Woolly news

It is Wovember and the Wovember site is putting out some excellent stories, facts and photos about sheep and wool every day. I particularly loved this hilarious post about the antics of several tups. Perhaps it is only hilarious to other sheep owners but I think it really describes some of the ridiculousness that comes with owning any animals. And how can you not love an enormous ram called Bollocks? We should start a Bollocks fan club. Except that might go very wrong very fast with the internets being what it is. 

I will have an article in Wovember later in the month - the story of making our yarn and what's been behind that over the last few years.

In other very exciting news there is a new Irish online magazine coming out this month - Olann and. Olann is Irish for wool and it will promote Irish craft, in particular fibre crafts - knitting, spinning, crochet, weaving and dyeing. I will have a regular piece in the magazine - a diary about the trials and tribulations of keeping a small flock of sheep from a knitters perspective. I'm really looking forward to the magazine - it is the first of its kind and I would really love to see this project thrive! 

The WOOL!!!

Hello folks, excuse the silence about these parts, I've had computer trouble which I'm hoping is sorted out now. Life has been busy with little ones and woolly ones and feathered ones and hairy ones, but the BIG NEWS round here is we decided to send our fleeces off to be spun into yarn!

Myself and the wonderful Judit from Harmony Farm have combined our fleeces to give us enough to spin two batches of yarn.  Our sheep are the daughters and grandchildren of her lovely Shetland ladies so they all have very similar fleeces. We have been carefully sorting through them all and picking out only the very finest fleeces to spin.

We have sent the wool to the very patient and helpful Diarmuid of STwist Yarns (I think I must have sent him a hundred emails already!) who is washing the wool in Tipperary as I type, and getting it all ready to be sent off to be carded and spun.

Here are the sheep, ready to head off to be shorn early in the summer. Paul is still wearing his sheep cover. 

The lovely thing about this project has been its small scale and the familiarity we have with our animals. When sending the fleece off I took careful notes on whose fleeces were sent so we will have a list of all the sheep in each finished yarn.

There will be a white yarn and a grey yarn.

It was a surprise to me to realise that we didn't have enough dark fleece for an (almost) black yarn. I hadn't realised quite how grey our ladies had become! But hopefully we will have enough next year to replicate the picture below in knitting!

But for now, the anticipation is building! I still can't quite believe it! We are going to have YARN!!!!!!!

Yarn miles and traceability

As shearing approaches I am looking at several bags of fleece from last year and wondering exactly when I will have time to spin this enormous pile of wool before I am confronted with even larger bags of fleece from this year’s clip. I am dreaming of having it spun into yarn by machine, and researching the possibilities.

There is nowhere in Ireland for the small farmer to have yarn spun from fleece so it would need to be sent at least as far as the UK for processing. And it would be expensive. I am looking into selling small amounts of the spun yarn to help fund the project and wondering would the interest be there for buying it. More on that another time. (Though the excitement of having mill-spun yarn to play with is keeping me awake at night. As well as the 10 month old baby of course…)

On the subject of local yarn and yarn miles I read a post by Rebecca of Needle & Spindle (a thoughtful blog and well worth a read) about local yarn. Rebecca lives in Australia and was musing on what makes a yarn local. She mentioned some local (to her) yarn companies who send their yarn to China and back to have it spun and she was adding up the yarn miles, which were significant. It got me thinking about the yarn producers in Ireland and how difficult it is to have an entirely Irish yarn – grown and processed in Ireland.

So I decided to look into how many yarn miles go into the knitting yarns produced by the bigger Irish companies and the proportion of their wool that is sourced in Ireland. It turns out to be a very complicated affair. (All calculations below are my own rough estimates.)

There are 3 large mills in Ireland producing knitting yarn. Carol Feller has written a great article on Irish woolen mills which I would recommend reading. I don't want to repeat her info here - rather to look at the miles traveled and the sources of what we term Irish yarns.

Donegal Yarns are the largest yarn producers in the country and they make several types of yarn for knitting. When I visited the factory some years back they sourced all their wool from New Zealand and Australia, though all their wool is sourced in the UK now. It is all processed in Donegal. They have begun sourcing some wool from Wicklow Cheviot sheep in Ireland but at this stage are only producing samples with that Irish wool and not knitting yarn.

