We are really looking forward another great market put on by Uniquities.
Hours are from 1 to 5 pm
It is at the Vienna Community Center, 120 Cherry St. SE, Vienna, VA 22180, (703) 255-6360

We will have lots of yarn, roving and some fleeces for sale. Many new yarns and colors. Plus, Kathy Owens will be introducing three new knitting patterns using Solitude wool. She will have the draft patterns with her…and I think she will give them out for free with yarn purchase. Come by!
Not to mention…this is the very best opportunity to see other farms in your fiber shed!

Sorry. I’m still sick (yes, you do hear a whine).
I don’t want to give this thing (virus?) to any of you, but especially not to Sue; so we are pulling the plug now.

If you were wanting/needing some yarn or roving this gray weekend, we do apologize. To everyone who was coming to the market…and what the hey, anyone of you on our email list, if you place an order this weekend we will refund the shipping cost (we don’t know how to tell the shopping cart to make an exception because I’m sick).

Stay warm and healthy!
Gretchen

This is Vanessa (on the rock) and Paula yesterday sunbathing. They are American Alpine dairy goats. They not only have a full time cook, maid, free healthcare etc. They also rule the roost here at Solitude. The sheep get what the goats decide they can have pretty much. I’m sure I wouldn’t change places with Vanessa (the queen) if I could, but sometimes I wonder who has the better life. I was trying to take advantage of the Spring weather the last two days, and I did do some dyeing, but this is what I should have done: laid on a rock in the sun all day. And now it’s groundhog day. I just heard that Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow. He wouldn’t have if he were here in Loudoun County Virginia, very gray and raining here this morning. This weather is most strange and just makes you nervous. Will we get August weather in May? I hope not, but in the meantime I will try to take a lesson from the animals and just enjoy it now.

I don’t know if I can blame it on the weather, but I’m being sick. So I’ve stayed home and Sue and helpers are about to start doing inventory. We really, really work at keeping our inventory current and accurate, but it is pretty challenging and we are probably not using the best system. But by the end of the day we should not only know accurately what we have, but all the colors will be “together” again. Our market strategy has been to bring a pretty good amount of about 5 or our 15 different batches of yarn each week so there would be enough for a project, and then change up the batches each market. But maybe we should go about it differently. Since we will need to start from scratch to prepare for market, we are going to bring a sampler amount of all our different batches. If you need more for a project and purchase it at the market, we will ship it to you for free.

It’s worth a try. Would love to have your feedback about what works best for any of you Dupont market shoppers.

I’ll bring honey and Sue is bringing Karakul Sheep pelts. I haven’t seen them, but they are usually stunning.

Hope to be feeling great and have nice weather for Sunday, if not, I will send post early that we are staying home

enjoy whatever good thing you can today!
Gretchen
f-fsolitude@mindspring.com

Howdy!
It was quite a weekend in NYC at Vogue Knitting Live. Thanks to all of you who came to the booth, and welcome to those new to the email list. I will just hit the highlights of the fun stuff and not bore you with the fairly extreme behind the scenes action of getting in and getting out (phew!).

The best part of the weekend was meeting new customers and even better…customers returning that met us last year. We so appreciate your support and enthusiasm about our efforts to make beautiful, useful yarn, support local small farms by providing a market for their good wool and share our love of different breeds and types of wool. Another highlight was seeing all the beautiful hand knitted sweaters, scarves, skirts, shawls etc. etc that paraded by the booth including a number of show and tell items that people made from the yarn they bought from us last year. A highlight for me was the fabulous scarf that Nancy Marchant (author of Knitting Brioche) knit from the Corriedale/Corriedale cross yarn:

Sue was wearing a vest she knit from Sally Melville’s book, and who should come to admire it but Sally Melville! pretty cool. And Nancy Bush came to visit us with Nancy Marchant…see that open wallet? Now Nancy has some Solitude Wool Targhee yarn. We wonder what she might make with it? There is something to look forward to.

This Sunday we will be back to the Dupont Circle Farmers market in DC. Ahhhh home!
We are going to bring the yarns we were highlighting last weekend:
The Targhee, including a number of new colors that aren’t on the web site yet (give me a week or so…)
The Romney, ditto on the colors
The Shropshire double twist and the great ruffled scarf (free Ravelry pattern)
and the Corriedale bulky. Vogue Knitting highlighted pillows and throws in their winter edition and had a display near our booth of the them and a covered ottoman. Too bad they used such soft yarns, they were already showing wear. If they had used our Corriedale for them they would look beautiful for years and years!
The Clun Forest solid dyed. This is marked down because it is the last of the batch, but there are quite a few skeins of each color. This is a great opportunity!

