Free Fleece - Icelandic Lamb

I have a philosophy about wool that goes something like this:
"All wool is good wool, but not all wool is good for spinning."  All wool is, ultimately, usable.  That may mean that it can be spun and used for luxury fabrics, made into yarn for hats, mittens, or blankets, felted into fine scarves or clothing, stuffed into quilts, used for making brake pads, or, as a last resort, used for mulching the plants in the garden or getting chucked into the compost pile.  

I can no longer count the number of times I have been offered free fleece and how often those free fleeces have mulched plants or been chucked into the compost because they were unsuitable for anything else.  The fleece shown above has a happier ending, and this is its story.  

There is a lovely yarn shop near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, called Studio S.  It's located on an odd, triangular intersection near a formerly infamous restaurant called the Duck Inn (a well-documented Chicago Mafia hangout in earlier days) and across the street from the Staller Estate Winery which produces some quite nice white wines.   The combination of local history, a drive in the nearby countryside, and a chance to indulge in two of our interests (wine and fiber) at the same location, makes it an ideal day trip.

Late last fall, I was asked by the owner of the shop if I would test out two of their spinning wheels and get them up and running.  I returned in January with my wheel tune up kit in hand to give the wheels a check up and test drive.  In return for my efforts, I was given a grocery bag full of about two pounds of Icelandic lamb fleece.

Icelandic sheep are raised by a number of shepherds here in Wisconsin.  They do quite well in cold weather, which we have in abundance here.  They also come in a nearly-infinite variety of colors, sometimes several colors in one sheep, which makes each fleece unique.

Icelandic Sheep  - photo from Heart's Ease Farm

Icelandic sheep have two coats - a coarser, outer coat called tog, which repels water and snow, and a very fine, soft under coat called thiel, which keeps the sheep warm.  In their way, they are very much like double-coated Shetland sheep, from which we get the lace shawls, durable Shetland sweaters, and tweed jackets many of us are familiar with.  Those who are fans of the Lord of the Rings films will have seen handspun Icelandic wool used to create the hobbit cloaks.

Depending on the qualities of the fleece and the needs of the spinner, the two coats of adult Icelandic sheep can be spun together or separately.  Icelandic lamb, on the other hand, is another thing entirely.  It's incredibly soft and silky all the way through, and since the outer coat hasn't developed fully, there is no coarseness to contend with and no need to separate the two coats.  Which brings me back to free fleeces and the grocery bag of Icelandic fleece I was rewarded with.

Free fleeces are often full of hay, chaff, sheep "berries," and burrs.  It is a sad truth that a substantial number of people who breed sheep and expect to sell the fleeces to spinners have no idea how to avoid this problem while the fleece is growing or how to take out the yucky bits once the fleece has been sheared off the sheep.  Such was the case with this Icelandic lamb.  It was full of crud of all kinds.  It was also so very lovely, though, that I decided to try to clean it up rather than use it for mulch, as I would have done with almost anything else.  The fleece had been sitting in the closet since January, and I finally decided to deal with it yesterday.

The photo at the top of this page shows the fleece fresh out of the bag.  It's full of vegetable matter and all of the other "gifts" of the field.  For the majority of the morning, I picked through the fleece, lock by lock, taking out every bit of undesirable matter.  The photo below shows the fleece after its initial cleaning but before washing.  I had only managed to save about half of the fleece, but all the good stuff was there.

I piled the fleece into a mesh bag and gave it two wash/soaks and three rinses.  What a difference!  The end result is a little over a pound of  clean, lustrous, creamy white, cloud soft Icelandic lamb that rivals Merino fleece for softness, and the yarn will be warm as toast.  In the end, it was well worth the time and effort.  My hand cards are itching to card it up for spinning. 

It doesn't happen a lot, but sometimes free wool is a very good thing.

New Handspun Yarn - Tutti Fruitti (from the "Muppet Barf" collection)

For those of you who are not spinners, ready-to-spin wool and other fibers come in several forms:  batts, roving, top, rolags, punis  and many other preparations, each with their own peculiar name.  Roving is a method of cleaning and preparing fibers which results in a long, thick, cottony strip of fibers which are ready to be spun.  It's rather hard to describe, but if you think of a giant cotton ball which has been stretched out into a strip several yards long (and sometimes weighing several pounds), then roll it back into a ball or braid it, you'll have a general idea of what roving is. 

