Home from Yarndale

I'd not been to Yarndale, the spectacular Yorkshire celebration of all things colourful and woolly, before this past weekend, and I am definitely going back! From the location for the show to the spectacular decorations to the wide array of vendors, it was absolutely lovely.

First up: the venue - held in the Skipton Auction Mart, the site for Yarndale is not what would immediately spring to mind when thinking about a show venue. There's a rough concrete floor, and vendors are literally penned in - most stalls are placed inside one of the animal pens. And while this may strike you as a bit odd, as a vendor it was akin to having a ready made shell system. We took advantage!

Then there was the decoration of the hall - I sadly did not get a photo of the famous Yarndale Bunting, but there was plenty of added colour to enjoy!

Then there were the critters - alpaca, bunnies, sheep on every aisle. I was particularly taken by the matched set of alpacas at the end of our row on Saturday.

Then there were the sheep: Herdwicks, Shetlands, Jacobs, Wensleydales - just about everything you could possibly imagine!

Thanks so much to everyone who came by the booth over the weekend - it was a pleasure to meet so many of you! If there's something that you wish you'd grabbed at the show, the shop is now back online so go over and have a browse. If you don't see what you're looking for, let me know through the contact links at the bottom of the page. And hopefully I will see you next year in Skipton!

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Lab Goddess Fibre Club August 2016

Last month's fibre club installment went out a bit later then normal, due to my summer travels, but it has hopefully reached everyone successfully by now.

August's colourway was inspired by biochemist Gerty Cori, who's long collaboration with her husband resulted in our understanding of carbohydrate metabolism, particularly the breakdown of glucose and glycogen and the resultant production of lactic acid. She was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, which she shared with her husband and Argentinian Bernardo Houssay for their combined work on the catalytic conversion of glycogen and the involvement of the anterior pituitary gland in sugar metabolism.

The colours that I used in this month's club come from the very concrete AND a more theoretical interpretation of Cori's work. The dark reds and browns are taken directly from the liver and muscle tissues that she used in her research. The brighter colours are inspired by energy and growth, both of which require energy derived from sugar metabolism. The fiber is dyed with long stretches of each group of colours as a nod to the link between the two sides of the equation.

I used Dorset Horn wool as the base for this month: this is a hardy and rare UK breed that is known for its ability to breed out of season, making it very attractive to shepherds looking for meat production. The wool is sturdy, with a strong crimp, but it can be a bit tricky as the crimp is irregular, and will vary from lock to lock. So some attention is needed when spinning your singles! I'm planning to spin some of this up for some sturdy lined mittens for the winter.

Sign ups for the fourth quarter of the 2016 Lab Goddess Fibre Club are now open, so do come join us! There's lots of fun colours to come...

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Green Mountain Holiday

We've been at my in-laws in Himself's home state of Vermont for the last week, and it has been the epitome of New England summer. Instead of trying to describe it in words, I'm just going to share some photos of what it's been like.

We head north and east today to coastal Maine, and another set of adventures that involve good friends we haven't seen in a long time, family celebrations, lobster, sailing, swimming in the ocean, and proper sweet corn. I suspect another photo essay will be upcoming next week.

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Lab Goddess Fibre Club July 2016

This month's Lab Goddess Fibre Club offering is a more semi-solid colourway than usual. Meet Far End of the Spectrum:

This colourway, dyed on British Suffolk wool, was inspired by Anna Jane Harrison, an organic chemist who focused her work on the structure of organic chemicals and their interactions with ultraviolet (UV) light, the waves lengths of light that are beyond the detectable range for human eyes. A professor of chemistry at Mount Holyoke College for many years, she was elected the first woman president of the American Chemical Society in 1978.

In addition to her research, Dr. Harrison was renowned as an educator; as a professor at an all women's small liberal arts college, she was a role model and inspiration for following generations of female scientists.

The colourway, though a variety of a semi-solid, actually took multiple dye baths to create. I wanted to capture the violet part of UV light but also include the fact that UV light is largely invisible or hidden from normal human sight. Purples and blues were first applied to the fibre and set, before adding black to the dyebath to hide the brilliance of the initial colours.

The Suffolk base is a serious wool: crunchy and sturdy, perfect for hardwearing items. Fairly rough in top form, the fibre softens with spinning to create a strong, durable yarn that I'm planning to use for some textured socks.