Hello, and welcome!
Chances are you found this site via some sort of Internet search. I think you'll find a lot of interesting information in the archives here, and you're welcome to look around; however, I no longer update or maintain this website.
I have moved all of my blog posts, teaching information, and retreat updates to my new site: The Independent Stitch.
Please visit https://independentstitch.com for all the information you need.
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Thanks so much for visiting! And also thanks to Typepad. It has been a fantastic platform for many years. I just finally outgrew it! (That took a long time.)
— Deb
My interest in Shetland textiles focuses on the sheep and their wool, in large part because that’s what I love. As I travel this particular road, I’m grateful for the gifted researchers and designers who pay attention to traditional and contemporary Shetland textiles. Among these people is Susan Crawford, whose previous four books have delved into knitting from the 1920s through the 1950s. For the past four years, Susan has traveled to Shetland twice a year (lucky!) to spend time selecting twenty-five tantalizing knitted pieces from the collection of the Shetland Museum and Archives, examining every stitch, and designing patterns that will allow contemporary knitters to be guided by the works' creators in making reproductions of the pieces or simply being inspired by them.
I’ve seen in person some of the works Susan has selected. I look forward to viewing them through her eyes as well, since she’s had the opportunity to study them in far more detail than I have.
This stunning vest, for example—when I discovered it in the museum on my second trip there, I didn’t want to quit looking at it:
It’s a long way to go to visit a garment, but the experience was memorable—and soon we’ll be able to get a close look without so much travel, because Susan’s Vintage Shetland Project is in the process of being funded through Pubslush. As I’m writing this, the project has gathered £19,998 with a goal of £12,000. I’m not surprised that it’s already exceeded its goal. Susan has a reputation for doing exquisite work. All of her previous books have been self-published, so we know how well she will pull this one off. We also only have to wait until November to see the book published.
You can hear Susan talk about the project on the Pubslush page, and get glimpses of a number of the garments that she has gotten to know so well. I’m including a few of my favorites here. I’m seriously wishing a trip to Shetland was in my schedule for this year (so many fine people; so many great ideas), but I’m still processing the piles of information I collected there last fall. . . .
It was hard for Susan to choose from the many garments in the museum, and it's hard for me to choose what to feature from the twenty-five she has selected. But here are a couple of them:
The breathtaking delicacy of that lace! Wouldn't it be lovely to wear?
There's a strong Scandinavian influence in Shetland, and it shows up in the knitting, with a shift in flavors.
And this cardigan ranks as a favorite for many reasons. Obviously both beautiful and well loved, it deserves to be reincarnated on 21st century needles and given more chances to bring joy into people's lives.
Go check out the Pubslush page, and also there’s a blog tour going on. Here’s what’s happened to date, if you want to see more pictures of cool stuff:
Coming soon:
Julia Billings - tomorrow
Donna Smith (check out her post on Carol Christiansen’s taatit rugs study and the exhibition, too)
(Cruise around these blogs: it took me a while to write this post because I kept finding interesting things to read.)
For those of us who like yarn for its own sake, Susan has been collaborating with some mills to develop yarns suited to knitting vintage-style pieces—exciting!
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And, by the way, one reason that it’s been so quiet around here is that I’ve been learning WordPress and moving my blog and site to that platform. There are only so many hours in a day, and I’ll be glad to get back to writing instead of learning software. Nonetheless, it’s a good move and very soon you’ll be finding me at The Independent Stitch.
Happy reading, knitting, and spinning to you. . . .
Years ago, when I edited Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot, I learned of Lithuanian textiles through weaving, by way of work by Antanas and Anastazija Tamošaitis and by Kati Meek and an awareness of the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture in Chicago (SS&D Summer 1986). Lithuania is one of three countries tucked into the curve at the eastern end of the Baltic Sea, along with Latvia and Estonia.
Later I met and published several books by Donna Druchunas, who has delved deeply into her Lithuanian roots with a special interest in the knitting heritage. Donna included some Lithuanian material in her Ethnic Knitting Exploration, for which I knitted the samples as part of the design and publishing process. Donna's dedication and rigor make her a great working partner.
Knowing Donna led to my meeting June Hall, who lives in Cumbria, in northwestern England, with a flock of Soay sheep and has been my generous guide and connection to that part of the world. June, too, digs long and hard into the subjects that catch her intellect and interest.
They both have studied the Lithuanian language, traveled to Lithuania, and now (over more than eight years) collaborated on a book: Lithuanian Knitting: Continuing Traditions.
It’s a great honor to host Donna here with a blog post celebrating the imminent publication of Donna’s and June’s book on Lithuanian knitting (and sheep and wool). She’s written us a splendidly technical introduction to how she came to know some of the techniques in the book—and notes as well that you can knit the book’s projects with the techniques that are already familiar to you. It’s just interesting, and possibly useful, to know exactly what methods Lithuanians use to make their stitches dance.
— Deb
P.S. I’ll be back with more blog posts before long. My time for writing posts has been consumed by other pressing needs, but it looks like some of those will soon be resolved.
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What makes knitting Lithuanian? Is it special techniques that are used? A unique way to hold the yarn and needles? Certain combinations of colors? Interesting pattern stitches?
All of these things, and more. The techniques I’ve included in Lithuanian Knitting: Continuing Traditions are all based on vintage accessories in museum collections, reproductions of Lithuanian National Costume ensembles, or folk art pieces made by contemporary knitters. These instructions are adapted from Mezgimas (Knitting) by Anastazija Tamošaitis as well as other vintage and contemporary Lithuanian knitting books in my library, along with tips I’ve picked up from Lithuanian friends. I’ve modernized some of the decreases and made other adjustments to make the techniques easier for contemporary knitters.
I love vintage knitting books and have my own small collection of nineteenth-century English-language books, but the earliest Lithuanian-language knitting books I’ve discovered so far were published almost a hundred years later. Sodžiaus menas kn. 5: Mezgimo-nėrimo raštai (Village Arts no. 5: Knitting patterns), by Antanas Tamošaitis, came out in 1933 and Mezgimas (Knitting), by Anastazija Tamošaitis, Antanas’s wife, was published in 1935.
