On Sunday, January 27, DH and I motored to Russell's Garden Center in Wayland, a suburb of Boston, to the Farm Fiber Day. This popular event drew over forty vendors not only from Massachusetts, but from Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and upstate New York, too.
We were able to get up close (not too close) and personal with three very calm sheep from
Prado de Lana farm in New Hampshire. The sheepherders, Alberto and Amanda, specialize in Lincoln and Romney sheep and sell natural-colored yarn only - no dyes here. There is considerable variation in coloration between sheep, so the choices are still quite varied, and all are quite beautiful. In a nice touch, each skein is labelled with the name of the sheep who grew it. In the image below, one sheep wears a coat, not for warmth - the fleece is plenty warm - but to keep the fleece clean.
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| A trio of sheep from Prado de Lana farm. |
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| Wool, and humor, from Prado de Lana. |
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| Gorgeous, well-made blankets in timeless neutral tones of natural wool. |
A palette of natural fleece colors is also utilized for the blankets and other items, in the image above, offered by the Baaay State Blanket program. (Massachusetts is known as the Bay State, for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the 17th-century settlement of colonists from England.)
This enterprise, initiated in 2007 by the livestock program at the University of Massachusetts at Hadley, uses wool solely from Massachusetts-raised sheep. The fiber for these blankets leads a peripatetic life - the shorn fleeces are scoured (cleaned) in Minnesota, then sent back to Massachusetts to be spun and woven. Finished with a blanket-stitch edging, the blankets come in a variety of sizes, are just the right weight, soft, and very well-priced. Order one here:
http://www.baaaystateblanket.com/index.html
although the images on the website don't do justice to these attractive bed coverings.
While I love these built-in colors of wool, as it were, there were also plenty of vendors supplying the entire rainbow of yarn colors, including both natural and synthetic dyes.
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| Basket of skeins from Foxhill Farm, located in Lee, Massachusetts (no website.) |
But there are plenty of things to do with wool in addition to knitting and crocheting. Weavers, spinners, and felters, their activities and supplies, were in abundance, including the hand-spinner demonstrating her craft, below. Love her socks! Alas, I didn't get her name.
Subito Farm offered felted items, too, as well as their two-color project hanks. Each kit had a completed sample on display - I find the samples really helpful and wish more vendors would provide samples and swatches to see before I buy.
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| Spinning demonstration. |
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| Felted pillows. |
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| Lots of two-color kits, and samples, from Subito Farm. |
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| The event was well-attended. |
The market was very well-attended and, in addition to all the fiber, there were lunch options too - I enjoyed a tarragon sausage roll, while DH dined on coq au vin in a cardboard cup. Delicious! Other vendors sold wine, jams and mustards, and bags of heirloom dried beans. It's soup season here in New England, after all, and we need something in addition to wool to keep us warm.
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| Audrey Lin promoting Matting Change. |
There's no limit to the creativity of knitter and crocheters, who also tend to be generous, caring people. Audrey Lin is one such person and this high school senior has found a way to upcycle plastic bags into something useful, using just a crochet hook and social media. Her initiative,
https://www.facebook.com/mattingchange/
organizes folks with needle arts skills to make sleeping mats from single-use plastic bags. The mats are distributed to people who are experiencing homelessness, as a sort of ground sheet. Go Audrey!
Finally, in addition to admiring the visiting sheep, we also had the chance to gently stroke this very fluffy bunny, an angora rabbit, who, believe it or not, is not yet fully grown. He looks a little worried in this image, but in person actually seemed to quite enjoy all the attention.
There is one more fiber market at this venue, on March 3, 2019, from 10:00 to 3:30.
