Even though the bull was a tough act to follow as her holiday gift to NYC, Agata recently knit herself an apartment, literally.

Agata did this as an installation at the Christopher Henry Gallery, but it’s still livable as Curbed points out! Stay tuned for more updates on my yurt once the wool’s available as well as an upcoming book the yurt’s featured in!

Aren’t they cute! They’re pretty big, right? They live int his little wooden hut that the group built for them up in the highlands! We met so many groups, some who were seamstresses and sewers in Guatemala City and some that are traditional backstrap weavers.

I had never seen backstrap weaving before and it is intense. I have no idea how they keep their tension right and sit light that on their knees for hours and hours. On our last day we went to the city of Antigua and visited another loan recipient of sorts, the Indigo Artes Textiles Center. We learned all about organic dying, weaving and more! And the funniest part was there was a group down there at the same time from Harrisville Designs where I buy all of my yurt rewards yarn!

Overall it was an amazing trip with lots of textiles-related activities! Now I’m back at work and trying to finish up my rewards for everyone — it’s taken much longer than I thought!

Look how cute that little guy is after he got his haircut! It’s interesting because some people I’ve met in the yurt process don’t know that sheepshearing in fact doesn’t hurt the sheep — they are just getting their hair shorn off and given the timing of the shearings it’s pretty in keeping with them needing to cool off in the summer time.

The gray ones are pre-shearing and the white ones are post-shearing and, look, they’re all okay!

As some of you will notice this is the same sheep shearer as was at Woolapalooza — he is awesome. He works so fast but is very delicate with the sheep and very calm, they don’t resist whatsoever, I think they kind of like it.

There were also Alpacas, baby goats, little lambs, etc. It was a very animal-centric day!

And look at all that beautiful roving! It was all I could do to not steal it…though with those colors I’m sure I would have been caught. We also saw a neat sheepherding demonstration but I think the puppies were tired by the time we got to them! Overall the whole day was great, it was gorgeous out here in Boston and it was great to spend a day with my mom and dad again! My dad even bought me, for my upcoming birthday, a “piggie bank” that is actually a “sheepie bank” — it’s so cute!

How good looking are they!?! If you want to learn more about the breed I advise checking out Lisa’s website or the Icelandic Sheep Breeders of North America page. They have milk, meat, soft wool, and they look nice too! More to come after I meet with these little guys!

I think that that could sum up a portion of the Pokorny philosophy of life! Interestingly the owner of The Yarn Tree has a large scale project of her own with Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road efforts — might not be a bad idea to tell him about the yurt!

I mean, this guy does look quite warm but not quite as mobile as he could be.

You can’t help but laugh to see these guys in their suits — they must be so snuggly but I still think a yurt might be more fun!

If we build it people will definitely show up…

That was what we learned this weekend at the NH Wool Arts Tour: http://www.woolartstournh.com/

We went to five of the six stops on the tour, met with Jennifer from the Mill, got some great ideas for where to source our fiber from AND learned there is a wool shortage in the area so we’re going to need to work fast!

While the weekend was intended to skirt all the wool we already have (200 lbs) that wasn’t possible to complete as we didn’t know the cut off for too dirty to clean…but fear not, we have until January/February to get it all done — I have faith that that’s plenty of time!

Thanks to everyone who is sending the Yurt Alert around the internet — I couldn’t do this without you!

Pics to come tomorrow when I’m back in New York — keep telling your friends!

Above is a picture of the dowel, the resulting hook, a hook I had previously thought was pretty big and the green hook that I carry with me just in case I have time to get a little crochet in on the subway. When we finished the cord I realized if I was going to crochet with a hook it would have to be made from a tree trunk! After some experimentation I found that using my hands was better since crocheting that dense, huge cord it more like wrestling.

Above is a close up of the hook I whittled in July. It can only crochet about a 3/4 inch piece of rope. I went back to Home Depot, the employees there think I’m a little weird, and bought a bunch of hiking rope to experiment with. As my first foray into single item oversized crochet I was really excited to find that it works!

Above is the result of those efforts — as my mom pointed out it looks like a hiking rope wreath. If anyone knows an adventurous sports fan who wants a recyclable, reusable, non-plant based wreath for Christmas just let me know, I’ve got a gift for them!

Is this not the happiest sheep you’ve ever seen? This little guy lives at the mill where the wool I’m getting will be cleaned, carded and turn into wonderful, easy to use batts! These sheep I couldn’t hang out with one-on-one so I promptly went to the petting zoo down the road.

At the petting zoo the sheep are smarter than the visitors — they give you a feed bag when you get there and guess what, the sheep know what’s in the bag when you walk in the pen. For someone who loves sheep of all varieties I was alarmed and embarassed to be running away from some seriously large sheep. Luckily it happened so fast it didn’t get caught on camera.

Yeah, the sheep’s sticking it’s tongue out at me — it got the feed, end of story. The history of domestic sheep is a good one — they were one of the earliest animals in history to be domesticated — they show up in artwork dating back 6000 years. Most people believe they come from the Mouflon, which now only exist on Sardinia, Corsica and Southern Iran. Currently there are over 200 breeds of sheep and even more hybrids — all that fleece has different qualities including feltability and weight — the two most important ones for the yurt.

Upon opening the box the wool began to expand out of it’s batts – quickly!

The next task is pulling it all apart into little strips and pieces to lay across each other to felt.

Look how much one batt grows — all ten only took a few days!