Yurt Alert

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!

New Little Friend

pokate — Fri, 21 May 2010 18:42:31 +0000

May has flown by in a hurry and I’ve had my hands full of crochet hooks! I also celebrated my 26th birthday this week and while I have lots to share with everyone — the number one thing is that my parents got me a little French vintage sheep toy that is too cute!

Look at that cutie! I haven’t decided on a name yet but I do love him to death already.

Massachusetts Sheepshearing Festival

pokate — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:32:13 +0000

This past weekend, back in Boston obviously, was the Massachusetts Sheepshearing Festival out in Waltham at Gore Place. Similar to the recent Woolapalooza event there were sheepshearing demonstrations of both the electic and old-school variety. There were also sheep — everywhere!

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!

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!

Felting, Morocco Edition

pokate — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:23:23 +0000

I’m back from Morocco and had the most amazing trip! I traveled around with 14 women from Nest and two Peace Corp Volunteers, Brian and Tim and just fell in love with the country. Everyone was unbelievably nice, I felt super safe, we saw amazing things, we danced, laughed, cried, ate, drank…it was epic! One of the highlights for me though was meeting this amazing little felter in Marrakech!

This man wet felts indoors, crouched up like that, making hats, slippers, necklaces, handbags, etc. He spoke amazing English and was happy to discuss technique. I asked him if he ever used bubble wrap to felt but he said he preferred to agitate the wool just with his fingers but that a bunch of French women had asked him the same thing!

He had a small shop filled mostly with 100s of hats! They came in all colors, some had spiney things coming out of them, they were wonderful. Had it not been 85 degrees out I might have bought one!

The day I visited he was making slippers. They were thick and looked a bit like Converse with the backs cut off. They were mostly brown with some color built in and it looked like he had a great system for cranking them out! Now I need him to come to NH and help me with the yurt!

Look how cute they are! And you feet just slide right in. I ended up buying a necklace for my mom that was big felt beads with embroidered patterns on the outside — I will be replicating that at home soon too. I told him about the yurt. I’m not sure he believed me…but I’m used to that reaction by now.

This was his little sign above his store in the local Artisana. While he wasn’t directly a part of the craft fair that our loan recipients were involved with while we were there I’m sure he got some great business from all the foot traffic. He was so sweet, I could have felted with him all day! Now, just wait for all the sheep pictures!

Yurt Vacation

pokate — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 16:18:54 +0000

Yurt lovers, I’m taking a vacation! This crochet-aholic will be spending the next 10 days in Morocco visiting with local artisans who are the beneficiaries of Build a Nest’s micro-loans. I have a feeling I’ll get a lot of mini yurts made on my 14 hours of flying in the next few days and I also have a feeling I’ll be returning with many more craft materials than anyone could imagine.

While the above is not a yurt Morocco also has a nomadic heritage and I’m sure I’ll be seeing some pretty cool transportable dwellings in the desert and in the mountains — we’ll be all over! On the rewards front I’m happy to report that over 45 packages have done out — with more to ship when I’m home! Some people are even blogging about receiving them, which warms my heart! If you haven’t gotten yours yet, keep your eyes peeled!

Woolapalooza

pokate — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 13:58:42 +0000

Yesterday, Cady (yurtern), my friend Leah and I went to Drumlin Farm in Lincoln to attend their annual Woolapalooza — an educational day all about wool, how it gets from animal to sweater, and more. We met some cute sheep, some new lambs, and saw live shearing and skirting too!

This guy was an awesome shearer with those old school scissors — no buzzer here!

Pre-haircut and post-haircut from left to right.

I love lambing season — they are the cutest and so soft and little. These guys had a heatlamp to keep them warm on an unreasonably cold day!

As these guys weren’t the stars of the show they took a time out to nap — synchronized napping is clearly their sport

Cady and Leah bundled up for the day!

These goats were also in sync as they watched the shearing from afar. I bet they were happy they weren’t getting their haircut while 100s of people watched! All in all it was an awesome Saturday — there were little shops in the horse stalls that I got a beautiful scarf at and we got to scope out some angora bunnies too along with other little rodents in the Drumhill Farm Underground habitat. Last but not least they were serving locally sourced chili, amazing cookies and cocoa — the families attending were all very excited!

Yurts Away!

pokate — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:05:26 +0000

I know many of my donors have been itching to get their hands on their mini yurts and now, many of them have! The last two weekends have been heavily committed to getting the single mini yurts out for delivery, which became a multi-step process. First I got locally sourced and spun wool from Harrisville Designs. Then I crocheted the minis, wrapped them in roving, put them in little boxes, tied those up in a bow, wrapped them in craft paper, adhered the custom yurt labels my mom made me to them, addressed them, stamped them and got them to the post office!

Today, when I stop by the post office the last six of the minis will be heading out to their new homes! Then it’ll be on to developing the packaging to ship the larger wall art pieces made of minis too! It’s an exciting time over at Yurt Alert HQ While in NH working on this with my mom she also had a beautiful number of daffofils from the UK in the house in Ball jars — so pretty I had to post that as well.

Yurt So Good

pokate — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:14:14 +0000

Not only do I love this John Mellencamp-inspired yurt pun BUT it’s also the title of the piece about my project in the latest issue of Vogue Knitting! I did an interview with Cheryl a while ago for Yarn Market News…or so I thought! I’m so thrilled at this — it’s so so wonderful — and to wake up to others being so excited for me was just beyond!

Cheryl hit the nail right on the head — I don’t really have an explanation for how I was able to reach my fundraising goal by the cutoff time and it is entirely thanks to all the people who believe that this is a cool project that I can complete!

Above is the clip from the magazine which I ran out an bought this morning! Yay for the yurt!