Two Shear Spirits

post Maryland wrap-up

That laryngitis I had must've slowed down my blog voice too. Here, a week later, our tattoo debs. from Maryland Sheep & Wool Fest.

 

Leading with some hometown faves , Crafty Brenda and Beth, two of the traveling New Haven SnB posse.

Here's RedThread , a raveler. I didn't realize it at the time but she's the one who designed the  snake scarf that inspired the Red Scarf project. I photographed Annalisa  of  the Orphan Foundation folks wearing her scarf. Six degrees of separation in the knit world? nah, only two. 

and Flo's friend  from Pittsburgh. May I just say? I met a lot of spirited Pburghers. What were you all passing around on that bus, anyway?

Flo is the title holder of most innovative tatt app. You'll probably need to click on this one to fully appreciate.

You can see all of these and more on our tattoo gallery, look over on that left sidebar.

I'll leave you with a couple of instructional images: Here's how you have a tatt applied at a show. Just call me the wet sponge goddess)

That's Nanney Kennedy,  of Seacolors getting herself decorated. You might recognize her from the first chapter of the book. I wanted to give a peek at her gorgeous sweaters, that's the real reason I'm posting it.

And how will you recognize me? Something like this.

buttoned up in Taos

By the time I left for New Mexico a couple of weeks ago I had just finished my Montana tunic. But there was no time to look for the buttons that were the last step. So I packed a tiny swatch of yarn and hoped to find something perfect along the way.
I thought surely Taos, with its active arts and crafts community, would offer something just right. And indeed when I stepped into La Lana Wools (where Laura was unwrapping a gorgeous selection of first-cut Wensleydale yarn that was unbelievably soft) I found a mesmerizing display. There were beaded buttons, shell buttons, handcrafted buttons in myriad shades. There were so many, I actually had to come back twice before I could make a decision. but I finally chose some medium size antler-horn buttons that had a kind of western look and went with the yarn I was happy I brought!
Here are the buttons. As soon as I find a minute to sew them on, there will be photos of the sweater, too.

tattoo you. and you,. and yes, you too.

So there I'll be at Maryland Sheep & Wool tomorrow & Sunday handing out tattoos. And signing books (see sidebar)

I'm bringing my camera so I can shoot you for  a rogue's gallery of tattoo'd knitters. (I know, they are only temporary. Born to Be Mild and all that).

I decided I was looking too much like the sheep I shoot so went for a haircut this morning. My naturally messy hair is super curly in back and sort of wavy weird on the sides, so I asked the hairdresser to get rid of the floppy sides. He refused.
"No. I am not giving you a mullet".
"But....could we call it a sardonic mullet?".
"No."
"..a sarcastic mullet?"
"No!."
"..a retro layered cut with no mullet reference at all?".
"NO!"

the top ten things we learned list

Joan & I are guest bloggers over at PotterCraft News  today. Go check it out, they made it into a groovy slideshow, and here it is in list form.

1. Never wear clogs when you’re photographing a yak in the spring.
Yes, most of the farms and ranches we visited were home to sheep, goats, and alpacas, but Tregelly’s in Massachusetts had a menagerie that included camels and yaks. Spring is not a dry  season in New England, and Gale likes to get up close and personal with her subjects. Hmmmm, those clogs sure can be hard to keep on your feet when you’re stomping in a field of….well, you get the idea. 

2. A group of goats is called a tribe, while a baby alpaca is known as a cria. Maybe everybody else knew that, but we didn’t. And amazingly enough, the tribe of angora goats down in Texas welcomed us with an initiation ceremony that included nuzzling and making utterly endearing faces. It was like going to a huge family reunion, complete with crazy uncles. 

3. You don’t spin yarn during a thunderstorm if you’re following Navajo ways on the reservation. More surprising, perhaps, is the persistence of traditions there. We met people who still liked to cook breakfast on an open fire in a hogan, and who used a cradleboard for a new baby. At Lazy J Diamond Ranch, Jay Begay spun with a drop spindle, dyed his yarns with vegetal dyes, and was quick to share the stories about the importance of sheep in Native beliefs, but he always put down his yarn when the thunder and lightning came crackling across the horizon.

4. You can’t get goat cheese on an angora goat ranch, but you’ll find great lamb chops on a sheep farm. Evidently goat metabolism works in a way that means you get great fiber or great milk, not both. (Gale threatened to move in permanently if she ever found one with chevre and mohair under the same roof.)   But sheep farmers can breed for fine wool and good meat  – and both turned out to be a hallmark of Thirteen Mile Farm.

5. When female alpacas –they’re called hembras – go out to the pasture in the morning, they line up and walk single file.

It’s all very ladylike. And when a cria is born, the other hembras come and greet the baby, like a lot of caring aunts.

6. Sheep farmers actually design their animals for the qualities they want. For those of us who thought that a sheep breed was forever fixed and immutable…what a surprise! At Autumn House Farm, the Knoxes actually worked to get animals that were self-sufficient and good at lambing without help – as well as crossbreeding for the kind of wool they liked for fiber. Great yarn starts way before shearing – it begins with mating the ewes and rams that have the wool you like.

7. If you live on a sheep farm in Minnesota, you don’t want a white house in the winter. Could that also be why the Judy McDowell’s felted creations, from Misty Meadow Icelandics Farm, are so colorful?

8. Staying on artisanal fiber farms around the country may cause an addiction to fine yarns. We sampled cashmere in Oregon, fingered handspun rosybrown alpaca in New Mexico, oohed over the artful colorways designed in Pennsylvania, and swooned over the incredible intensity of Nanney Kennedy’s worsteds dyed with solar power and set in sea water. There’s no heading back to the commercial skeins now.