Together, these two books form a wonderful foundation in Lithuanian knitting. Antanas wrote about the spiritual significance of folk art and documented colorwork motifs and mitten and sock designs from regions around the country, while Anastazija wrote instructions for knitting a variety of accessories using traditional motifs and colors. Mezgimas also includes instructions for knitting techniques that were not traditional in Lithuania, but which Anastazija may have learned about in The Encyclopedia of Needlework, by Thérèse de Dillmont, which was published in 1884 and became a hugely popular reference throughout Europe.
Most of the Lithuanian-language knitting books in my collection were published between 1959 and 1979, during the Soviet period. Most were written by Lithuanian authors, but others were translated from Russian. I found these books on eBay and at used book shops, street fairs, and flea markets in Lithuania. These books are quite similar to the vintage English-language knitting books I have from the same period. They include basic knitting and crochet instructions, a stitch library, and a collection of projects. Many of the books also include basic dressmaking information, along with tips for sizing garments which may be quite detailed or as vague as, “Models are given in one size. If you make a gauge swatch, it will be very easy for you to determine the number of stitches to cast on for your own size.”
I’ve been learning to read and speak Lithuanian, so at first it was a challenge to figure these books out, but since I’m quite fluent in knitting and they all have lots of charts and diagrams, it’s been a good way to learn the parts of the language related to knitting.
My grandmother taught me how to knit when I was in kindergarten, maybe even before that. I started out with a stockinette-stitch swatch and wrapped the working yarn snugly around my left index finger, like a bobbin, to control my tension.
“When you knit the yarn goes in the back and the needle goes in the back of the stitch,” Grandma told me. “And when you purl, the yarn goes in the front, and the needle goes into the front of the stitch.” The formula was easy for me to remember and I learned to knit and purl with equal ease. I didn’t know that this was called the Eastern Uncrossed or Combination method of knitting, commonly used in Russia and parts of Eastern Europe. To me, this was just Grandma’s knitting.
One of my favorite Lithuanian knitting books, a small volume called Megzkime Pačios (Let’s Knit) by O. Jarmulavičienė, presents the basic knitting stitches just the way my grandmother taught me. Other books offer up instructions for the standard modern-European style of knitting and note that this is the common method used in books, but in the old days, most knitters (in Lithuania) used močiutės mezgimas, or “grandmother’s knitting.” Both methods are interchangeable, the authors explain, as long as you pay attention to your work. In general, the books do not show drawings with hands, but the working yarn always trails off the drawings to the left, with the assumption that knitters will carry the yarn in their left hand, no matter which way they form their stitches.
Knit = back/back. To make a knit stitch, hold the working yarn in the back, and insert the right needle into the back of the stitch. Pick the yarn with the tip of the right needle and pull it through to form a new stitch.
Won’t you twist your stitches if you knit into the back? Not if you purl wrapping your yarn in the opposite direction.
Purl = front/front. To make a purl stitch, hold the working yarn in front, and insert the right needle into the front of the stitch. Pick the yarn in the same manner as you do when knitting.
With this technique, switching back and forth between knits and purls is easy and fast. After I practiced for a bit, the process became unconscious as the yarn “automatically” moved to the front or back of my needles as necessary for the next stitch. Ribbing and cables followed quickly for me, and I never realized that purling was supposed to be difficult. Moving your yarn to the front or back of the needles is something that is not even mentioned in Lithuanian knitting books.
To knit without twisting your stitches, always work into the leading (or right) leg of the stitch. It doesn’t matter if it’s in front of or behind the needle.
While I was doing my research on Lithuanian knitting techniques, I stumbled onto an interesting discussion in the Combination Knitters group on Ravelry about Lithuanian (and Russian) knitting and how to work left- and right-leaning decreases. This is an important topic, and perhaps the most confusing to knitters who knit in the Lithuanian fashion. Because your stitches are oriented on the needle with the leading leg of the stitch at the back, the normal decrease instructions in English-language knitting books don’t make any sense when you look at your stitches on the needle.
A left-slanting decrease is usually worked as ssk in America these days. In my Lithuanian knitting books it’s usually called simply "knit two together," but because the stitches are turned, you put the right needle into the back of the two stitches to knit them together and the final decrease leans to the left. Sometimes it is explained like this: 2 akys, sumegztos kartu gerai iš apačios (knit two together from the bottom, or back). But it’s not usually so simple, because knitting terminology is not standardized in Lithuania, so each author explains things in her own way.
A right-slanting decrease is worked as k2tog in America. In my Lithuanian books, this is sometimes explained as 2 akys, sumegztos kartu gerai iš viršaus (knit two together from the top, or front). This creates a decrease that slants to the right, but the stitches are twisted. Depending on the yarn texture and color, this may or may not be noticeable in the finished knitting.
All of this is very technical and fascinating to me, but you can knit any of the projects in Lithuanian Knitting: Continuing Traditions in any techniques you like. In fact, most of the projects are knitted in the round, which eliminates many of the differences between močiutės mezgimas and standard Western knitting techniques.
I’ve been working on this book with my co-author June Hall since 2007, with several trips to Lithuania for both of us between then and now, along with uncounted hours of writing, knitting, and editing.* We are finally ready to send the files to the printer. To pay for this, I’ve been holding a Pubslush crowdfunding campaign (like Kickstarter but only for books) and we're over 100% funded today with just 5 days left to go! I’m so excited that so many people are helping me make this dream come true in a way that will give back to the Lithuanian economy. The book is being printed in Lithuania, and the extra funds that come in will go to our Lithuanian art director, Marius Žalneravičius.
I hope you’ll take a minute to check out the fundraiser. If you like what you see, you can also pre-order your copy through this campaign and get some special rewards as an extra bonus!
Thanks!
~ Donna
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* Not to mention lots of language study, leading up to and during the project.
