Yurt Alert » Process

The Yurt Alert Goes on Vacation — Guatemala Style

pokate — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:07:32 +0000

Pardon my absence from the blog — I’ve had a remarkably busy summer so far! Last week my mother and I traveled to Guatemala with my non-profit of choice, Build a Nest. We went to visit our micro-bartering groups in Guatemala City and the Lake Atitlan region. While Guatemala has low numbers of sheep and artisans work mostly in cotton I still managed to find me some sheepies to hang out with.

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!

The Wool is Clean…sort of

pokate — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:58:38 +0000

Great progress was made on the yurt this Memorial Day! I took out all three HUGE bags of Dorset from the barn, set up a ramshackle skirting table and voila — we got to work. We listened to some good tunes and while my mom and dad tried to stay away and not help me at all they could resist. It was a team effort to get it all done before the rain rolled in!

That’s mom — and that’s one HUGE sheared sheep! It was the most wool I’d ever seen all connected together at once, that guy must have been a little fatty. Some of the wool was very clean and some of it was gnarly and had tons of hay in it. I tried my hardest to get the hay out but sometimes it was just too bad. I’m new to skirting so I wasn’t sure how much to remove but I think I got all the really bad stuff.

Look at that big pile of cleanish wool! We used the table to skirt, letting detritus fall below and then tossed the clean ones onto a tarp in the driveway. Needless to say, I got a little sunburned. It went quickly but not super fast.

Look how happy I am! That’s over 150 pounds of Dorset wool that’s going to soon be blended with our Icelandic! More to come, this is just the beginning!

Sheep, Morocco Style

pokate — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:14:51 +0000

When I left for Morocco I knew that I’d be meeting with the weavers in Midelt that Nest works with on product design and development but I never really stopped to think where their wool came from until we got there. It turns out that Hayat and her cooperative don’t own their own sheep but get their wool from a nearby town, clean it themselves in basins and then weave it. Despite this…we saw a lot of sheep action and wool techniques on our trip!

In Fes we saw this place where they were skirting wool and getting it ready for weaving. Unlike how I skirt, they just had an oversized hand rake and went after it — much more efficient!

What a machine!

I think I’m going to make myself one of these little handtools. They seem awesome!

We saw sheep along every road we drove — which was a lot of road. Sometimes they were crossing, sometimes they were just hanging by the side but everyone had a shepherd and sometimes, they’d bring a lamb and put it in our bus.

That’s my friend Penni, holding a little lamb when we stopped by the side of the road — totally normal.

The sheep had wonderful places to live — each region’s climate and topography was so different it was great to drive from place to place and see as much as possible though Tim claimed we needed another six weeks to see it all!

Busy Sunday!

pokate — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:45:38 +0000

Today I made some major headway on the yurt’s donor rewards because I had the energy and extra hands of my new yurt intern, Cady! As of last weekend I had finished all of the individual mini-yurt gifts and had begun work on the sets of 15…but still had hundreds more mini yurts to go! Today, Cady came over around 1 and with the help of delicious pizza from Picco downstairs we managed to finish 4 sets of 15! Many were already done but I finally had time to sew them all together into wonderful pieces of wall art!

Cady is a fibers major at Mass Art, which is one of the coolest art schools there is. I’m probably one of the world’s worst teachers but she caught onto the min yurt “pattern” in no time after I failed to explain my process correctly — seriously, worst teacher. Thank goodness crochet has some regularity and predictability to it!

Look how beautiful they are! So exciting!

Get ready donors — these awesome pieces are coming your way soon!

Woman After My Own Heart

pokate — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:27:47 +0000

One of my favorite things is coming across people who are also crocheting/knitting with large “yarn” or things that they improvise as yarn! Via Design*Sponge last night I came upon Jean Lee of Ladies and Gentleman. Jean is making what she calls the Mega Doily seen in the photos below out of cotton rope.

Look how beautiful that is! It would make a great carpet for — you guessed it — the yurt!

As someone who tries crocheting with every cord she sees I feel like Jean and I would get along. Her pieces though are far more intricate than my mini-yurts!

Weekend Sheep

pokate — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:43:32 +0000

It’s Friday evening, the fundraising has hit 35% and it’s Halloween tomorrow — how does the day get better? The answer is with a peaceful photo of sheep on the water from Swans Island.

I got some scary news on the wool we have up in NH today — the mice have found it and since it’s so cold up there already they’re making themselves right at home — very soon I’ll be cleaning it out though and getting it to the mill so be warned, Mice! Your days of sleeping in my wool are almost over! Whenever the mice start to stress me out I just look at the photo and everything’s okay again.

Sheep: Shear Joy

pokate — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:46:20 +0000

Today I’ve been getting a lot of yurt love, largely driven from a great write up on the project over at The Daily Green! As a way of keeping my karma in check I wanted to post about Heifer International, which, if yurt’s aren’t your donation of choice, allows you to “gift” animals to people in need — including sheep!

As I’m working from Boston this week, my mom has been buzzing about doing great things for the yurt (I’m fairly certain she does this when I’m not here as she is basically the Yurt Whisperer). When I got home from a conference this afternoon she handed me the Heifer International catalog which states, “Warm in winter, cool in summer, waterproof and durable — wool is a valuable product that struggling families can use for clothing or sell for extra income…All over the world, Heifer partners are raising sheep to advance the cause against hunger and poverty.” For $120 you can give the gift of a sheep to someone who can care for it and benefit from it for years to come!

Yurt of Dreams

pokate — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:10:20 +0000

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!

Green the Lean

pokate — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:47:32 +0000

They say, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” — but what about gentle mocking, does that count? I think so! And thanks to my friend Anthony I can now say, I’m being mocked, in a good way. Today he posted to his satirical blog a post entitled, “Green the Lean,” which made me laugh out loud, read it to my whole office, and need to post it here — the full text is below. I still take the yurt just as seriously as ever though!

According to wikipedia “a Lean-to is a free standing structure of three walls and a sloping roof with an open side sheltered away from the prevailing winds and rains. Often it is a rough structure made of logs or unfinished wood and used as a camping shelter.”

I constructed my first lean-to when I was 13 years old. I was on my vision quest under the tuteledge of my Shaman guru Archduke Francesco Frederique. It was nightfall and I was about an hour due east of Puerto de Luna, New Mexico and the desert winds began to kick up…. I needed shelter. Remembering the words of Frederique and summoning all of the might of my newly found power animal I began to gather brush and construct the first of many many lean-tos that vision quest.

That night I built more than a three walled shelter made of unfinished logs and wood, I built what I would later realize was the foundation of a movement…

Though everyone knows that Lean-tos are adequate structures for protecting one from the elements, many people fail to see the environmental damage they wreck on our planet. My project is to build the world’s first self sustainable lean-to or “green lean” as I like to call it. It is my hope that with this project I can kick off a revolution that will shake up the long stagnant self-constructed three walled hut industry for the better. But I cannot do it alone, I need your help and support. In the coming months I will track my progress as well as the pitfalls of taking such action but I am confident in the end we can all “GREEN the LEAN!”and in turn make the world a better, greener, healthier, 3 walled place.

Kickstarter Fundraising is Live

pokate — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:16:21 +0000

I know everyone has been waiting with anticipation to find their own way to get involved with the yurt other than by coming to New Hampshire and learning to felt — well now you can! I’ve launched my fundraising site through Kickstarter.com, a great crowdsourced funding startup that enables creative projects to be realized. You can find my page here and you can choose your reward for pledging your support as well!

Thanks to everyone who can help out in advance — tell your friends, coworkers, family, etc. I’m excited to get this going!