A Brief History of Merino Wool Way back in the depths of time, not hidden but certainly unclear, are the origins of the sheep breed we know as Merino. We can easily find information on its recent history, but delving back before the Spanish developed and refined the breed into the one we are familiar with today, reveals that there can be conflicts in information and shows a potentially broad origin indicated in the development of this prized sheep. What
Arlene’s Notes: One of the great blessings of the partnership between Suzy and myself is the synergy of taking a germ of an idea, watering it with collaboration, and then watching it grow into something exciting. Our new book, “The Big Book of Fibery Rainbows” is a thrilling manifestation of this process. And, so with tremendous pride, with this blog post, we launch our first printed book!!! Read on to find out more… It has arrived, the BIG Book of
I have a dear friend here in New Zealand, and she happens to be involved in a subgroup of our National Spinners and Weavers Guild (Creative Fibre NZ). Now Angela is one of those people who is always coming up with awesome ideas, and she loves to offer challenges, the lastest one is ‘we’ (as in everyone she can catch for 2 seconds) must spin a single to contribute to the collection of samples that Angela is building, and she
A little while ago we brought you the ebook on how to approach and spin Multi-Media fibers such as those found in the wonderful Namaste Farm ‘ScrapBoxes’ or collections of various different fibers from your stash. This week I would like to offer you an extra treat that sprung from that original offering, and this is free for a limited time! When we were working on the Multi Media book projects we (the contributors) were challenged to share our own
So here I am in a New Zealand summer, feeling the heat and enjoying the sunshine, very much aware of the vast climate difference others are experiencing in the northern hemisphere right now! Just a week or so ago I saw images of people ice skating in the streets of northern Holland, bringing back some very fond memories of playing in the snow and ice during the winters I was there. One of my big pleasures at the time was
I am sure many of us art yarn spinners have heard the same thing.. its beautiful, but what do you do with it? Sometimes is not even so complimentary, statements such as ‘its unusable’ and ‘theres nothing you can make with that’, directed at a lovely lockspun yarn simply because its bulky, and theres 30 meters of it.. So here is my post today, some examples of a few things that you CAN do with art yarns, and these are
Last week Arlene posted about being stuck and working through some of the creative slumps we all get into sometimes. So this week we thought I should follow this up with a little look at something else that happens with all of us during our creative lives, and that is change. I think this is something that can help cause those many WIPs to come about, you know, you start a project, and for whatever reason it gets put aside.
Its my turn to write a blogpost this week (Suzy), and I would like to share something with you about spinning, more specifically about plying. This is actually a document that we created to send out along with our first set of yarn recipe cards, and I think its useful for anyone who wants to ply once, twice, three times, even ten times.. if you want to add texture to your yarns, create unique combinations of colour and form, and
One of the challenges for Arlene and I when designing our online courses, it taking into account the different ways we all learn. Most of us learn in lots of different ways, we take in what we hear and see, we like to get some hands on practice, we get a book and read everything about a subject… However for most of us, we will find there is always one way that works better.. If you are a visual learner,
I know, its Valentines day, and I am talking about singles! Well Cupid isn’t always welcome, especially when we have ‘the perfect single’ thats really not trying to hook up with the perfectly matched partner to ‘balance’ it.. This is not the single thats smooth, low twist and relaxed.. in my eyes thats not always ‘perfect’, in fact, sometimes its just too damn smooth for its own good, I mean, if I wanted ‘that’ kind of perfect single, wouldn’t I