More from Deb: I signed on early at Pubslush to get one of the first copies of Lithuanian Knitting. This is going to be a very cool book that I’ve been following and supporting since it was a vague dream. If you go to the Pubslush page, you can see Donna’s video and hear some snippets of Lithuanian music and see preliminary pages—well worth the 4 minutes.
There are more posts in the book's blog tour here. Felicity Ford's post has a photo of Lithuanian coarse-wool sheep.
Late last year I received an e-mail message that I answered personally, but I haven’t had time for blogging in a while (as some may have noticed), so this inquiry and my response didn’t get shared. This morning on Twitter I was asked for information on cruelty in shearing, which led me to find my previous blog post on the topic and to pull out that December 2014 message and my response to share here. I was going to write a blog post this morning on a different topic. Perhaps I’ll have time early next week to get to that one.
Hello Deb,
I just came across an older blog of yours where you fail to expose the horrors of wool! Now that we know how horrific it actually is for the sheep, I wish you would update the inaccurate information stated there.
Here is an extremely educational link from PETA!
Thank you,
CL
My response:
Thanks so much for caring about the sheep, C. I am working (hard) to support the NON-cruel collaboration between humans and sheep—in direct opposition to the highly industrial practices that are being exposed by PETA. The raising of animals for wool in small, well-managed flocks does not involve *any* of the activities in that article, with which I am all too familiar. And shearing doesn’t have to be any more “cruel” than a haircut, when done with skill. I’d invite you to explore the differences between the types of shearing equipment and the techniques of using it in order to understand this.
As another example, mulesing applies only to specific breeds bred in specific ways (large flocks) within specific environments. It is, fortunately, being eliminated from husbandry practices. The difficulty is that the problem for which it is the cure (flystrike) is worse than the mulesing. In my opinion, the answer is to raise different breeds in smaller flocks, chosen to suit the environment.
And so on.
My blog is not a place where I choose to engage in the extended discussions of these topics that are necessary to cover them adequately. Those are matters for longer-form consideration and writing. The primary goal of my work through the blog is to support the people who are caring for animals responsibly, in part by helping create a more robust market for cruelty-free wools. That involves helping crafters sidestep the vast majority of manufactured fibers and go direct to the source, using their own hands to prepare and use fibers from carefully raised animals to make textiles that will last for decades, if not generations.
I agree with you (and PETA) that large-scale, industrial production harms animals, humans, and the planet. I do not agree with you or PETA that all sheep (and domesticated animals) are treated cruelly and thus should be eliminated from the biosphere—which is the logical result of following the PETA point of view to its end. Humans have domesticated some animals and have an ongoing responsibility to treat them with great care. In my personal case, that involves (1) vegetarianism (of many decades’ standing) and (2) educating people about wool and sheep in ways that foster respect, gentle husbandry, and the conservation of genetic diversity.
I would also add some notes on statements in the final paragraph of PETA’s article. The first statement is this: "No amount of fluff can hide the fact that anyone who buys wool supports a cruel and bloody industry.” I would agree that anyone who buys wool without knowing where and how it was grown might be supporting practices that we need to eliminate (“might be supporting” because it’s possible to have purchased well-sourced fibers and not be aware that that’s what they are; if you’re not paying attention, then you wouldn’t know). The second statement is this: "There are plenty of durable, stylish, and warm fabrics available that aren’t made from wool or animal skins.” That’s true; yet many of those fabrics depend heavily on the petrochemical industry for both the materials and their processing, and as a result they produce huge amounts of pollution and economic and social instability, even wars. Far better, I think, to be fully conscious of and to mend our relationships with sheep, and to move away from the throwaway culture that has led to industrial-scale production of all fibers.
For a fuller example of what I think about these topics and what we can do about them as individuals, please see the following blog post: http://independentstitch.typepad.com/the_independent_stitch/2011/04/is-using-wool-cruel.html
With best wishes,
Deb Robson
EDITED March 7, 2015 to add: Felicity Ford's KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook is now one of the wonderful books (including Kate Davies' and Elizabeth Lovick's and more) available in the U.S. from Meg Swansen's Schoolhouse Press. I'll link here to the "new books" page where you can currently find them. Thanks to M.C. for letting me know.
Sorry there's been such a gap in posts. I've been washing fiber and writing up information about sheep and llamas. I'll be back.
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Having met Felicity Ford and also watched her in action at Shetland Wool Week last fall, I was predisposed to like the book that she had just embarked on making. That book has just become available (in both print and electronic formats). Backing Felicity’s Kickstarter for the book didn't require any thought at all. I knew what she would make would be worthwhile, and worth having, because Felicity is one of the most creative and intelligent people I’ve ever met (plus one of the most unpretentious).
While I have access to a bunch of high-quality photos related to the book project, I’m going to season this post with photos I’ve taken. Trust me that every production value in Felicity's project is top-notch. The reason I want to use my photos is to represent the way my conversations with Felicity—in person and now in her book—have, even when tangentially experienced, enriched the light and color and ideas in my life.
I knew I’d like The KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook. I didn’t expect to love it and to be inclined to take it everywhere with me.
The printed book has a generous but not bulky page size; has been printed on high-quality paper; and is slim enough to tuck into my backpack next to my computer (the comparatively small backpack already containing that computer, the projector, the cables, my books, travel food and utensils, my 3-1-1 bag, and a novel). When I began to dip into it, I discovered that it is also, Tardis-like, bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, and it provided me with enjoyable reading and discoveries while I traveled—and because I was teaching for the two-week trip, I only had a few moments in which to sample a few of the pages.
Nonetheless, it influenced how I went through my days.
One of the things the book is about is paying attention to what’s around us, and what we care about.
I practice this anyway (practice, which means improvement is always possible), and Felicity’s book tweaked my viewpoint in ways that I enjoyed. During teaching weeks, I like to take solo walks to refresh myself and my thoughts, preferably in quiet places full of plants and animals and views. Often I take photos. As I took this week’s walks, I found myself taking different photos than usual, and thinking differently about how I might use those images not as ends in themselves or simple aids to paying attention but as inspiration for Fair Isle–style knitting.
