I was asked the other day how I’d gotten from my career in museum work to an obsession with rare breed sheep (as though this wasn’t a straight line but rather a step off the edge). To me it has been a natural evolution, from life-time knitter, to somewhat competent spinner, to cheerleader for special sheep.
For so many years, I just knit with whatever was available. I didn’t pay all that much attention to whether the yarn was wool or acrylic. Up until the teenage years I knit with whatever my mom brought home. I do remember that there were many skeins of Red Heart yarn in the house. This was a yarn originally created by Coats & Clark in the 1930s, and was offered as a worsted weight wool. These days it is offered only in acrylic, but I’ve noticed on Ravelry that you can still find the odd skein of the older wool in its wide range of solid colors.
It took many years as an adult knitter before I learned about special (and often expensive) yarns. I still tended to make purchases based on color and feel (without paying much attention to fiber content). One of my first forays into specialty fibers was with bamboo yarns (probably around the early 2000s). While bamboo/wool mixes have been patented as far back as the 1880s, bamboo didn’t start to catch on until early in the 21st century. The sheen and softness hooked me, but I found out this fiber REALLY stretches, and the sweater that started as a nice cardigan could have been worn by King Kong by the time I gave up on it and sent it to the rag bag. I wish I’d thought to take a picture of me in it at its worst.
Bamboo is often touted as an environmentally friendly natural fiber. It is neither environmentally friendly nor natural when it is processed for yarn or fabric. Bamboo and most of the other cellulose-based “new” yarns, are just another form of rayon. Rayon was first developed in 1899 by scientists who were trying to develop new explosives. Using wood and other sources of cellulose, the fiber is made by first dissolving the fiber in a solution of alkali and carbon sulfide, or amine oxide, and then regenerating the resulting viscous material into insoluble fibers. The first solution is a neurotoxin, and the second is quite expensive. Both use large quantities of water that are highly contaminated if they re-enter the ground water without extensive reprocessing. The pros of bamboo are that it is easily grown, doesn’t need fertilizer, and is self-regenerating. At the moment, the most sustainable bamboo fabric or yarn is made by mechanically crushing the bamboo and stripping out the fibers. You can imagine that this is hideously expensive compared to the chemical methods (i.e., not frequently used).
When I bought the yarn that I’m knitting into this shawl, I was impressed with the idea that it was potentially another entry into the environmentally sustainable group. This yarn is made from rose stems, and is truly soft (when blended with alpaca as in this case). The colors are bright and have a wonderful sheen. It also drapes beautifully. Again, this is essentially a type of rayon that in this instance has been mixed with alpaca.
There are some newer processing methods that use significantly less water, and some companies are capturing and reusing the water to bring rose rayon into a more sustainable category. Surprisingly, this process is significantly less water intensive than what is used for cotton, so it does show promise when looked at from that perspective.
But what about knitting it up? Well, the jury is still out on that and I probably will have more set opinions by the time I finish the shawl. What I can say so far is that is has great drape, but like bamboo yarns, it’s a bit heavy. And, like bamboo, it can be splitty if you catch a strand on the tip of your needle, or if you have to rip back. Having to rip back also tends to de-ply the yarn giving it the look of having been stretched out. I find this characteristic the most disturbing, and hope that soaking and blocking will help improve that.
Meanwhile….
I took a dye course with Gail Callahan this past week. This was a 2-day class where we dyed a wheel of 36 different colors, then chose our favorites to dye a couple of skeins of yarn.
My wheel isn’t exactly going to look like this one…instead of dying 36 of the same yarn, I decided to split mine between yarn and roving, so not only did the various breeds impact the color, but I used several different yarns that also reacted a little differently than some of the others. I really wanted to have the various colors of fleece because I’m taking an online blending board class, and it turns out that almost all of my fleece is grey or white. The 15 or so different colors will be fun to spin, and will give me a wide variety of possibilities.
My fleece and yarn is still drying, but I’ll post them at some point
And…..
I’m still working through my notes from Scotland. I can’t believe that a month has passed by already. I continue to think about all of the wonderful people I met and I feel so privileged to have been granted the gift of their time.
Here are a few photos to preview what I’ll be writing about in the weeks to come….
