Road Trip

The weather’s been miserable for the past couple of weeks. After having a taste of Spring, this return to snow, sleet, rain and cold weather left me feeling rather morose. A road trip was in order.

“How would you like to look at baby goats?” I asked Liz.

“Where?”

“Down near Elora. Donna Hancock raises angora goats and she’s having an open house at her farm and mill this weekend. We could go Saturday.”

“You’re on. Wait. I thought angora came from rabbits?”

“It does. Mohair comes from Angora goats.”

“Then why aren’t they called Mohair goats? Never mind, I’ll pick you up at 9am. Pray for good weather.”

I drove home from work on Friday in a sleet storm. About an hour later the sky cleared up and the sun broke through. It stayed that way til sunset. Things were looking up.

And it stayed that way overnight, too. We had great driving weather, and great travelling conditions. The location instructions on Donna’s website are clear, and we had no problems finding Wellington Fibres. (I admit that I forgot to take a picture of the sign, and have borrowed this image from the Wellington Fibres website. If they object, I’ll remove it.)

Owner/operator Donna Hancock and her husband Lorne have been raising Angora goats for several years. I think I first bought yarns from her at the very first Knitters Fair organized by the Kitchener Waterloo Knitters Guild, and that was 15 years ago. She is well respected in Ontario fibre circles for her knowledge of animal husbandry and spinning technique. Last year, Donna expanded her business, adding equipment for full fibre processing from washing and dyeing to spinning yarns.

The front end of the shop holds the sales room

The mill is in the middle, with storage at the back end.

Donna also wants to run small workshops for shepherds, to help them improve the quality of the fleece they bring to the mill for custom processing.

The goats were out in the barn. I was concerned that the new kids – penned with their mothers – might be spooked by the camera flash, so my pictures of them are fairly dark and I’m not going to post any. These yearlings were near the barn door, so I took advantage of the natural light. (I confess that picture-taking was pretty low on the priority list for this trip.)

Purchases? Two 250 gram packs of Mystery Roving. (Note to Mar: 250 grams is just shy of 9 ounces.) This first picture really doesn't show the colours in the roving. It is mostly blue/grey, but the camera didn't capture the lavender, rose pink and greens.

Huh? What? Mystery Roving? Well, my understanding is that as a mill is processing fibres, they may have a small amount of a particular type or colour of fibre left at the end of a run, and that small amount gets set aside. At some point, all those odd bits will be carded up into Mystery Roving. Hence, it’s a bit of a mystery what’s actually in it: there may be variations of the proportion of fibres, and a wide variety of fibres in the blends, and it all could change along the length of the roving. The colours could be a veritable mélange. Larger mills may have enough fibre volume to group colours together; smaller mills may give you what they have. Of course you take the risk that the mill isn’t dumping crap into the blend, so buy from a vendor you trust. I’m completely confident that these purchases will make for enjoyable spinning and good yarn.

K. and Rob met up with us. We chatted about their podcasts and K. brought her recently knitted shawls. I was particularly interested in seeing her working of the “Belinda” shawl, which she’d posted about while knitting it, but I hadn’t seen photos of the finished item.

I like this shawl for a couple of reasons. The design itself, from the late Gladys Amedro’s now-out-of print-book “Shetland Lace”, is one of the nicer versions of a triangular shawl using feather and fan pattern, IMO. (See the thumbnails to enlarge; scanned from the book and posted without permission.) Jamieson and Smith Shetland Wool Brokers has other designs by Amedro available as leaflets and kits; I wish they’d make this one available, if they can. The colour choices are only suggestions, of course. I worked it eons ago in a solid shade of Kroy 4 ply, and it looked great. (IMO.)

K.’s working of the shawl is bright and colourful. A great thing, I’m sure, to have around your shoulders on a dreary winter April February day, sitting up in bed, reading, wishing to God that it would stop snowing and the sun would shine. (Not everyone will like the colours, I realise, but chacun à son goût.)

The other thing I love about K.’s shawl is that she did it in handspun. Spindle-spun handspun. Every inch of that yarn was spun and plied with a suspended spindle. Would people stop complaining about how you can’t make enough yarn with a spindle to do anything? Ya don’t have to have a wheel to spin enough usable yarn to make something. I’ve done it; K.’s done it; generations of people around the world did it before us. So can you. The fibre, by the way, is Polwarth roving from Rovings, in the “Parrots” colourway. (Looking at the picture on their website, though, I’m wondering if they may have reformulated it from what K. worked with. I think you'll now get a much tweedier yarn.)

All in all, a very good day. I recommend, by the way, that anyone who works with yarn – knitting, crocheting, weaving - take a trip to a mill to see how yarn is made. The process is really very interesting. Handspinners, should do it, too.

Have a good week, everyone.

Comments

[LaurieM]

This post is a wealth of excellent links. Thanks especially for the link to the mill. I think a family road trip is in order this summer.

[k]

Ted, the Parrots roving I bought was based on that exact photo, and I had planned on getting something that was more subtle than what I got -- I love their stuff, but I find both of the batches I got vary quite a lot from what's shown on the website. Remember the other handspun shawl I had with me? It was Sky Show -- go look at it and then think about how dark my shawl was.

Mind you, I kind of like the adventure -- you never know what the colour is going to be when the box arrives (grin).

Ted Writes: Just a mention that this is comment #1000 on my blog.

[Danny Ouellette]

We must have just missed each other! Van and I were there as well in the late afternoon, about 3ish.

The baby goats are soooo cute.

I did well, not buying everything in site. Got 1 skien for a hat, and 2 skeins of her new sport weight yarn to try out on socks. And some of the white mohair/wool mix to spin up. I have some dye experiments I want to do with the yarn this will become.

[Tara]

Wow, that sounds like tons of fun. I think that mystery roving looks fabulous. I don't spin...yet...but I can't wait to see what yarn it turns into. I hope that spring hurries up and gets to you. We saw it here breifly (Texas), then it froze again, and I think it's trying to warm back up. I'll think warm sun-shiny thoughts for you.

[Lorraine]

Oh phooey I'm so jealous you got to go to WF! And of course I'm sorry I didn't go and see you there... I was all set to go and then I had to confess that it was the day I had ear-marked to do my taxes, finish April's issue of SQ and about a billion other things before my next work trip. Thanks for taking me there virtually! I just love those little goats. Not to mention the great roving WF churns out.

[spider]

Hi Ted,
Reading your blog post was almost as good as taking a road trip myself...thank you!! Wish I could have been there in person.

The sun is up and doing its thing here in VT. Hope the same for you folks in ON.