One or two pages before bed gave me plenty to ponder overnight and on the next day’s hike. I could actually spend a week, or a month, on every cluster of concepts. Pacing can fit the available contours of time. There’s lots here: it’s clearly and concisely presented. On pages that I found myself wanting to linger over.
Another thing Felicity encourages is trying things, and making mistakes—those being (as many of us have discovered repeatedly) good ways to learn what works.
The intent of the book is to help us take things we love and learn enough about their shapes and colors, and about interpretation, to use those treasures as inspiration for knitting. Step by step, she leads us through the process, with philosophy and progressive examples, in ways that I’m guessing even the most tentative designer (or not-yet-designer) will find supportive and effective.
Colo(u)r. I have to mention color because many people find it intimidating. The way Felicity works with color here, and shows the reader her process in detail, will be a blessing to many.
Here’s what just carrying the book around with me last week and reading a few pages at night produced in my life:
As I was pulling those photos, I found some others on the computer that also seem to warrant contemplation. Here's just one, from Iceland. It would be interesting to extract some patterns and colors from this and see what happened.
Now, some of those just might get turned into knitting concepts that would let me wear one of my favorite places even when I’m elsewhere. . . .
Can I give this book ten stars on a five-star scale? Well, I do.
For a glimpse of Felicity’s personality and of the book, check out the Kickstarter page and video. To order it, here’s the place.
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Post written at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Please excuse any typos.
I’ve gotten swept away in preparations for the two Shetland-wool-specific retreats that I’ll be facilitating in the San Juan Islands of Washington State during the first two weeks in November. There’s a lot to do: the fact that I enjoy the activities doesn’t shorten the hours required to complete all the related tasks. Fortunately I have help this year with a number of the administrative details, so I can focus on the wools and the plan and the written materials.
Nonetheless, the intervals between my blog posts have gotten stretched out again.
Here’s what I think will be a quick post, about some of the yarns and fibers that I “met” during my recent travels in Iceland and Shetland.
First, it’s generally my practice to acquire natural-colored skeins of representative yarns for sampling and the archives. One of these excursions, however, involves COLOR! Brace yourself. Second, I haven’t swatched up everything that I obtained to sample, and I didn’t get “one of everything,” either. I only packed home things that posed the most intriguing questions or possibilities.
Icelandic
When the participants in the North Atlantic Native Sheep & Wool Conference toured the Ístex factory in Iceland, several of us asked repeatedly whether the Einband, or laceweight yarn, was spun from the same fiber mix as the other all-Icelandic-wool yarns, like Léttlopi, Álafasslopi, Bulkylopi, and the unspun Plötulopi. It feels a good deal coarser. We were equally repeatedly assured that it was spun from identical wool, and that it would soften up when washed.
We all found that a bit hard to believe. So of course I bought a skein and I ran the yarn through my usual series of tests: an approximately 4-inch (10cm) square in stockinette, followed by an approximately 6-inch (15-cm) square in a pattern stitch.
I washed them.
The results, although not extremely soft, were indeed a good deal softer than I had any reason to expect. Veering from my standard practice, I knitted two small stockinette swatches that I left unwashed and attached to the corners of the “real” swatches for ongoing tactile comparison.
Even with the mix of under- and outercoats, and the subsequent slightly hairy surface, stitch definition is quite clear in the comparatively complex Japanese pattern that I decided would be interesting to try out.
(Japanese pattern book, I think the one with 300 patterns, must go look it up. #164.)
I also purchased, but have not yet spun, a carded batt of Icelandic Leadersheep wool. This is because I liked the color, and I like the Leadersheep. A lot. (Here’s a 9-minute video. If that's not enough, part 2 has another 9 minutes.)
Looking forward to this one.
I’ve already shared the Plötulopi swatches.
Greenlandic
No, I didn’t go to Greenland, but the Greenlanders came to Iceland for the conference and brought wool with them. Greenlandic sheep are closely related to Icelandic sheep, because that’s where a lot of their bloodlines originated.
.
Nice yarn, great texture, lofty, promising durability.
My patterned swatch. . . .
(Barbara Walker 2, German Herringbone Rib, p. 124.)
And then I got my copy of Cat Bordhi’s new Versatildes e-book, and what was handiest was the Greenlandic yarn and appropriate needles, so I made a tiny-tilde swatch from it, too.
I watched this book germinate and grow and am glad to now have a copy on my hard drive to play with further.
Shetland
Jamieson & Smith in Shetland has a new yarn, which is a worsted-spun aran-weight. They’ve previously had a woolen-spun yarn in this weight. It may be a little confusing for a while that there are two J&S aran yarns, spun from differently prepared fibers, but I’m glad they’re giving us options—especially worsted-spun ones.
I like this new yarn a lot. The colors relate to those in the worsted-spun fingering-weight Heritage yarns.
The introductory swatch, the stockinette one, is in one of the packets I posted back, but not one with fleece in it that needed to be washed so it hasn’t surfaced yet (first things first). But I took a photo of it in transit. I think. I don’t recognize that background. It does match the one below, so . . . even though the color doesn’t quite match, this is it. . . .
Here’s where I played with it in pattern, because I did this after I got home.
(Barbara Walker 1, Twin Leaf Lace, p. 210b.)
Now. Thinking about woolen-spun and worsted-spun, I decided on a demonstration project, replacing color alternations with yarn alternations. I would have worked with woolen- and worsted-spun natural white fingering-weight yarn except that the whites didn’t quite match. Ella Gordon at Jamieson & Smith helped me get two greens that came in the same color and I began my experiment, using Martina Behm’s “Leftie" pattern. (“Leftie” is a fun pattern. I’m knitting it now with color contrasts out of Wensleydale. It’s the right combination of interesting-but-not-too-interesting that’s ideal for travel knitting. Thanks to Sarah Anderson for demonstrating its value in this regard while we were teaching at Fibre-East.)
