Spinning the Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em Passport
I didn’t plan on becoming a spinner, but the purchase of a spinning-wheel-shaped object in February 2020 changed my path. That’s a story for another post. In time, I found myself with an Electric Eel 1.1 spinning wheel from Dreaming Robots, and a couple of pounds of fiber from the Maryland Sheep and Fiber Show, my girlfriend’s sheep Anna and Emma Shetland, and roving I had purchased years ago and used as decorations at my wedding.
I started collecting dyers’ websites. Lots of people had great colors. A big dark deep hole was opening up in front of me, because I didn’t have any real plans for what to make with yarn I spun. It was easier to buy fiber than it was to spin it, and I didn’t need to build too much of a fiber stash. I promised myself I would spin what I had first before I bought much more.
I also thought hard about where I wanted to enter the process. I’m a sucker for lower cost-per-pound, which made whole fleeces and raw wool attractive, but I really didn’t want to get into washing and processing raw fleece. I was also reluctant to get into dyeing, mostly because I was concerned about the toxicity of some of the dyes. That excuse was blown away when I discovered wool could be dyed with Koolaid and food coloring, so dyeing fiber became possible. I hate variegated and speckled yarns, so I didn’t want to dye skeined yarn, but I have a 10-yard warping board, so I could re-wind white yarn and dye longer runs than a hank allows.
Somewhere along the path, I started seeing posts about the Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em program offered by the Livestock Conservancy, which, incidentally, is headquartered about 15 miles from my home. The SE2SE is designed to encourage hand spinners to work with wool from rare breeds, creating a market for the wool from those breeds and helping to sustain the gene pool.
(It is hard to imagine that 1000 hand spinners, spending roughly $300-$500 on fiber, would make a huge difference. There are about 100,000 sheep covered by the program, whichh works out to $3–5 per sheep.)
I Liked the FB page. I joined the program for $15. I bought the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, and then the Handspinning Rare Wools video, and started participating on the FB page. I really didn’t know what to make from 15 x 4 oz of wool from different types of sheep—some would be suitable for socks, but some is rug wool and far too scratchy for skin contact. The program counts one step in processing as “enough,” so I do not have to go further and make something if fleece is spun into yarn. If I bought finished yarn, I would have to turn it into something else. It is not clear if cooking mutton counts for the rare breeds that do not produce wool in economic quantities.
Fortunately, there was enough fiber on hand that I didn’t have to buy any for the SE2SE program right away. I watched the video, and the book arrived, and I watched the FB group, and thought. I wanted a project that would use a lot of yarn and not force revisiting the decision for each different breed. I also didn’t want to have to buy much more than 4 oz per breed. Four ounces is a pair of socks; sweaters take more than a pound.
I went to Ravelry. I am making a Mandala Madness crochet “blanket” and so knew some of the blanket and afghan patterns on the site. I wanted something modular, though, because it gets way too hot in NC to knit something blanket-sized in one piece. I can crochet but didn’t fancy using 15 x 200 yards (plus or minus) in crochet. The ergonomics of knitting are better.
I looked at the crochet Persian Tiles, but it works through colorways and I didn’t know if I would be able to dye colors reliably across the size of that project. Look at the projects for that, by the way; they are much better than the sample on the pattern page. Persian Tiles led to Persian Dreams, which is knit. There’s one version in fingering weight and another in worsted weight, which I thought I would be able to spin reliably. Each unit can be a different color and the blanket will still look good, but there was one remaining problem. My husband and I don’t care for white—we both liked the blankets based on black better.
I didn’t want to dye 2500 yards of fiber black. But I wondered—a lot of the rare breeds on the list are rare because they come in colors, and commercial yarn processors prefer not to have any colored yarn in the flow because even one black hair can ruin a batch of yarn. (Story about Spinrite Gray sold as seconds due to black flecks.)
I worked through the list, identifying the breeds that came in colors: Shetlands, Navaho-Churro, Jacob, CVM, Karakul, Hog Island, Santa Cruz, Lincoln, Southdown, Dorset Horn, Black Welsh Mountain, Cotswold, and Romeldale. Heck, that’s more than half of the sheep on the list! It’s harder to find sheep that only come in white. I would have no problem doing half a blanket in dark wool, especially if I allow overdyeing gray or less-than-completely black yarn to darken it.
I saw six ounces of black Shetland for sale on Ravelry, and I was off. Next, I found eight ounces of Teeswater on Etsy, marked down because of VM. Bingo. I set a strike price (anything less than $4-5/ounce) and was on my way. I bought two packages of McCormick food coloring and will test dyeing my white roving of unknown origin before the Teeswater. I have missed some of the 2020 shearings, but I have another year to fill the passport.
I still need to plan colors and dyeing, as well as how much yarn I can spin out of 4 ounces. I’m making notes about where to buy wool from the different breeds and not buying the “easy” ones right away so I have money and space for the more rare breeds. Stay tuned.
