How it all got started...
I live on a small acreage on the border of Minnesota and North Dakota. I live with my husband, three dogs and two cats. I have been working with fiber for about fifteen years. It all started innocently enough. A friend of mine had two young children. They decided to raise lambs for a 4H project. At the end of the summer, my friend asked if I would like to have the lambs, a white female and brown male, both mostly Suffolk. Of course I said yes. At the time we already had several Saanen milk goats, a flock of geese, a few ducks, a dozen or so chickens and a couple of pigs. Why not sheep! Well, one thing led to another (more on that later...). I ended up several years later with a flock of very nice mixed breed sheep, angora goats and two llamas. I no longer had the other livestock. I was learning to focus. I did have a lot of fleece to play with. I decided that I needed to figure out how to use all this wool so I bought a used spinning wheel and learned how to spin. I soon had a lot of very nice yarn to use up so I taught myself how to knit. My grandmother taught me to crochet when I was a little girl and I picked that up again as well. Due to changes in circumstance, I no longer have the animals. I do have three spinning wheels, a collection of spindles, two floor looms for weaving, every conceivable size of knitting needle in straight, circular and double point, and enough yarn and fleece to fill a large spare bedroom, closet and armoire. This year as a Christmas gift, my wonderful husband surprised me by making arrangements to take the last of my fleece, all 41 pounds, to a local fiber mill to be processed into roving for spinning! Now I have enough fiber ready to spin to keep me busy for quite some time. I have started to toy with dying as well. I hope you will join me on this ongoing adventure!
