Join Ewephoric Fibers for an informative and fun-filled day of spinning. In the morning portion of the workshop, we will spin wild roving and batts. In the afternoon, we will work on plying to make the best possible yarns. While we are learning about wonderful fibers, we will also be helping a most worthy cause, Peaceful Paths. This non-profit group assists women moving out of abusive situations into a position of self-sufficiency and strength. Ten percent of every workshop fee will go to Peaceful Paths. Feel free to bring a non-perishable food donation for their food pantry. Details after the jump…
Many of you know that Ginger was headed to Argentina to interact with cashmere goat herders and the guanaco cooperative (www.payunmatru.com). After an overnight flight from Houston, TX to Buenos Aries, Argentina then an overnight bus ride to Junín de los Andes, the real adventure started! And yes, that is two days of travel to get to the beginning!
Ginger (far left) and the Grupo Costa del Rio Colorado Cooperative
Ginger writes:
Susan Walker, who works with the Wildlife Conservation Society (facebook.com/WCS.Patagonian.and.Andean.Steppe), and her husband, Andres Navarro, are long time friends and sponsored my visit to Argentina. They live in Junín and work in the Patagonian Steppe on habitat restoration for the benefit of threatened and endangered species such as the Andean cat, Darwin’s rhea, hairy armadillos and guanaco. As part of the effort to improve the habitat, WCS has been working with the local goat farmers to reduce over grazing of the fragile grasses allowing the return of the guanaco migrations and population expansion of animals that depend on the steppe for survival. Many of the local goats produce a cashmere undercoat, which increases the individual animal’s value. The herders are forming cooperatives, working with WCS veterinarians on better husbandry, and learning how to improve the quality of the cashmere through breeding management programs and by combing out the cashmere at the appropriate time.
Goats playing on the steppes
I traveled to the Patagonian Steppe to observe the conditions of the farmers and animals, consult with the farmers to assist with improving the quality of the animals and fiber, and purchase raw cashmere. A day’s driving brought us to our first stop at the Grupo Costa del Río Colorado cooperative. This group is incorporating sustaining husbandry to reduce herd size and improve cashmere production. I was able to purchase a quantity of raw cashmere, which represented a 10% increase of their annual income. This was the first purchase of “green” cashmere: cashmere that was produced in a sustainable, environmentally friendly manner! It was very exciting to be part of this momentous event!
Guard dogs in training
We visited another group, the Carrizalito Cooperative, and I was able to purchase more cashmere. Members of this group are incorporating guard dogs into their herds to reduce loss of goats to predators, mostly the puma. Where the dogs have integrated, the program has been a success! Both of these groups are working toward or have applied for Wildlife Friendly Certification from WCS (www.wildlifefriendly.org).
Migrating Guanaco
We drove through the Payunia reserve on our way to El Aguita where we spent a couple of nights. Along the way we observed large herds of guanaco migrating from wintering feeding grounds to the summer grounds. We had a meeting with the cooperative (www.payunmatru.com) who are shearing the guanaco. We discussed marketing, fiber, processing, I was able to evaluate the handspun and mill spun yarns. I was not able to purchase any guanaco on this trip, but Ewephoric Fibers still has a quantity available through our Etsy shop.
First ever sale of Green Cashmere
I will work with these groups to assist them in producing the best possible, sustainable cashmere by consulting on breeding programs, fiber collection, and by introducing this luxurious fiber to hand spinners and fiber artists through Ewephoric Fibers! Be sure to keep checking back with us as we process the raw cashmere into exquisitely soft and luxurious spinning fibers! I will share more tales of travel and keep everyone informed of the progress!
We are very excited about going to the January Spin-In in Destin, Florida. This small gathering is such a wonderfully relaxing venue that we sign up for it as soon as possible! We will have lots of luxurious and luxury fibers, BFL, BFL with silk, Tussah and Bombyx silk roving, cashmere, guanaco and some special blends.
Jane and Ginger are very excited about introducing our first ever most fabulous fiber club! We will be stargazing through the Hubble telescope (pictured above, the Crab Nebula). Each offering will feature 4 ounces of roving or custom carded batts in an astronomical colorway along with suggested spinning directions. One of the months will feature a blend of luxury fibers. You will receive your fiber 4 times a year, about every 3 months. Cost is $120/year, shipping included.