That photo is why I know this is all Shetland yarn, including the image above of the worsted-spun aran. Of the two green balls, the one with the beige band is the worsted-spun and the one with the white band is woolen.
While it was possible to see the distinctions between the two yarns, I wasn’t getting exactly the effect that I wanted.
So I altered the pattern slightly, making the leaf sections (contrasting color in the original pattern) a similar width to the intermediary sections, and started over. The effect shows up most clearly when the shawl is held up to the light, but in person you can see and feel the subtle differences even without backlighting.
I finished the woolen/worsted shawl while I was in Iceland and took the photo just above with the unblocked fabric held up against the window of the apartment where a group of us stayed in Reykjavik. It’s blocked now, and I’ll post a photo of it some month (or year), but right now it’s probably buried under some of the multi-dozen fleeces I’m sorting, labeling, washing, and preparing to transport to Friday Harbor, Washington.
And it’s time to get back to that work.
But . . . if you haven’t encountered Barb Parry’s book, Adventures in Yarn Farming, it’s delightful. I’ve had it for a while but only read it once I got home.
For reasons why the blog posts are getting farther apart, check out my newsletter (of which there will be a new release soon, but this blog post comes first).
Up over the top
After learning more about winter housing of sheep, we got back into our mountain-ready bus and went up over the Icelandic Highlands. There are reservoirs providing hydroelectric power, and we were told there are also mountains and glaciers and gorgeous views.
We made what passed for a lunch stop at Hveravellir, a well-known geothermal area between the two largest glaciers in Iceland, Langjökull and Hofsjökull.
Apparently this was not an appropriate place for a busload of people to make a mid-route stop. I’m sure the folks at Hveravellir are nice enough on a normal basis, but our welcome was not warm and we ate in the rain. Ólafur assured us this was not typical of Icelandic hospitality. I walked over to take a look at some of the hot springs, although I didn’t venture out to see the farther areas. I was already coming down with a bit of a cold and didn't want to push my luck.
The map two images back shows the tip of the Langjökull, the larger portion of which appears below. After lunch we drove south along the road that skirts its eastern edge.
After a lot of this. . . .
and this. . . .
. . . beautiful in a moonscape sort of way (and, amazingly, inhabited at this season by occasional sheep), we arrived at a small white building with a sign on it, not knowing what to expect except that Ólafur said that they would be glad to see us, and would have some refreshments for us. Both of those sounded appealing.
Þingborg
Written Icelandic retains two ancient characters that aren’t familiar to people accustomed to most western European alphabets: eð or eth (uppercase Đ, lowercase ð), which also is used in Faroese, and þorn or thorn (Þþ), not used in any other modern language. Although their pronunciations are slightly different when Icelanders say words using them, someone new to the language doesn’t hear much difference, putting a variant of “th” in place of both (there’s also a touch of “d” in the ð). This can be handy to know when looking for names involving eð or þorn on a keyboard that doesn’t make producing those symbols easy: type in "th."
Thus the website for Þingborg can be found by seeking Thingborg, and the pronunciation is not far off from that.
So: What was this place we were coming to, cold and a bit hungry and wet and having crossed a wide expanse of the moon?
Wool, it said—a friendly word.
Another sign around back:
We went through a small door into the lower level of what used to be a school, and found smiling women welcoming us with a table with a selection of cheeses and breads and beverages: quite the contrast to Hveravellir.
After we nibbled and chatted and warmed up a bit, someone among us discovered that if we climbed up a short flight of stairs, went through a medium-sized workspace, and down another half-flight, there was a shop.
Keep in mind that we had already seen superb Icelandic fiber-related shops, including the Handknitting Association of Iceland (in Reykjavik) and Ullarselið (in Hvanneyri). This was the end of the conference. We were tired. We may have been just a bit overloaded and jaded.
But what we walked into woke us up all over again.
The building used to be a school, but in 1990 the school moved to a new building and the following year a group started using the space for something knitters and spinners from other parts of the world would recognize as informal guild meetings. Now the structure houses workshops, a small gallery-like area (creatively manifested hats! in the front rooms, not for sale), meeting rooms, a dye studio, and the shop (finished goods and yarns at eye level, but look under the tables for carders, spinning wheels, and other tools—no small selection, all neatly boxed and ready to be carried off to new homes).
Did I need more wool? I did not—but I left with some yarn, and a small cake of plötulópi (unspun roving) which did not feel quite the same as the version I’d picked up at Ullarselið. (It wasn’t—I’ll explain why in a moment and offer a brief comparison of the two.)
The yarn? I struggled. And I yielded.
I’m not entirely sure what I’ll make with these, but with those colors . . . well, they’re just too beautiful. Yes, when I stray from the naturals of my studies, I find myself fingering the blues quite often. Both skeins were made by Dóra Óskar. The top one is indigo-dyed, and if the bottom one’s dyestuff has been identified it’s in Icelandic and I don’t know, but it’s been overdyed on a mix of light and dark fibers.
I’m open to suggestions on how to use these skeins. Yardage wasn’t on the labels, but I counted about 231 yards (211m) of the indigo and 208 yards (190m) of the variegated. Singles, probably about fingering weight ("4-ply" singles, which always seems as weird to me as calling a yarn worsted weight).
Our adventure at Þingborg continued with more random discoveries. After we’d been there a while, someone asked, “Have you seen upstairs?” Nope . . . so I made my way up another narrow staircase and found a magical room where part of the reason for the difference between Ístex plötulópi and Þingborg plötulópi became apparent. They’re produced on different machines (as it turns out, the fiber is selected and washed a bit differently, too).
I’m pretty sure this is some of Pat Green’s equipment for carding and making pencil roving. That’s his logo on the side of the drum at lower left, and the style (and color) of the machinery look like his. You won’t find information on his cottage-industry tools on his website, and shipping would be a serious challenge, but this room contains just the right tools for the jobs they do and they’re being put to very good use.
The story starts here. . . .
And goes along to about here. . . .
