (Broadford Isle of Skye) over top of the Cotswold tops from Imagine Yarns. The seashore has Lazy Ewe Inconnu twisted with some white merino hand spun by Melanie Hellum who is a local lady who uses her own sheep’s fleece in some amazing art projects. The land gets some definition from Made Marion’s avocado dyed wool and CJ Alpacas’s alpaca dyed with kool aide. The puffins flying around the lighthouse make it likely that this seashore is around Cornwall (where I purchased the card) but it also reminds me of the flock of puffins I was blessed to visit in Newfoundland. This was sewn to the page with woolen yarn from The Outside.
Here’s the colours of the ocean in a simple weaving to show off the wool from Island Sweet Fibre Arts of Cornerbrook, Newfoundland. Although most wool from Newfoundland goes to the two mills in Atlantic Canada (Briggs and Little in New Brunswick or MacAusland in PEI) for processing, this artist used local wool and processed, spun and dyed it at her studio. She created kits with her wool and simple patterns that were available around Newfoundland. I bought this and a couple more kits while at Gros Morne National Park and this was the last bit left. It was too little to make a scarf, too much to throw away and just right for this weaving. Unfortunately, the artist has been inactive since 2014. If you look on the next page, you will see that the weaving was sewn to the page with black silk carpet yarn from Khiva.
Dry felted background deep under the sea with no coast to be found. Black base is Northern Roots Family Farm and then the next layers are all the beautiful bits in the sample pack from Crux Fibres. The design of the fish is from a takeout bag from somewhere in Europe. I only saved the design, none of the labeling. The large fish and the outer border is wool from The Outside dyed with madder and cochineal. The smaller fish are embroidered with Khiva silk carpet thread, also dyed with madder. Two communities very far apart but both with the knowledge of natural dyes. It’s interesting to note that many of the dyes used in Khiva have to come from Afghanistan.
Rainbow, or perhaps clouds, over the ocean. Here’s a selection of my white Low Mileage yarns. The yarn to sew it to the page is from The Outside and the background is Irish linen.
Top to bottom:
-
Imagine Yarns Cotswold tops from Saskatchewan
-
Connemara Blackface from Ireland. A repeat of the wool from the sheep on the
hill spun by the lady next door.
-
Northern Roots Family Farm
-
Corriedale tops from the Handspinner Having
Fun on the Isle of Skye
-
Melanie Hellum flock
-
Made Marion Alpaca and wool lopi hand
spun. Natural colour
- Made Marion Alpaca and wool lopi hand spun. Dyed with onion skins
This is actually the first page I completed. Cockle shell embroidered on linen. The pattern is from a book about the Bayeux Tapestry. Of course shells go with the ocean, but this has a lot more meaning that I became aware of on my travels. The shape of the shell as well as the gold and blue colours indicate that this is actually the symbol of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. I saw this symbol all over Europe – during the middle ages, basically every road was a road to Santiago de Compostela. If you find a church with the name “St James”, you can be assured that it was a place that pilgrims could seek shelter and food along the road. And yes, the road from Bayeux and nearby Mont St Michel are both routes that led folks coming from England onto the French route. The blue lines in the shell are the last bits of indigo dyed silk carpet thread (and the indigo from India had to come through Afghanistan) The gold is wool thread from The Outside dyed with weld and madder. The thread sewing the embroidery to the page is wool dyed with indigo. Indigo that comes either from India or from Central America.
The ocean floor. This is some lumpy fluffalo fiber that was one of the maker’s early efforts at spinning. Yes, the white is natural, her neighbor has two white buffalo. When I laid a handful of the yarn on the table, it just said “ocean floor” so I tried a number of ways to bring it together but keep the lumps and texture. Finally, I arranged it between two layers of netting and gently dry felted it. Just enough to hold everything together. It’s sewn to the page with black Khiva silk carpet thread. My intent was to add nothing else to the page, but today this yarn marker said it needed to be part of the story. I remember buying it in Iceland at the local yarn coop (everybody in Iceland knits and comes to the coop to buy wool and accessories and to offer finished garments for consignment) because it was pretty. It’s been sitting for ten years in a basket of found seashells from that trip to Iceland.
The last fibre page is a tip of the hat to seahorses. And the memory of seeing a whole group of them at a “seahorse ranch” on Caye Calker, Belize. One of the docks had plants to encourage the seahorses to visit, with a fence they could get through but the larger carnivore fish could not, and all the locals knew to park their boats elsewhere.
Contact information about the wools:
Canadian
Wool
Crux Fibres www.cruxfibres.com
Breed Sample Pack including coloured from Ontario. And a roleg and the fisherman’s sweater is
made of Wesleydale fingering weight yarn.
Fluffalo Fiber Company from Caroline
@fluffalofibercompany
Custom Woolen Mills www.customwoolenmills.com
Field and Forage Yarns
Twisted Sister www.twistedsistersmill.com
Ombre Alpaca and Merino yarn and Alpaca roving
C J Alpacas cjalpacas@gmail.com
also Facebook and Instagram lopi yarn alpaca and merino spun at Twisted
Sisters. Alpaca spun at home. Dyed with kool aide. Available at local
Farmer’s Markets and at Hippy Strings (local yarn shop)
Made Marion available at www.hippystrings.ca
Fingering weight wool spun at Custom Woolen Mills and hand dyed. Lopi hand spun Alpaca and Merino and hand
dyed
Island Sweet Fibre Arts (Cornerbrook NL)
Northern Roots Family Farm northernrootsfamilyfarm@gmail.com and
on Facebook and Instagram Available at local Farmer’s Markets. Yarn is named after the sheep. Black (Clover) roving and several thicknesses
of Shetland and Icelandic sheep, hand
spun.
Lazy Ewe Farm (Eaglesham) shirleyulland@gmail.com
available at local Farmer’s Markets.
Sheep and alpaca raised on the farm.
Fleece is hand spun and hand dyed.
Imagine Yarn www.imagineyarn.com
Cotswold and Gotland tops from BC and Saskatchewan.
Melanie Hellum on Facebook. Hand spun.
Sheep are raised on her farm.
Qivuit from a friend of a friend
Wool
of the World
Iceland sheep wool lopi spun
and purchased at a pop up stall in Iceland
Uzbekistan Khiva Silk Carpet
Workshop
Peru Centro de textiles tradicionales del cuzco www.textilescusco.org
Bolivia Museo National de
Bolivia in La Paz. sheep and alpaca from a government supported
cooperative. Also alpaca yarn from a
local merchant
Ecuador highland sheep hand
spun and dyed with carrot at a workshop near Cuenca
Ushuia (Tierra del Fuego)
England The Outside www.theoutside.org.uk
embroidery threads hand dyed with traditional dyes on Swaledale fleece.
Grasmere Weavers www.grasmereweavers.co.uk
Hardwick sheep. Bought at Keswick. Lake District (Beatrix Potter Country)
Wales Balwen sheep (rare breed)
bought at Hay on Wye
Ireland Connemara Blackface
rare breed (white), natural dyes to Scottish Blackface (ombre) Blarney Woolen
Mills Donegal Tweed (not LM)
Scotland. Handspinner Having Fun (Corriedale tops) www.handspinnerhavingfun.com