Did you join us at the Florida Fiber In? We had a wonderful time! We met old friends and made new ones. The demos were great! I learned Navajo 3 ply on the fly; a bit more practice and I’ll actually be good at it. Tacking down the loop was the aha-moment! I gave a demo on Taming the Wild Roving. We talked about how to get the yarn you want from multi colored roving that has all the colors you love, but not necessarily in a complimentary format. The notes from the demo will be available on this site after SAFF.
Ewephoric Fibers introduced Gotland at the Florida Fiber In. Gotland is an ancient breed of sheep developed by the Vikings on the Swedish island of Gotland. The base breeds were Karakul and Romanov sheep from Russia that were crossed with the native landrace sheep. Many of the short-tailed primitive breeds came from these early crosses as the Vikings wandered the world. Gotland became known as the fiber that was hand spun, hand woven, and sewn into the capes worn by the Elves in Lord of the Rings.
Gotland is a beautiful gray, lustrous fiber that is strong, durable, and has wonderful drape. As is true of many of the primitive breeds, the Gotland fleece is not the softest fiber. To give it a better hand, Ewephoric Fibers blended Gotland roving with soft, shiny Suri llama. What a terrific blend! The Suri softens the yarn, adds to the sheen, and deepens the colors.
SAFF (Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair: www.saffsite.org), Fletcher, NC, takes place October 21-23, 2011. This fair is rapidly becoming one of the go to places for new spinning fibers, yarns, and all the new tools and toys available. Ewephoric Fibers will have a booth (#18) in the Sales Arena area. Since this is a pole barn, we are hoping for cool, crisp, fall weather, but not too cool! Ginger is going to be teaching a ½ day workshop on Taming the Wild Roving. We will be spinning multicolored roving and learning how to make the yarn of your dreams from that amazing roving that you just love.
Ewephoric Fibers will use SAFF to introduce some wonderful new exotic fibers! Guanaco is a CITES protected camelid from South America. The Patagonian Steppe in Argentina is home of the Cooperativa Payún Matrú (www.payunmatru.com) where this amazing fiber originates from. Guanaco is a down fiber, exquisitely soft, fine and rare. Only very limited amounts of it are available each year as the shepherds capture the migrating herds of guanaco, shear them, and then release them to finish their migration across the arid steppe to the summer feeding grounds.
Ask us about Green Cashmere: No, it is not actually green! The shepherds who shear the guanaco are goat shepherds, mostly indigenous, who are replacing their feral herds of goats with more profitable cashmere goats. Increased income is realized from cashmere goats as markets for fiber, meat, and hides are developed. Dogs used to guard the herds lead to a reduced loss of livestock to predators and less retaliatory killing of those predators. As the habitat of the steppe improves the world’s migratory populations of guanaco reclaim their ancestral routes with the Andean condors soaring overhead, Darwin’s Rheas racing along the steppe and Andean cats and pumas can return with plentiful native prey available.
Wildlife Friendly Certification (www.wildlifefriendly.org) for ‘green’ cashmere ensures that the environment is being used in a sustainable way through better use of the habitat, reduced killing of predators, improved husbandry, and fair market income from these rare and sustainable fibers to support and elevate the shepherds. Be part of the solution and acquire some of the first green cashmere and guanaco fibers to come out of the Patagonian Steppe for your finest handspinning endeavors! Ginger will be traveling to Patagonia in December and will be returning with fibers, just in time for Christmas! Do not miss out on this rare treat!
Right now Ginger and I are dyeing like crazy getting ready for SAFF in North Carolina. We can hardly wait. Hope to see some of you there! Stop in and say hi, and take a peek at our no longer top-secret fiber club we are debuting (which will be up on the website shortly).
Join Ewephoric Fibers (www.ewephoricfibers.com) at the Florida Fiber In (www.floridafiberin.org) inOrlando,September 16-18, 2011. Attendance is free, although a donation at the door will help to defray costs. Come on in, even if you have not pre-registered!
We will be launching a bunch of new products you won’t want to miss:
Dreamtime Roving BFL (80%)/ Silk (20%): the softness of BFL combined with the sheen of silk becomes a dream sliding through your fingers. You will LOVE the yarn from this exquisite roving!
Parfait Batts: Luscious custom carded batts in layers of analogous colors that spin up into a softly heathered yarn.
Stripey Batts: Four stripes of analogous or complementary colors that easily spins into a self-striping yarn.
For our batts, we use the finest Shetland wool from Stonehaven Farm in Oregon (www.stonehavenfarm.com) and Alpaca from WoodsEdge Farm in New Jersey (www.alpacasllamaswoodsedge.com) and add in just the right amount of silk or bamboo to give it a luscious hand.