Yarn miles for all their yarns: approximately 300 miles. Amount of Irish fleece: none.

Cushendale produce three types of yarn: a knitting yarn of which 75% is Irish (from Galway sheep which are the only listed native Irish breed and have fine wool) and 25% is crossbred lamb's wool from New Zealand; a 100% Irish knitting yarn from Zwartables Sheep – a project they undertook with Suzanne Crampton of Zwartables Ireland; and a Boucle mohair yarn which is a South African mohair and Australian wool blend that is spun in the UK at the moment and dyed in Kilkenny. I talked to Philip Cushen, a man very passionate about wool, who was extolling the virtues of wool produced in our climate – its elasticity primarily – and he is trying at the moment to source lamb's wool from Galway lambs to make up the last 25% of his yarn in order to produce a wholly Irish sourced yarn. Their fleece must be sent to the UK at the moment for scouring, but otherwise all production on their wool yarns is done in Kilkenny. 

Yarn miles for their standard knitting yarn: c. 12,200 miles. (This figure includes the longer journey 25% of the wool has taken from New Zealand and the much shorter journey taken by the Irish fleece.) Amount of Irish fleece: 75%. 

Yarn miles for the Zwartables yarn: c. 600 miles. Amount of Irish fleece: 100%. 

Yarn miles for the mohair yarn is c. 17,200 miles. Amount of Irish fleece: none.

Kerry Woollen Mills produce two types of knitting yarn. Their standard knitting yarn is a blend including Irish Galway fleece and imported wool from New Zealand. The percentages of each vary. The wool is scoured in Yorkshire, due to high environmental compliance standards making this too expensive for small scale operations here in Ireland. The rest of the processing is done in Ireland. Their organic yarn is sourced in Ireland from a range of different sheep breeds. Apart from scouring this yarn is processed here also.

Yarn miles for their standard yarn: c. 11,900 miles. (This includes yarn miles of both the New Zealand wool and the Irish wool.) Amount of Irish fleece: varying percentages. 

Yarn miles for the organic yarn, c.600 miles. Amount of Irish fleece: 100%.

So of the large mills (and not all are large large - Cushendale for example has only 7 employees) that leaves us with only two yarns both sourced and almost entirely produced in Ireland - Cushendales Zwartables yarn and Kerry Woollen Mills organic yarn – only 2 colours! And because of the fact that the fleece needs to be scoured in the UK, the yarn miles for these actually ends up higher than Donegal Yarn's UK sourced yarns.

There are smaller producers in Ireland – mostly small hand-spinners selling yarn locally, but also the relatively new S Twist Wool (yarn pictured above) who produce low-impact handspun and mill-spun yarn using Irish wool. There are a few shops in Dublin stocking their yarns presently.  Another woman I worked with as part of Harnessing Creativity is producing a sock kit with Irish Galway yarn - spun in the UK but wholly sourced here. (More on that when it arrives.)

As Rebecca talked about in her article – the shortest way from sheep to yarn is through your own hands – by cleaning, carding and spinning your own yarn. I am lucky enough to be someone with a very short yarn mileage – approximately 0.01 miles to my sheep from where I process my yarn. It’s a pity I cannot have it mill spun in Ireland. But even so, the UK or near Europe is not halfway across the globe. 

I wish there were more options for small yarn producers in this country. All the companies mentioned make great yarn. I use and love the yarn from all of them, and I wish obtaining marketable Irish fleece was not so difficult for them. The interesting thing is that it is available - contrary to popular belief not all Irish wool is only good for carpets - but it is difficult to obtain - for example, as mentioned above, Cushendale are looking to source Galway lamb's wool from slaughterhouses to make a 100% Irish wool, but cannot get slaughterhouses to sort the wool from other breeds yet.

I'm not sure any of our Irish sheep will reach the softness required for Donegal Yarns' Soft Donegal range which is produced from Merino wool. (Though apparently Merino sheep have been kept in Ireland and were possibly used many years back to improve the Galway breed.) But at least some of the mills in Ireland are making use of the unique qualities of our fleece to produce a great product.

However I wish there were more traceability for consumers on yarn - a label of Irish knitwear does not necessarily mean the wool is grown or processed in Ireland, merely knitted into a garment here. Likewise yarn labeling can be misleading for those who do not delve deeper. The realities of the tastes of the yarn market, (favouring softer yarn) and high production costs for small companies mean the yarn miles of Irish yarn will likely always be higher than they could be.