With intermediate steps that I found equally fascinating, but others might not, at least not without the machine present in its entirety so the pieces make sense (instead of being just a series of snapshots).
Next, however, is the piece that might interest more of us. On the left is the plate of plötulópi (unspun roving) from Ístex and on the right is what I got at Þingborg, Yes, they both come in colors, but for my demonstration swatches I cut out the variable of color and pick natural white or as close to it as I can get (which explains the thrill of breaking out of the box with the two dyed skeins shown above).
They are both splendid fiber preps that I would happily use. The differences are subtle. Let's look at what they are, and why they exist.
Icelandic wool is bulk-washed at Blönduós, in northern Iceland. That’s true for the fibers that end up in both of these materials. What’s different is that Ístex wool is processed in much larger lots. During a slow time at the plant, the Þingborg folks bring in specially selected fleeces and use the same equipment, with the help of the normal professionals who operate it, but a different type of scouring solution. The Þingborg plate had already been wound doubled (which is the way plötulópi is often used). The Ístex version was wound as a single strand, although I wound off a doubled portion for my comparison swatches.
What differences did I perceive?
In knitting, the unspun Þingborg wool was slightly less fragile than the Ístex wool. The fibers were slightly longer. (Neither, of course, is held together by twist.)
They worked up at almost the same gauge; the widths of the swatches are identical, and the Þingborg swatch (on the left) is exactly one row shorter than the Ístex swatch (on the right)—but there are 19 rows in its stockinette area to 20 rows in the other’s. (I eyeball my swatch lengths, instead of counting.) Both combine the two coats of the fleeces; the Þingborg swatch is slightly softer (very marginal: they are both delightful). The Þingborg stitches are not quite as bulky or dense as the Ístex ones, the fabric has a touch more luster, and it drapes more. Hmmm . . . I might be able to demo that. . . .
Istex:
Þingborg:
You could probably work up the Þingborg fiber at a slightly tighter gauge, but I like the fabric as it is and wouldn’t want to.
On the other hand, the Ístex swatch has a bulkier hand, is slightly whiter (the Þingborg has a very subtle ivory cast, only evident when it’s right next to the Ístex), and is more even.
Þingborg:
Which would I want to knit with most?
BOTH! For different reasons.
Yet at first glance, they’re identical, except for the size of the plate and the fact that one has been wound with two strands together (Þingborg) and one is a single strand.
Now I need to finish putting together something that resembles a newsletter—and wash more Shetland fleeces. The two Shetland-focus spinning retreats are starting in a month, and I have a significant amount of prep done—and more to be accomplished. Four more fleeces arrived yesterday and I need to get them into the bathtub.
{Note: Because the first Shetland-wools retreat was full to overflowing, we added a second one, November 2 to 7 (arrive November 2, retreat November 3 to 6, depart November 7). They're both in the San Juan Islands, in Washington state. There are still some spaces available in the additional retreat. (Background information is here; questions? check in with jess at drobson dot info—I'm washing and packing wool and prepping handouts.) Given what it takes to put together an all-Shetlands event like this, it's not something that will likely come along again. I might do another, but right now I think this is it. Reasons to be explained in that newsletter I mentioned. I'm having a blast getting ready—and it's taking months, and thousands of miles, to do it right. . . . }
After Icelandic sheep are brought down from the mountains, those that will be wintered-over spend some time in pastures closer to the farms. Counts of Icelandic sheep are always given in terms of the winter flock, and thus do not include the lambs (that number would be almost three times as large, because many Icelandic ewes have twins—the breed’s lambing rate is 170 to 180%, or higher). Wintered-over flocks range in the hundreds up to a thousand or so sheep.
So: keeping sheep inside—how does that happen? As part of the North Atlantic Native Sheep and Wool Conference, we had the opportunity to see one of the largest and most modern winter-housing facilities, constructed several years ago by a farmer named Christian. As with many of the events, catching folks’ names was difficult. While I got many questions answered there, I have even more now—and if anyone who is reading this was there and wants to supplement or correct what I'm saying, you're most welcome to do so!
Note the round, plastic-wrapped hay bales to the left in the photo. More on those later (but a one-minute YouTube video of making them here: six layers of plastic, we were told, wrapped green, allowed to ferment slightly into haylage).
Ólafur Dýrmundsson (left) translated our questions and Christian’s responses.
The inside of the building has been set up for the comfort of both sheep and humans. It’s quite a contrast from the half-year that the flock spends in the mountains! And I think it's amazing that the sheep can adapt to the dramatically different living situations.
Established areas accommodate the bulk of the ewes (larger pens along the righthand side), the older ewes or others that need extra attention (the smaller pens at the right front), and other groups. The left side (mostly out of the photo, to the left of the walkway) is a long run, uninterrupted by barriers.
Here’s a view of the standard pens, with feeding bins at the rate of one for every two pens. The slotted floors allow manure to drop through to an open area beneath the building, but the openings are small enough that even the lambs’ feet can’t get caught after they're born here in the spring.
Mating and lambing do take place in this facility. Christian is in the minority among Icelandic farmers in that he manages his breeding the old-fashioned way: with rams. Most Icelandic sheep reproduction takes place through artificial insemination. (For more details on this topic than most of us need in daily life, here's a PDF of one of Ólafur's papers; suffice it to say that our primary guide on these travels is one of the top experts, if not the top expert, on sheep in Iceland.) Christian buys rams from the few locations where that’s permissible, because they are certified to be disease-free. He allocates one ram to each of the main pens (just during the breeding season; note that the barriers between pens are solid, which in part is to help keep the rams from seeing and being competitive with each other).
Here’s an adjustable feeding bin: the height can be changed with the boards along the sides, and the width with the rails. Each can hold a large round bale of hay (about 500 pounds, although the weight of a bale varies depending on what's in it), and the adjustments allow the sheep monitored access to the food, so they don’t get too much or too little. If I’m remembering correctly, Christian goes through 1,000 bales in a winter.