In other news…
Since Gotland sheep are being showcased at the NJ Sheep and Wool Festival (www.njsheep.org/festival/index.html) this year, we thought it would be fitting to introduce…
Special Edition GotlandBatts: Stansborough Grey Gotland fleece from New Zealandwas used for the elfin cloaks filmed in Lord of the Rings. Ewephoric Fibers and WoodsEdge Farm have joined up to produce a blend of lovely grey Gotland and super-silky WoodsEdge Suri Alpaca. These batts spin up into a beautiful yarn with a soft sheen and an elegant drape.
Ginger writes: We all have fiber and or yarn stashes that are squirreled away awaiting that perfect project. We have all had the experience of opening our stash and, horror of horrors, discover a little cloud of moths! Or you find a little pile of gritty dust. Your natural fibers can become dinner for moths, silverfish, roaches and other insects. Mice also find that nice warm fluff a fine place to raise a family. So how do you protect your treasures from unwanted company and damage?
There are many compounds that can be used to protect your fiber or yarn. My grandmother used mothballs made from naphthalene. Whenever I encounter that smell, it triggers memories of my grandmother knitting wonderful items. Naphthalene, however, is flammable so it is no longer used. The current compound used in mothballs — 1,4-dichlorobenzene — smells about the same! These work by sublimating, going from a solid state to a gas state, which means you have to replace them on a regular basis. The fumes are toxic to moths and other bugs, and theyrepel mice. However, the fumes are also toxic to people, so if you are going to use them, be sure to open your storage containers in a well-ventilated area.
While mothballs are very effective, it can be difficult to get rid of the smell. Even washing won’t entirely remove the odor. Placing the fiber, yarn, or clothing in the sun for several hours helps to volatilize the last of the molecules and remove the smell. Mothballs have also been recently listed as a potential carcinogen.
So what are the alternatives? There are a variety of herbs and spices that can be used to keep unwanted pests at bay. Sachets made of lavender and calendula flowers or rosemary, mint, or cloves will not only repel pests, they will also smell wonderful! Non-moth ball alternatives only repel insects; they do not kill them. Good fiber hygiene is the best way of protecting your precious fibers, yarns, and wool/alpaca garments.
Washed Shetland, Ready to Store (photo by Jane D.)
Some dos and don’ts:
Just like good personal hygiene, good fiber hygiene starts with bathing. Wash your grease or dusty alpaca fleece before you add it to your stash. Bugs will flock to dirty fleece before clean fleece. This applies to any protein fiber such as wool, alpaca, camel, silk, etc.
Do not store fibers in plastic where the plastic actually touches the fibers. Rabbit angora, in particular, and other very fine fibers have a tendency to mat if they are against the plastic. Store your fleeces in pillowcases then place them into large zip-top type bags. Smaller items like yarns, roving, and clothing can be wrapped in non-acid, non-dyed paper and then into a zip-top bag. Squeeze out most of the air and your fibers will be protected from outside attack. Use heavy plastic bags as moths can eat through lightweight plastic.
Check your fibers or clothes on a regular basis and look for infestation. If you have stored your items in zip-top bags, any problem should be contained, literally! If you are suspicious of any item, you can either freeze it for at least two days or put it into the microwave for a couple of minutes. If microwaving, do not use any plastic or acrylic ties or bags. These can melt into the surface of the fiber. If a bag is infested, just throw the whole thing away.
So you have found a moth. Now what? First you need to determine if you need to worry. If the moth is flying around in the middle of the day, it is most likely a flour moth. These small gray-brown moths get into dry packaged goods like dry pet foods, oatmeal, pasta, and rice. You generally find them flying around these items in the pantry. These moths do NOT get into your fibers and are not really a problem to protein fibers, other than being a pest. A trip to your friendly hardware store to get some flour moth traps will deal with this problem. Wool moths look very similar and can be difficult to tell apart, but they do not like the light and, like little vampires, they will avoid it at all costs! If you pull out a woolen item, fiber, yarn, clothing, and suddenly have moths about, it is time to worry and look for infestation.
If you determine that you have wool moths, dispose of the item and carefully check any other material that is nearby. If unsure, freeze or microwave any suspicious fibers then repackage in cloth and a plastic bag. This is a time to be absolutely ruthless!