Does it mean these yarns are local yarns? The answer is complicated. And what is most important to you as a yarn buyer? Locally sourced raw materials? Local production of the end product? Yarn miles? Local employment? Animal welfare? Fair trade? Environmental impact? 

These are all important to me. And the longer I live on this planet, the more important it feels to tread lightly on it. To make conscious choices over the yarn I buy for my hobby feels important - which is part of the reason I now have sheep. (Unfortunately having my own source of yarn outside my door has not stopped my yarn-acquiring habit!) I would like to know the impact that the choices I make have. I just wish it wasn't so complicated.

The KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook

 My dear friend Felix has published her awesome book, the KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook, which was funded by a Kickstarter campaign she ran earlier this year. Felix has knitted a lot of incredible swatches inspired by the landscape and objects that surround her, and this is what the book will teach you how to do - to take inspiration from the things around you that mean something to you and to translate those things into a knitted format. 

 

 Some of the starting points for Felix's knitting include a walnut tree in her back garden, an old biscuit tin, brickwork in Reading where she lives and her sound recorder (my personal favourite).

 Felix's knitted swatches document her search for home, and this idea of rooting yourself in your home environment through knitting it is what I love about Felix's work. Her swatches are a record of places and things Felix loves that she has knitted into glorious colourwork patterns, some of which become sleeveless mittens and some legwarmers. They become garments full of history - representing the environment she lives in and travels through and the things that inhabit her life.

Felix has broken down her process into very easy to follow stages where she teaches the reader to really look at colour, to analyse what you are seeing and work out a way to translate it into knitting. It reminds me of learning to draw and paint in art college, and Felix's approach to knitting her world is very like that - learning to look at the things around you with fresh eyes, and creating beautiful patterns from those things. The swatches are like a sketchbook for knitters and Felix' book is all about the process of creating colourwork knitting and what you learn from that process rather than the finished result.

 It is a real workbook, a textbook for knitters, with so much practical information, so many tips and so much learning! (My favourite kind of book!) So if you are interested in knitting from the things that inspire you in your world, look no further and go and grab yourself a copy!

I talked to Felix about the process of making the book. Read on to hear all about it!

 First off Felix, congratulations on publishing the book! It’s an incredible achievement to write such a detailed tome in such a short period! How did you do it? Were there gallons of coffee and very little sleep involved?

Haha! Yes there was quite a lot of coffee and several late nights involved but on the whole working on the book was very pleasurable; I don’t like it when projects linger and grow stagnant, and the goodwill and positive energy of the Kickstarter backers really energised me to keep going with it and so that is what I did. I didn’t really want to work on anything else or think about anything else while the book was in progress. The only other thing I liked doing was gardening because being with my plants broke up long stretches of sitting at the computer and helped me to think about things in peace and quiet. I am really pleased that it worked out that way because I think the actual experiences of being in my garden helped me a lot with the Plants chapter of the book.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the structure before I began work on it and the blog tour that you were part of when the Kickstarter campaign was live helped me to understand what folks expected and wanted. The thing which seemed clearest was that breaking down the creative process into little chunks – inspiration, palettes, patterns and shading – would really help to make each step manageable. Once I had some idea how many pages each bit would take up, that gave me a word count. It was a bit of a jigsaw puzzle but once the whole shape of the book was in place, finishing the job was just a case of doing everything in bite-sized chunks rather than all at once. My wonderful partner Mark is a project manager and gave me some invaluable tips for handling the workload. His advice was to get one chapter made up right away so I could see how long it would take and to go from there. This turned out to be a super way of tackling things and once I had a chapter format to stick to, it was just a case of making the writing fit to the available page space.

The best thing about the book was the amazing team of comrades I had working on it with me; they really helped to turn my vision into an actual reality. The absolute high point was going to the printers with Nic and physically seeing the covers coming off the presses. There is something just wondrous about witnessing several months of work coming together into a final and beauteous object.

 What did you enjoy most about the process of writing the book? I wonder did the knitting become tedious or whether you managed to keep your knitting mojo throughout - and if so, how!?