To the left is a photo of a ball of grey Lincoln longwool roving.  You can see the end of the strip coming off the ball of roving.  The end is the part of the roving you spin from, and you unroll the ball as you spin the fiber.



A couple of years ago, a knitting friend of mine approached me with seven different braided rovings of wool, each about seven feet long, and each a different blend of fiber and a different blend of two or more colors.  She had purchased them at various vendors at the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival.  They were all discounted rovings, and one look at them made the reason obvious - they were horrible color blends.  Sometimes the best ideas in hand dyeing go horribly awry, and Ann had purchased the "orphan" rovings dirt cheap because nobody was going to buy them.   There were greens and browns, bright yellows combined with weird shades of grey, reds that faded into muddy blues, purples with odd blotches of orange in them, and turquoise blue that wound up a greenish black as though it had gone moldy.  Individually, they were just awful. 

Ann was hoping to have her mother spin up the roving so that she could knit a sweater for her husband, but her mother wasn't able to spin at that time, so she asked me if I would do it as a commission. Because Ann was a friend, I said I'd spin them up for her.  I must have been out of my mind.

I took the big bag of roving, weighing over two pounds, home and started to examine what I had.  If I spun up each roving by itself, the results would be disastrous, and the resulting sweater would be one that would be stashed in a drawer by her husband as soon as possible, there to be forgotten until the moths had made an end of it.  There was only one option:  I would have to spin all seven of the rovings simultaneously and hope that somehow the colors would blend into something that would at least be tolerable.

I tore the rovings in half and then in half again and split the strips up so that I had eight strips per roving (56 strips in all).  I dealt out the strips into eight piles, one strip from each of the seven different rovings, and wrapped a scrunchy band around each pile so that they wouldn't get mixed up.  

Holding a pile of seven roving strips in one hand , I started to spin all of the colors at once, and the effect was miraculous.  The ugly, muddy colors became a pleasant, muted background for bright splashes of vibrant yellows, turquoise, fuchsia pink, and purple, and the end result was a soft, variegated yarn that was absolutely unique and lovely, full of color but not so bright that a man wouldn't wear it in front of his buddies.  

When the yarn was plied and finished, I was amazed at the results, and I took the finished yarn to my favorite yarn shop, The Sow's Ear, to show my knitting friends and deliver it into Ann's waiting hands.  Amy Detjen, a knitting rock star if there ever was one (her hair is purple), declared the experiment a success, and christened the result "Muppet Barf" because of the multitude of colors in the skeins.  Ann was stunned, as was everyone else.

Ever since that first experiment, I have continued to spin multiple rovings simultaneously, always with unexpected and beautiful results.  I have spun as many as ten roving strips at a time.  More than that is somewhat difficult to hold in one hand, but I'm sure I'd find a way.  I finished three skeins this week, spun from two different rovings I was given by Harvest for my birthday, and I have called the new Muppet Barf skeins "Tutti Fruitti".

The skeins are spun from Australian wool top into a yarn that would make some delightful socks or a great hat and socks to match - 876 yards total in 7 ounces of yarn.

I think Kermit the Frog would approve.

Roadside Attractions - Summer Wildflowers

Southern Wisconsin is a land of great contrast.  The monochrome tones of winter - white, black, grey, and brown - give way to a riot of color in spring and summer.  Roadsides which were covered with six-foot high snow banks are now covered in a nearly-infinite variety of wildflowers which seem to change almost daily.  

The abundance of flowers in front of homes and on the roadsides makes even the most brief and trivial of errands a feast for the eye. The photos below are a sampling of some of the flowers I saw on a single, 30-minute drive from Madison back to my house.  I didn't go anywhere special.  These beauties are just everywhere, reminding us that summer is short but full of life.

Daylillies - these plants may have originally been escapees from someone's garden, but they now form huge masses of orange or yellow flowers along the roads at random intervals.  Most of the time they are orange, but occasionally, there are yellow ones growing wild as well.

Queen Anne's Lace - Almost certainly an import from European settlers, where it was a popular herb for strewing on floors to sweeten the air and for producing a yellow dye, Queen Anne's Lace is also known as Wild Carrot.  The fields teem with these delicate, nodding flower heads, some as large as saucers.  They will soon be overrun with Goldenrod, another yellow dye plant.   When I dye wool with Queen Anne's lace, the whole house fills with a lovely aroma - sort of a cross between yarrow and chamomile.  Not every dye plant is as pleasantly fragrant.  