The design includes rails overhead for the transport of those bales of hay to the farthest reaches. A tractor can come in through the big door and offload bales. You can see two of the grippers (like huge calipers) that are used to lift bales—one is against the wall at the end of the orange rail on the righthand side, and once you recognize its shape you can see a second silhouetted against the large door, suspended from the center rail.
Sheep that need additional attention are housed close to where the humans spend the most time (by the door where the hay comes in).
The set-up has been devised to provide effective ventilation; temperature control; and more.
Because the sheep were just about to come down from the mountains, the group had access to the whole structure and examined it in detail, with some folks taking measurements.
The new system is not perfect. It has made many major chores easier, but as with everything in life, changes in one part of an ecosystem produce changes in other parts. Christian said that there are some downsides, although they are outweighed by the benefits. One complication is that the sheep experience a few more lambing problems than they did when they were housed in the older, smaller units, because in that situation the ewes could occasionally get outside during the winter and have a different type of exercise. Of course, they get serious workouts when they go to the common grazing areas, during the entire summer, and on the return trip in the fall. I didn't think to ask whether, or how, the sheep might get in shape for the journey before undertaking it in the spring! I would guess that they are pastured for a while before they set out. On the positive side, feeding and breeding are a lot easier to manage now, and Christian can keep a close eye on every sheep.
Building this facility involved huge investments of thought, time, and money. It's state-of-the-art for winter housing of sheep in an environment noted for severe winter storms. ("The lowest winter temperatures in northern Iceland and the highlands are generally in the range -25 to -30°C [-13 to -22°F], with -39.7°C [-39.5°F] the lowest temperature ever recorded." That quote is from the link in this paragraph—but temperatures only tell part of the weather story.)
Christian’s next chore before the arrival of the sheep was to go underneath the building with his tractor and remove last year’s manure (which will be used as fertilizer) in preparation for the start of this year’s collection, and then to go bring the sheep down from the high common grazing.
Our next chore was to get back on the bus.
After our visit to Ístex, we drove north to Hvanneyri and the Agricultural University of Iceland (AUI), which combines strong research with a mission of teaching. Thanks to Google for the map.
Through this year's North Atlantic Native Sheep and Wool Conference, I was delighted to be able to meet Emma Eyþórsdóttir, who is on the university faculty, has written a number of papers pertinent to my research, and has been kind enough to guide me to resources I wasn’t able to obtain through normal channels.
AUI appears to be one solid reason that a number of young people are going into farming in Iceland, and are being well prepared to do so.
During part of our time there, the sky cleared up enough for us to appreciate the setting. It also rained a bit, and the mountains played hide-and-seek.
The campus in Hvanneyri is also the site of Ullarselið, a wool center with a shop and workshops.
Those of us who were itching to cast on with the wool we’d been given a couple of hours earlier at Ístex found knitting needles, along with a selection of Ístex and other yarns, which hadn’t been available for sale at the factory. Pattern books, too. That was all on one side of the hallway. On the other side, we discovered a big room graciously stuffed with finished textile goods: sweaters, mittens, kits containing specially dyed wool (tempting), and other delights.
The packaging for purchases consisted of re-purposed newspapers, with edges reinforced and seams joined by zigzag machine-stitching.
I bought test balls of several Ístex yarns. The newspaper container held together for most of the day: for normal travel, it would have been ingeniously fine. For the rather rough treatment that our travels involved, it wasn’t sturdy enough. Fortunately, I had a lightweight shopping bag with me to catch the contents.
The agricultural museum was in the process of being moved from the building that houses Ullarselið to another structure nearby, so some exhibits were in place, some were missing, and none had multilingual interpretive signs (most places we visited did). Fortunately, our group consisted of people who could figure out what they were looking at, and it was fun to be in the middle of so many solvable mysteries. The topics included all types of agricultural history, but of course we focused on the textile-related items.
This motorized device was made to wind yarn onto spools. (The skein winder/swift underneath needs to be pivoted outside the frame in order to work.)
The abundance of braided utilitarian cords would have been overlooked by most viewers.
Finding them turned into a bit of a treasure hunt.
(And what’s that fiber? There are hints later in this post.)
Some time I’ll gather all the spinning wheel photos that I took during my time in Iceland: tremendous variety and quantity, although only one in this particular museum (some may have been moved already).
I want a box like this to keep my ready-to-spin wool in. (If I currently had a cat, I'd be well aware that it is exactly cat-nap sized. Which could be a plus or a minus.)
I also like the style of lazy kate, similar to those found in Shetland—I’ll show a bunch of Icelandic ones in a later post. There were many, many at another museum.
The conference group gathered in a former barn for a meal (soup, which I’m told was very good—not vegetarian; plus excellent bread and cheese; and coffee), a few welcoming talks. . . .
. . . and a musical interlude.
Those guys had senses of humor, and they were also terrifically talented performers with a lot of experience working together. If they’d had CDs, they would have been at risk of selling out. I’m not exactly sure who they were. One thing that was missing from many of the presentations during the week was the people’s names! (This happened with a number of the speakers, too.) Note the sweaters, of course. . . . Icelanders do wear Icelandic sweaters: practical and beautiful.
This line-up of tractors resulted in an extended discussion among the folks on the bus, some of whom were familiar with every model, and why and how the designs had evolved. These are all, of course, historic tools now (except that some of them still chug along on particular farms).
Because AUI covers all agricultural topics, these horses make their home on campus.
Icelandic horses share some history—and some of the common grazing areas—with Icelandic sheep.
Two more images from that day when we drove from Reykjavik to Blönduós, with stops at Ístex and AUI:
At home, we’d be worried that billowing white clouds like that indicated a wildfire. In Iceland, however, that’s steam, not smoke. It’s easier to find sources of hot water than of cold. Natural hot water is used to heat homes. (Sorry for the tilt of the photo: taken from the bus, and I’m still not up to speed with the hardware/software changeovers that happened just before I left on this trip; on the old system, I knew how to straighten horizon lines without having to go through about ten steps, and some day I’ll know how to do it on this system as well.)