9. The best way to move a flock of sheep – if you don’t have a border collie at your beck and call – is to rattle a bucket and take off running.

They’ll be following you.

10. If you visit fiber farms and fiber artists thinking that you’re researching a book on animals, yarn, and knitting, you’ll find that what you’re really doing is creating a book about people who follow their dreams.

signed, sealed, delivered

Last night at The Point. Thanks to everyone who came, what a great roomful you were!
It is somewhat mindboggling to look at a cozy NYC gathering of dear friends, editors, blog friends, famous authors, famous bloggers, my Aunt Marcia, The Point knitters & staff (yay, Patty!) all shoulder to shoulder amidst the yarn and to be describing the vastness of   remote Navajo tribal lands we visited for the chapter on churro sheepherding. Good thing I'm a photographer because sometimes, words fail.

I don't think I'm wrong in stating that we might be the first knitting book with its own tattoo. Come see us somewhere and we'll tattoo you, too.

love, life, and what we might wear*

*with apologies to the author
Will you look at that in the upper right of our sidebar!  Last week Joan found out she'll be in NYC on  our publication date.  Faster than you can say how many yards are in a meter, we'd arranged a party. Join us!  Seeing us in the same room is rarer than a blue moon. We'll talk, we'll  book sign, you'll have fun, and anyway, we're serving wine plus all the great snacks (and yarn!) at The Point Knit Cafe.

As usual, no matter what I'm doing, no matter how exciting, how challenging, how intimidating, it is plowed under oh my god what to wear??  It turns out that both Joan & I are knitting the Montana Tunic  pattern from the book.

A sneak peek .  Either of us might look like this if a) we were fly fishing in  Montana,  b) we were 20 years old, tall and had the most perfect natural red hair and c) most critically...we'd  finished knitting it !

Mine's only got 12" of the back done so hope is slim. I'm loving the 13 Mile Farm yarn, it's the indigo I have on the needles . Joan's got a head start in another color but more deadlines. So no breath being held here. Just look for the two faces from the upper left sidebar , run over and say hi.

and there's THREE of them

I was planning a post about a fun magazine shoot I did last week,.

This is an out from the take while waiting to get started, you'll have to look in TV Guide in a couple of weeks to see the real thing.
So instead of  behind the scenes with Jon Stewart or NY or knitting or reminiscing about meeting Joan in Arizona a year ago to visit our Navajo sheep herding subjects for the book or anything else remotely interesting I will say no more.

Because I am home with the flu. With my whole family. All the guys. And me. It isn't pretty.   I think this sums it up.

Seeing sheep in the strangest places

I'm just back from southern Utah, where spring is still way around the corner. Thank goodness I had my warm beret. But sheep did turn up in unexpected places...like Arches National Park, for instance. There, among the gorgeous red rock formations I came upon, yes, Sheep Rock. There it is, being guarded by the Three Gossips.

A few days later I took a day-long boat trip on the San Juan River, which cuts through 1000-foot canyons. Along the way we stopped to see a small cliff dwelling and centuries-old petroglyphs that included images of bighorn sheep. There were a few live ones visible on the riverbanks, too. But my favorite souvenir of the day was this little willow-twig sheep that Marcus Buck, the boatman/guide, made for me, like those that have been found in ancient cliff dwellings.

time flies

And so do kids.

I learned that a year ago this week, at Kai Ranch in Blue ,Texas. That's where Lisa Shell,  fiber farmer and artist,  raises colored angora goats for mohair and does her beautiful dyeing , spinning and weaving.

When we started working on Shear Spirit we realized the only way to get real life photos was to invite ourselves to move in on the fiber farms for a few days.  Nervy, yes. Also magical. Because fiber artists live art filled lives that we wallowed in. And lots of the good stuff happens just after dawn, or around the dinner table with a couple of bottles of wine, after all the animals have been coralled and no one is worried about impressing each other anymore.  It is kind of weird to be showing up on a stranger's doorstep, in the middle of somewhere, based on a couple of emails and a love of knitting.  I'd never been to rural central Texas , and when Lisa told me I'd be on a dirt road turning right just past the ninth turkey barn, I was too chicken to admit I wasn't sure what a turkey barn looks like, anyway.  When I pulled up and saw Lisa's front door, I knew it was going to be just fine.  Wouldn't you?

Why Lisa agreed to have us show up on such short notice I don't know but I am so glad she did. The farm we thought we'd be visiting had dropped out, and with only two weeks warning, Lisa said "sure".  If she and her husband Randy lived nearby, I'd be popping by often. ( Not just for the locally made pecan ice cream and Texas beer they serve. Really. )

 

You need to know that all this fab color is set in the sagey browny green of Texas range land, with scrubby bushes, and thick woods with tall spare Texas-y trees surrounding.

 

 

 

 

I love the tea towels, embroidered by a neighbor.
And the bathroom? If there hadn't been a drought , I would have taken twice the showers just for the pleasure of stepping out onto Lisa's downy handspun crocheted rugs.

That little airborn guy at the top is now  a handsome year old buck, reports Lisa. She's got thirty-one new kids in the tribe  flying around this week. sigh. Wish I was there!

sharing the warmth

It was a gorgeous spring day here in Santa Barbara, and I hit the tennis court – not a time to be wearing knitwear. So I was happy that I'd sent a Taos beret to my niece, Suzanne, in New York, where winter has not yet left. Here she is...preparing happily to face the elements.

Of course, winter is not completely over in California. Just in case, I'm still working away on my wool Montana tunic. As it happens, I've got two trips coming up – to Utah and Tortola (in the British Virgin Islands). Guess which one I'm hoping to take the sweater on...