There are a few things I'm known for...and we are going to skip the first couple of them ;-). If you've been around me any length of time you'll know that I am notorious for my lack of color. My car is gray. My truck is gray. I wear white turtlenecks all winter and most of the time you'll find me wearing a gray t-shirt during the summer.
Gray IS a color! There are lots of grays! You can make all sorts of them by mixing different amounts of black and white Jacob wool together! It's just maybe not as exciting to you as all the other fun colors most wool crafters embrace. Whatever ;-).
In the last couple of years I've gotten interested in punch needle crafts. I enjoyed sampling rug hooking with wool strips several years back, but didn't want to get started having to collect a stash of different colors of wool fabric. Punch needle is done with yarn. I can make my own yarn as I need it and I can...ahem...dye it all sorts of colors.
During shearing over at Tring Farm we pull out the nicest fleeces for hand spinners and the rest, because there is no commercial market for anything but fine wools anymore, get used around the farm for mulch, erosion control or...nothing :'-(.
As I set one of my favorite sheep's fleece on the dump trailer last year I started thinking about how else to use that wool. Miss Piggy is old and her wool is nothing really special...but it's Pigs...so it's special to me. So are her daughters, The Piggly Wigs. And Pocket and Double O and Mims and Holly and Posey and Maybelline and then there are all of Annemarie's favorites.
While they might not be sexy young sheep fleeces, they'd make great rug yarn! And the next Lamb Camp yarn was born. Lamb Camp...Old Friends.
I decided to ask the mill for a mix of worsted weight and bulky weight yarn. There are different punch needle sizes for each, with the smaller yarn and needles offering a bit more option for detail work and the larger for a heavier weight rug you would actually walk on (!).
When the yarn came back earlier this year I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was very pretty and much softer than I'd expected and it would actually be just as nice knitted as it would be woven or punched, especially the worsted weight. I should have trusted the old girls :-).
Here's where things get really crazy. Since I'm a bit color challenged, I've been a little hesitant to make any big dyeing plans. I did dye up a small amount to match the basic colors that someone else developed for last year's winter postage stamp collection. I needed some color inspiration...or at very least a kick in the backside.
Yes, I bought two boxes of Nothing But Color :-o. These Color Cubes provide all sorts of information for aspects I'm not even positive what they are yet, but they're inspirational for sure. I'm looking forward to learning all sorts of new things.
Stay tuned for more colorful posts and more information about my ideas for punch needle designs and yarn kits and even perhaps some colorful knitting! We'll have the new yarn available for the Bluegrass Yarn and Fiber Crawl starting this Saturday and I will get it added to the website soon.