Like many of the mixed-weather days we experienced, this one produced rainbows.
I’m taking our Icelandic adventures a bit out of order, in order to relate them logically to each other. This post concerns the trip to Iceland’s spinning mill, which was the first place our North Atlantic Native Sheep and Wools Conference bus stopped after we left Reykjavik together. The mill is only about fifteen minutes from the city.
After shearing, Icelandic wool is scoured in Blönduós, in the northwest. Blönduós was our primary base of operations for the conference, although we didn’t arrive there until late in the night of that first day together. The scouring facility wasn’t on our itinerary because we were in Blönduós before the year's shearing commenced.
Once the wool is clean, it is transferred to Ístex, located in Mosfellsbaer. Ístex was formed in 1991 to salvage the capacity previously provided by Álafoss of Iceland, which was going down the tubes in the late 1980s. Farmers and other shareholders stepped in to keep the Icelandic wool industry going. The old factory buildings within the town are now artists’ studios and galleries. We visited the modern facility in an industrial park.
The warm welcome we received included a brief slide show about Icelandic wool. I especially enjoyed the photo of the suppliers: credit where credit is due.
As we saw later in our trip, sheep are located throughout Iceland, including in some unlikely-looking environments.
Lambswool is kept separate from adult fleeces, as are solid natural-colored fleeces, and the white adult fleeces are divided into two grades. The grade one is spun in Iceland, and the grade two is sold out of the country as carpet wool. Although grade one is worth more to the farmers than grade two, it can be a challenge to get the grading done appropriately. There are no “official” wool graders.
So the clean wool arrives from Blönduós.
The washed bulk fiber combines the two types of wool that are characteristic of Icelandic fleeces, one shorter and softer (called þel or thel) and the other longer, sturdier, and more lustrous (called tog). These are processed together at Ístex.
Isn’t that lovely?
The lambswool tends to be softer and whiter than the adult fleeces—although as I mentioned in a previous post, it’s the fall shearings that are used for these yarns, because they are longer, cleaner, and whiter than the spring shearings. We were told that because of the clarity of its color, the lambswool is used primarily in the white rovings and yarns—so if you want the softest possible yarn from their output, you’ll select the white (and dye it yourself, if you want colors).
Ístex begins by dyeing the colors that it will need in huge vats. The dye area was amazingly clean (the whole factory was).
The colors that come out the other end of the factory as yarn are characteristically made from blends of colors—that’s what makes them so interesting. The blending process starts with big clumps of the components.
They are fed through a variety of equipment that gradually tosses the colors together.
The fibers tumble through a variety of blowers and conveyor belts and bins.
Finally, they’re pretty well mixed.
Next they go to the carding equipment—and yes, we’ve changed colors. Each part of the plant was processing a different color run. The carding section was working black.
I’ve seen a lot of mills at this point, and am intrigued by the differences in the way the same types of actions are managed. This plant had a lot of equipment with sections made of wooden slats (those sections move the fiber from one place to another). Also, the sheets of partially carded fiber that the following machine laid down were wider and thicker than I’ve seen in other places, and the equipment made a cool zigzag impression on the wool.
At the end of the carding there’s what is sometimes called pencil roving—and in Icelandic wool, fiber at this stage of processing becomes the end product that is sold as plötulopi, which can be knitted in that unspun form. Yes, it pulls apart easily because there’s no twist holding it together, but because of the fibers’ length the simple structure of the knit stitches is adequate to make it stable in a finished garment.
I’ve got a plötulopi photo, but it will need to go into another post. This post has already been delayed for two days while I try to find time to get that photo off my camera and into place here. I don’t have time today, either—!
Most of the roving does go on to the next process, which is spinning.
Cones of yarn are, to me, one of life’s delights. There’s enough there to really do something with. Cones are mostly sold to weavers.
For knitters, though, balls of yarn are the standard put-up for the lopi yarns, and skeins are the intermediate step.
Bright pink yarn was being turned into balls on the day we were there, and people who hang out in yarn shops know that there are a lot of different types of mechanically produced balls. The lopi balls are distinctive, and I saw how they get made.
This is the nifty machine that does the job. The cores around which the yarn is wound lie horizontally (I’ve seen a lot in other mills that were vertical). The end of a strand is caught on each core.
Wrapping begins.
And continues.
Until there’s a nice, fat ball.
These are ejected from the cores and picked up by little arms from above that transport them. . . .
. . . . and drop them into cradles.
This was fun: then a correctly shaped tool comes down and gives each ball a little squeeze.
I don’t think the label went on until the balls were inside that next area (to the right in the photo below) that I couldn’t see very well. But by the time the balls were in the clear box on the left of that photo, they did have their bands in place. Sorry some of this is mysterious: the x-ray vision on my camera wasn’t working.
The next bit of machinery packed the balls, ten at a time, in plastic bags, sealed them, and added an external label.
Packs went into boxes, which in turn were transferred to the warehouse.
The yarns from Icelandic wool that come out of the mill are all singles, in varying weights. They are:
At the end of our visit, our hosts presented each of us with what has to be one of the best souvenirs of the entire trip.
Before, during, and after our trip, the Bárðarbunga volcano was (and still is) acting up. Therefore shortly before our arrival the folks at Ístex designed a pattern for commemorative mittens and packed copies up with the yarn we would need to make them.
A stop later that same day had knitting needles, which sold out of size 4.5mm in a flash. (This was a group of sheep-interested people and not specifically knitters, but a remarkably high proportion of the recipients of the project bag were casting on by the end of the day. I knit loosely, so I dropped down a size and didn't need to compete for the specified needles.)
I got a cuff worked, but discovered that knitting in a bus when I’m seated in a position where I can’t move my left arm very much may be the only situation (other than too much time at the keyboard) that causes my hands to hurt. We did celebrate someone else’s finished pair during one of our times on the bus, and I’m sure many others have been completed since. Mine will come along as travel knitting this fall.
Thanks to Ístex for a terrific start to our journeys around the world of Icelandic sheep and wool!