Sumac - In summer, sumac bushes - many growing to six feet tall or more - grow conical, bright red blossom clusters which will later set fruit to become deep red berries.  Sumac berries are tart, and they were a common addition to pemmican or were used to make a type of "lemonade" by the native peoples and, later, by the European settlers to this area.  The blossom clusters are quite large and very dramatic against their deep green foliage.  In fall, the foliage will turn bright red, orange, and burgundy.

Chamomile and Fleabane - Chamomile and its many relatives, including Fleabane and Feverfew, are among several of the daisy/composite type plants that have naturalized in this area    Chamomile is familiar to many people as a relaxing tea.

White Clover and Vetch - These two plants were originally planted by farmers as food for cattle, but they now dot the landscape near fallow or abandoned fields, forming soft clouds of pink or white on hillsides and disturbed ground.  Sometimes they will grow separately, but I found them growing happily together in an abandoned field.

Wild Phlox -  There are several species of wild phlox in my area, in addition to the many garden varieties.  In the spring, huge masses of wild pink and purple phlox grow along roadsides and in fields.  By summer, the pink and purple phlox is gone, but the smaller, white variety blooms in smaller patches here and there.







Harebell - This flower is part of the Bellflower (Campanula) family.  I spotted a single clump growing in the shade under a leaning maple tree.

Partridge Pea - This flower seems to love growing near sidewalks, where it cascades gracefully over the cement.  It is very fragrant, and it reminds me of the Scotch Broom that grew on the roadsides of the mountain where I grew up.  I put some in a small vase, and it scented the entire room for days.

Is it any wonder that I can go down almost any road in summer and say to myself, "I'm so lucky.  I get to live here!"

Can You Say, "Rhubarb, Rhubarb, Rhubarb, Rhubarb.....?"

Every time I see rhubarb, I think of my dad.  My father, Antony Ellis, was an actor and a writer for CBS radio and television in the 1950's and 60's.  He wrote for shows such as "Gunsmoke" and "The Man From U.N.C.L.E."

One of the things I remember my dad telling me about filming was that when a scene included a crowd of people talking in the background, the directors would tell the actors and extras to say, "rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb," over and over.   Get enough people together saying "rhubarb" at different speeds and inflections, and it sounds like people having conversations just out of hearing.   Is it any wonder, then, that I love rhubarb?

Rhubarb is an amazing plant.  It's a perennial in Wisconsin, and in good years, like this one, a single plant can grow waist high and three feet wide.  Some varieties have only red stalks, but others have red, green, and pink stalks, all on the same plant.  It's decorative as well as delicious, so it has a prominent place in the front garden where it provides a spot of color on the walkway to the front door.  There are several varieties of rhubarb, and here in Southern Wisconsin, the Victoria variety seems to do the best according to my friends at K & W Greenery.

If you want to grow rhubarb, give the plants plenty of room and plant more than one of them.  If you harvest a few stalks at a time from each plant, it will keep going for most of the summer.  Leave enough leaves and stalks on the plants, and let them die back in fall; they will come up again in spring, bigger and fuller than ever.  Eventually, you will be able to divide your plants and share them with friends - a much nicer gift than cut flowers, I think - and your friends will remember you fondly for it.  Rhubarb lovers can find everything they need to know and more on the Rhubarb Compendium website at www.rhubarbinfo.com.  

Rhubarb leaves are toxic, so keep them away from pets who have a penchant for chewing plants, or put a fence around the plants.   My dogs aren't interested in them, but there will always be an exception - somehow Bear managed to find and sample some bittersweet berries last fall, and the results were not pleasant.  The stalks of the rhubarb plant are perfectly safe to eat and are delicious in pies, crumbles, crisps, jams, and sauces.  Mother Nature had a good idea when she allowed rhubarb and strawberries to ripen at the same time.  

I'm not a big dessert eater, but rhubarb crisp is an exception.  I love the combination of tart and sweet, and I prefer mine a bit on the tart side.  I like it for breakfast as well as dessert.

