The New Year has come, and I keep thinking people are talking about their vision (20/20) rather than a date. I’m actually quite happy to see the last of 2019, although I think that its turmoil will follow us. Both Bruce and I are trying to limit our exposure to the news in hopes that we’ll feel less anxious. I am trying to stay fully engaged in writing for the book, as well as swatching more yarns and looking for additional resources.
I have been doing a bit of spinning today and it was nice to get back into the “zone” of drafting and feeding the wool onto the wheel. After my hand surgery I’m still limited in the amount of time I can spend on either knitting or spinning without my hand getting sore. These days I feel like I’m suffering a little from ADD as I hop from one activity to another. The good news from that is I’m moving lots of projects forward at once, even if they don’t look like huge amounts of progress.
I pulled out some Dalapäls rolags that I received from Swedish Fibre some months ago. Unfortunately, the rolags had been sitting long enough that they were really compacted, and needed quite a bit of fluffing up to spin. I still can’t work with my hand carders or combs, but two passes through the drum carder did the trick. You can see two of the compacted rolags sitting on the drum carder tray, and the post-carding rolag sitting on the table. What a difference. The new rolag came from about 1/2 of one of the compacted ones, and is a dream to spin.
You can see examples that Josefin Waltin made from her Dalapäls yarn here.
Dalapäls are another of the Swedish conservation breeds. It is also one of the endangered group, with only about 100 lambing ewes in 2000. The breed conservation program is increasing their numbers bit by bit (up to 160 ewes by 2018), but they are still too few in number to be commercially viable for a steady supply of yarn. It is possible, however, to find fleece from individual shepherds/shepherdesses, and a good place to begin your search is the Ullformedlingen Facebook page or website marketplace. Be patient waiting for an answer!
Fleece from the lambs have lovely corkscrew curls that have traditionally been used as-is for decoration on coats, and the full sheepskins for coats and jackets.
The wool of the Dalapäls is fine and curly. Most of the sheep are of a medium size and good both for their wool and meat. These sheep are native to Dalarna province where their fleece also was used for the region’s characteristic two-end knitting (Tvåändsstickning).
These stockings from the Nordiska Museum are worked in the Tvåändsstickning technique.
Photo by Sissy Sjöberg courtesy of the Nordiska Museet.
More from the Nordiska Museum
I’ll admit I’m having trouble finishing up this post. The Nordiska Museum has a wonderful web portal to their collection, and kindly allows downloads of images for use in blog posts, so I end up jumping down the rabbit hole and finding image after image that I wanted to use here. This couple are photographed (the date 1870 is carved into their bench) in their beautiful Dalapäls coats.