I honestly did not lose mojo; in truth I became more and more engaged with the swatching process as I was working on the book, and the swatches got longer and longer and more involved as I got to know the process more. Writing about a process for others really clarifies it in your own mind, and what I love about the swatches is that – towards the end – I just felt so happy and confident with each new idea. To be honest I was a bit sad when I cast off the last swatch and have already cast on another one because I miss the process so much!

I did run out of time for knitting things, though, and was saved by my two amazing comrades Claire Weaver and Liz Ashdowne who knitted the sample pairs of fingerless mitts featured in the book. They each did an amazing job and we were able to feature the mitts in the photo shoot which would never have been possible had I not had help – there was just too much knitting to do to manage it all myself! 

The Hops Legwarmers were a big task and I did get mildly fed up when it came to weaving in all those ends, however I promised myself a tasty pint to celebrate their completion which proved a fitting and appropriate incentive! Also, who can really lose mojo when there is a pair of turbo insane beer themed legwarmers to be gained at the end of a knitting mission?

What is your favourite swatch in the book and why?

The EDDIE swatch based on my little handheld recorder is my favourite one!

In searching for patterns and colours in such an unlikely place, I ended up making something which really celebrates my personal relationship with this tool. The whole designing process somehow deepened my relationship with the recorder and made me see it in new ways. For example I like that the transport buttons worked in different greys and blacks are not entirely clear, as this reflects how the real buttons on the recorder have become worn away in time; that the glowing red RECORD button is so striking against the greys and blacks, and that this reflects the little frisson of excitement I feel when amazing sounds are being captured... 

I also like that there is a pattern in there which relates to the settings I use when I am out recording. All these details offer an expanded view of what a pattern can be and how it can relate to everyday life – patterns can be based on use and habit, for example; patterns can celebrate special moments or memories like recording a beautiful sound... working on the swatch made me crave a massive hoody with all of those ideas about sound and its capture emblazoned on it in fantastic stranded colourwork!

I also really wanted to show in the book that you don’t have to start with something typically beautiful like a sunset or a snowflake; that the most unassuming objects can contain hidden beauty and be used as an inspiration source. I feel the EDDIE swatch does that well, and I was very hopeful when writing the book that readers would possess similar objects – mass-produced consumer electronics – and that reading about my little recorder and how I used it as knitting inspiration might give them new ways of seeing those devices.

 Your brother Fergus Ford took all the incredible photos for the book - they are just beautiful. What was it like to work with a sibling?

Ferg’s real passion is Wedding Photography; he makes the most amazing films of people’s weddings and photos which really capture the feelings and atmosphere of the day.

Although that may seem a weird match for a knitting book, it’s actually perfect because Ferg’s experience with photographing weddings meant he really saw how to get emotions and textures into the photos. It was important to me that the knitting looked good and clear, but also the feeling of friendliness and invitation to knit had to be there and I think he has captured that really well. I especially like the photos of me holding up a finished swatch – I hope every knitter can relate to the feeling of pride and triumph in one’s work that we were trying to show there.

I think his photos of the Things are also really great; the tin looks so tinny, the book so papery, the socks so well worn and darned... knitters think with a sense of touch and Ferg’s photos speak to that. 

He is a really sensitive photographer and I also like his photo of my hands resting on my camera, because somehow that photo tells the story of the many hours I have spent wandering this town and taking pictures of its brickwork.

As siblings I think we are remarkably similar and we share a sentimental outlook on people and places. One thing that was really interesting about our collaboration was that when I started with a very fixed picture in my head things went less smoothly than when I started out with a feeling or an idea. We had so much fun working out the best way to try and set up the creative process – an afternoon of playing with pencils and paper and photos to try and create the right atmosphere of embarking on a creative knitting project. I love what we ended up with and I think it is because Ferg sees the feelings in photos as well as he sees the light and the colours.  

Thanks for talking to me Felix! It's great to hear about the whole process and to hear how much enthusiasm and joy you had throughout the entire making of the book. I love the book, it is both an amazing resource for a way of working with wool and a beautiful object in itself, and the sense of celebration, wonder and love for your surroundings really comes through in the gorgeous photos and your great text.

If you would like to buy yourself a copy of Felix's book you can pick one up from Felix here. 

All images copyright Felicity Ford.