Our rhubarb plants are still pretty young and have fewer stalks than fully mature plants, so we were able to make rhubarb crisp only once this summer, but my friend Mildred had lots and gave me a nice, big bag of it, so we were able to make some more.  Here is a recipe for rhubarb crisp that Harvest whipped up on the fly the other night, with me taking notes as she cooked.  I think it's one of the best versions of rhubarb crisp I've ever eaten - the sweet and tart explodes in the mouth.  

For those who are calorie conscious, this recipe contains a good amount of butter and sugar - rhubarb is incredibly sour in its natural form - so consider yourself warned.  Also, if your rhubarb stalks are somewhat older and fibrous, like old celery, you may want to peel the outside of the stalks to remove the fibers before cutting them into chunks.

Rhubarb, Rhubarb, Rhubarb... Crisp
(makes 8 generous servings, great for a potluck)

5 - 6 cups rhubarb, tough ends and fibers removed, cut into 1"    chunks
1 cup other fresh fruit such as strawberries, peaches, blueberries, or raspberries (optional)
1 dark brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup unbleached flour
1 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1 cup granola - your favorite or Mildred's Granola from this blog
10 Tbsp. butter (1 1/4 sticks) divided as follows: 1/2 stick (4 Tbsp.), cut into small dice, and 3/4 stick (6 Tbsp), cut into small dice

Suggested Toppings (if desired):
Maple syrup
Half and half or cream
Whipped or clotted cream
Vanilla yogurt

Preheat oven to 350ºF.  Spread rhubarb chunks evenly into in an ungreased 9 x 13 baking pan and top with the other fruit.  Dust the fruit mixture with the flour and top with the 4 Tbsp. of diced butter and brown sugar.

In a medium sized bowl, combine the oats and granola together, then add the 6 Tbsp. butter.  Knead the butter into the mixture with your hands until it is well coated and thoroughly blended, then spread the mixture over the top of the rhubarb and fruit mixture in the pan, forming an even layer.

Bake at 350ºF for 45 minutes or until nicely browned and bubbly at the edges.  Cool before serving, topped with any or all of the toppings suggested above, or eat it plain.  Yum!

Warped

Harvest and I have a balanced relationship.  I spin and knit; she weaves and crochets.  Both of us sew by hand and machine, and both of us do embroidery.  Between the two of us, we have most fiber-related activities covered.  Harvest started weaving a little over a year ago, and she has a natural eye for fiber design, texture, and color. She has several looms, including a rigid heddle loom, three band looms, and a Kessenich 4-harness floor loom.  She's been taking private lessons with a friend and will be going to weaving school in August.  I can't wait to see what she comes back with.

Harvest is also a serious golfer, and her favorite color combination, since finding her most recent golf bag, is a vivid - some might say lurid - shade of iridescent lime green accented with black.  She is also fond of houndstooth checks.  Very, very vintage.

In preparation for a competition this weekend, she decided on the spur of the moment to weave a new golf towel for herself on her rigid heddle loom, a Kromski "Harp."

Harvest is what I call a "warp speed warper, " and unlike some weavers, that's her favorite part of the weaving process.  She likes the math and the measurements and the creation of the design.

For the golf towel, she used a sport weight cotton yarn, and the warping took maybe an hour in total yesterday morning.  That afternoon, she mounted her loom on its stand and started weaving, supervised by Bear and JujuB.

She wove off the ends last night, twisted the fringe this morning, and hey, presto!  New golf towel, complete with a braided loop to hang it on her golf bag.   Here it is, drying on a hanger after being wet finished.  Total time start to finish: about three hours.  Not bad.  Not bad at all, though it is really green.

And in case you might be wondering about her "unusual" yarn bowl in the first photo, yes, it is, indeed, a Victorian chamberpot.  We bought it at an auction because I loved it, but we couldn't find a use for it, other than the obvious, so it sat under the china cabinet for ages.  Harvest wanted to put it up for sale at the annual town yard sale, but I insisted on keeping it, and it has now found its purpose: holding balls of yarn during the warping process.  I think its a pretty good second life for a chamberpot.

Ahoy, Captain! There be zucchini on the port bow!

The first fruits of the garden are coming in.  The zucchini flowers have gone from tender orange stars to deep green, tasty fruits.

We also have bok choi, kohlrabi, peas and rhubarb that are being harvested, with lots more of everything on the way.  The rain over the last three days has kicked the garden into high gear, and pretty soon I'm going to be spending time freezing or canning what we can't eat right away.