And Care2.com also has some excellent advice for deterring moths and making sachets. Here’s their recipe for Natural Repellent Sachets (you can find the ingredients in bulk at most health food stores).
2 ounces each of dried rosemary and mint
1 ounce each of dried thyme and ginseng
8 ounces of whole cloves
Combine the ingredients in a large bowl. Blend. Make sachets by choosing a 4″ x 4″ piece of natural fiber with a tight weave, such as silk. Sew three sides together, then fill with the herbs and sew the fourth side shut. You can adapt this pattern to any size you want (2 x 2 is the traditional size for the undergarments drawer, for example). A good idea for small sachets is to fill cotton teabags sold for making your own tea (these are often sold in health food stores). If you are really in a rush, just tie the herbs up in a cotton bandana or handkerchief; place the herbs in the middle, gather the edges together, and tie with a ribbon. Variation: Other herbs that are good for repelling moths include lavender, lemon, sweet woodruff, and tansy.
Ginger writes: Why do you spin? Why in this day and age of readily available, immediate gratification yarn stores and online shops would you want to spin individual strands of fibers into yarn?
Me? Why do I spin? There are reasons I can delineate and many others I simply cannot.
I spin to produce the specific yarn I want for a specific project. Sometimes I find a pattern that I particularly like and plan out the yarn I will use. I select the fleece, wash, dye, card, and then spin to the weight I want. I like to select the different fibers, blend them, and plan out the yarn in advance. Or I select the roving I like that is the appropriate fiber content for the project, sometimes already dyed, sometimes not. I figure how much I am going to need and while I am spinning the yarn I review the pattern to decide how much modification it needs. More often I write my own pattern. You cannot get this kind of start-to-finish satisfaction in store bought yarns. But this is not the primary reason I spin yarn.
Ginger and Bunny
I spin because I am very tactile. I love the feel of the fibers, especially very soft fleeces still warm from the sheep or alpaca they were just sheared off of. I love the sensation of warmth or coolness the fibers exhibit. I love the sweet hay smell and feel of lanolin from a clean, fresh sheep fleece. I am amazed as I watch the twist capture fragile individual fibers and make them into a strong, stable yarn. Fiber is a feast for all the senses, except perhaps taste!
I spin to connect with a distant past that is very hard to define. When I spin, I feel a connecting thread that stretches back through time and space to the first woman who figured it out. I feel as if I can close my eyes, open them, and be in some other time and place and I would not be surprised at all! As the fibers flow through my fingers, I experience an internal calm that is unique to this particular activity. Spinning feels as natural to me as walking. I am sometimes amazed that I have not done it my whole life, only the last 30 years! Spinning is my Zen. It quiets and calms my mind. The day’s tension drains away as I spin.
Many years ago I had Lyme Disease. During the course of the illness I became severely neurologically impaired. I could not walk without help, brush my hair, feed myself or do any of the many things we take for granted. I lost my long-term and photographic memory as well as my short-term memory and I was aphasic, the wrong words came out of my mouth. I could not remember how a sentence started so I could not carry on a conversation for many months. On the other hand, I could think and reason, I just could not say the correct words! I spent a year relearning basic skills and speech.
One of the first physical things I could do once I could get around on my own was spin. I still couldn’t carry on a conversation, could barely brush my hair or feed myself, but I could spin. How glorious that was! It was a huge part of my recovery. As I look back on it now, I realize that I had close to my 10,000 hours of ‘practice’ in spinning before I became ill. According to Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers: The Story of Success, you need to spend 10,000 hours of doing something before you can truly become an expert and really excel in that field. I don’t know that I excelled at spinning, in fact I feel like a merely competent spinner most of the time, but the physical and mental memory was present even if the rest of my brain had not caught up yet! So for a year I spun for the simple joy of spinning.
I spin to connect to the most basic part of my being, to be sure the that the connecting thread stretching back to my very origins is still intact. I allow the tactile part of spinning to take over and carry me through the most difficult parts of my life. It helps to keep me on an even keel. It is my lifeline.
Our Booth at the 2010 Gainesville Local Art Market
January 26 – 29, 2011.
Destin, here we come! We are teaming up with Hanks Yarn and Fiber (WEB, BLOG) and traveling to Destin, Florida, for the January Spin In (RAVELY, YAHOO GROUP). We’re packing the van full of fibery goodness on Wednesday morning and leaving bright and early. Shoot one of us an email at <www (at) ewephoricfibers (dot) com> if you are looking for something in particular, and, if we have it, we’ll bring it.)
