Some articles written about our yurt project have called it a knit house, I’ve self-defined it as a wooly igloo, others call it a sweater house — whatever you call it I’m just glad everyone’s talking about it! So whether you know your knit from your crochet or not I really appreciate the support — as a diehard crocheter I still wanted to post this image as I support all things fiber!
Thanks to Wendy for sending along this awesome picture off of her favorite knit-related T-shirt!
I know you all have been greatly anticipating pictures of the first 200 pounds of wool and they’re finally here! The money I’m raising through Kickstarter currently is to pay for all of the wool, processing it will need to go through to become feltable fleece, and additional materials.
As you can see, I already owe my parents back for a serious amount of raw wool! I could hardly drag one of those 75 lb bags out of the barn and onto the green! Wild wool!
Above is what the bags looked like up close — those are all the fleeces from the Barlett’s and there are a few black sheep in the bunch. We started skirting the fleece only to realize that skirting wool might be one thing you can’t yet learn on YouTube. Before we failed we stopped and are going to get a lesson in skirting before we start up again!
Reclining on the wool! It was about 45 degrees — I wish the wool had already been made into a sweater house! Be glad you weren’t there — it didn’t smell good.
As promised here are some pics from this weekends wool extravaganza! Many are from the NH Wool Arts Tour where we stopped at many different farms including alpaca farms.
The alpaca were captivated by the horse and buggy rolling by — clearly these camels were concerned by the size of the horses!
Even though it was cold and windy these ladies had set up their wool shops on the farm property to appeal to the knitters and crocheters among us — which was basically everyone.
This angora rabbit was getting a “haircut” when we saw it — it’s owner, who has six rabbits, was pulling off its extra fluff and spinning it right there into yarn! They kept each other warm.
Fall in NH — plenty of pumpkins!
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!
After a layover in New York so I could see what I was working with the wool made it back to New Hampshire! It’s five pounds of wool, half merino and half merino blend, which I ordered from Harrisville Designs to build the prototype 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!
Yurt Alert 