Here's a recipe for tasty zucchini "fries" that are one of our favorites:

1 lb. zucchini - a dozen or so baby zucchini or 2 - 3 medium sized
1 tsp. garlic powder (approx., more or less as you like)
2 Tbsp. nutritional yeast flakes
1/2 tsp. paprika
Salt and pepper to taste
olive oil to coat (approx. 3 Tbsp.)

Preheat your oven to 350ºF.

Cut the zucchini into thick strips resembling french fries.  Place them in a 9 x 13 cake pan in a single layer, skin side down.  You can squash them together in the pan, since they will shrink during cooking.  Using a sprayer or basting brush, brush the olive oil over the top of each strip, then sprinkle the garlic powder, nutritional yeast flakes, paprika, and salt and pepper evenly over the top of the strips.

Bake the strips for 15 minutes, then stir and bake for another 15  -20 minutes until the strips have lost their water and are nicely browned and a bit crunchy.  The exact baking time will depend on the moisture in your vegetables, so watch carefully to avoid under- or over-cooking. They will shrink somewhat as they cook and lose their water, so if you are feeding a crowd, plan accordingly.

You can eat these "fries" with your fingers.  Dipped in ranch or bleu cheese dressing they make a great appetizer, though we enjoy eating them plain.   Any leftovers can be reheated, and they will still be tasty, but they will lose their crispiness, so you may wish to add them to another dish such as a vegetable curry.  Don't be surprised if they disappear in short order, though.  They're delicious!

The Laundry Line

When I was growing up in Southern California in the 1960's and '70s, energy conservation, sustainable living, and recycling as an everyday part of life were things we talked about in school but hadn't the slightest idea how to put into practice.  The "eco revolution" hadn't happened yet.  Sure, there were a few people who talked about "living off the grid" and "getting back to the land," but they were considered to be radicals, hippies, or people who were just too poor to own common, modern appliances like washers and dryers.  As a child, most people I knew looked down on folks who dried their laundry on a line outside.  Thankfully, all that has changed.  

I've always been charmed by laundry flapping on a line - all the colors and shapes flying like so many flags in the warm breeze.  There is something innately comforting about it that I can't quite define.  It also seems to me to be a kind of secret window into the home and its occupants.  Diapers on a line where no diapers had been before?  Aha!  A new baby has joined the family!  In rural areas, it's also a wonderful way to admire quilts, since these are often dried outside in the spring and summer.    

When I moved to Wisconsin I discovered that I really enjoyed the process of hanging out laundry.  I like the heft of the wicker basket of damp fabric on my hip.  I enjoy the spongy softness of the grass underfoot and the contrast of the colors of the laundry against the grass and trees. I like the feel of the wooden clothespins in my hands.  I prefer the wooden ones without spring clamps.  I have found that the old fashioned ones hold just as well, if not better, than the "modern" clothespins with springs.  You can find these springless, wooden clothespins at antique shops, hobby and craft stores, catalogs like Lehman's, and rural hardware stores. I use the squared ones for heavier items and the round ones for lighter, smaller things.   They will even hold delicate items like vintage hankies without damaging them.  I keep the pins in an old feed sack that hangs handily on the clothesline just in reach and can be moved around as I add or remove items from the line.

In the winter, it's usually too cold and damp to put the laundry out on the line, and we revert to using the dryer, which has little appeal for me, but when spring arrives, I can put the laundry out again.  It's common in my town for many folks to line dry at least some of their laundry, and a clothesline is considered a basic necessity rather than an eyesore.  When one of my neighbors put an addition on her home, her clothesline had to be removed temporarily.  We offered her the use of our line until hers could be put back up a few months later.  

The backyard clothesline is also a convenient meeting place for neighbors.  If I am hanging out clothes at the same time as my neighbor, we will usually stop for a minute to exchange news.  It's a pleasant way to keep in touch. 

We've never had a theft from our laundry line, nor do I know of anyone else in town who has.  I do, however, remember the line in the 1994 film "Little Women" when the March girls are working on their "newspaper" in the attic:

"Advertisements. One periwinkle sash belonging to Mr. N. Winkle has been abscondated from the wash line... which gentleman desires any reports leading to its recovery."

What Mr. Winkle was doing with a periwinkle blue sash on the clothesline is anybody's guess, but perhaps he should have kept a better eye on it.