The weather forecast for Sunday is nice. Do come!
and if you are wanting something in addition to the list above, do email me and we will be happy to bring it along: f-fsolitude@mindspring.com

Thanks!
-Gretchen

Greetings!
So, I’m changing up my usual order of procrastination this week getting ready for Vogue Knitting Live. Both the RedGate big red truck and the Solitude green truck are packed up with yarn, roving, tents, lights (yeah!), the pattern box (which needed to be fed-x’ed to us at Stitches East since I left it on the table), and all the assorted stuff to put together a booth. That is thanks in great part to Sue and Bill who did most the work while I was printing stuff…and now I just need to do about five other things like stamp bags, organize all the paperwork stuff (and where is that NY sales tax number?), pack clothes, charge everything and maybe even take a bath…but even though it feels like I’m a little less crazy than usual, I haven’t done an email to you all. There is always something I can be behind on.

We will be in booths 2114 and 2116 on the second floor of the marketplace. It is the same spot we were in last year. The highlights in my mind are: 1. new colors of the Targhee 3 ply yarn including some handpainted skeins that are the first with our new 4 yd skein winder. I think it is going to open up some new creative dyeing possibilities. 2. We have three new samples to help show off our yarns courtesy of Chris Rose, a long time DC customer. (2.1) One is “Daybreak” designed by Stephen West and knit with two colors of the Targhee yarn (pattern available on Ravelry).

photo by Patrick Gonzales

(2.2) The second is a free pattern on Ravelry, Ruffled scarf- Ullas-Schal by Margareite Dolff in our Shropshire double twist yarn. and here is Chris modeling it

(2.3) And last, but not least, is a pattern from Nancy Marchant from her book Knitting Brioche, “Laars Manchetten” which is Dutch for boot cuff. These are knit using the Brioche stitch which is double sided and therefore reversible. The yarn is our Border Leicester sport weight yarn. I love them.

Since we have two spaces this year we can bring more yarn…so hope you are also going to be a VKL and can come see us!!

And to finish off, wanted to share some photos from yesterday morning when we had snow on the ground and fog. It was a bit mystical, and so unexpected after our spring like weather for the market last Sunday.

Happy New Year!
Wow. Feeling like I’ve gone from zero to 60 miles and hour in 6 seconds. What happened to that Holiday suspension of time? I know this happens every year, but it is still a shock. How did I get so behind when I thought I was getting ahead? So, once again, this is a rush email. I’ll do it in bullet points:

• We are going to the FreshFarm market at Dupont (in Washington DC) this Sunday. Remember it is now winter hours: 10am to 1pm and we will be on the other side of the street from where we have been (which is really nice for us to get the sun and to be able to park next to the stand). We will take these yarns: Alpaca-Merino lace weight, Border Leicester bulky (almost sold out and it is really nice!), the Corriedale bulky, the Leicester Longwool and Border Leicester nature dyed yarn, the Shropshire baby yarn, the Suffolk-Dorset boot sock yarn (really nice for sweaters, kids knits, shawls etc and socks too), the Tunis-Alpaca and ready to spin or felt roving.

• The following weekend we will be at Vogue Knitting Live in NYC at the Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan. Holy smokes! We aren’t quite as worked up as last year, but almost. We are going to have a double booth and lights (I think…) so hope to have room for people to actually get into the booth this year. We were so excited to see some friendly DC Solitude customers last year! We hope lots of folks will come. I don’t know what classes might still be open, but just coming to the marketplace is really interesting, there are very Vogue fashion shows (two different runways) and demos, yarn tastings, celebrity book signings…and man the knitting celebs are so there! Kaffe Fasset, Clara Parkes, Nancy Marchant, Ysolda to drop names of people I’m looking out for. So if you are interested in dropping in to the marketplace, you can purchase tickets online (and the lines last year were daunting, so this is a really good idea) and get a free gift certificate. I’ll send an email next week with our line up of yarn and other particulars.

• Lamb update from RedGate…they are growing up really too fast I think. Here are the photos Sue just sent me of the little girls

snuggling sisters

• and look what we got for Christmas, a special purple birdhouse…with a leaping goat. We have it hung where we can see it from the livingroom. Just waiting for spring to see who will move into this fine place.

Hope you can come to the market Sunday, if there is something we don’t have on our list to bring that you would like, drop me an email by Friday morning and we will pack it in: f-fsolitude@mindspring.com
The weather forecast is for warmer temps (thank goodness!) but possible showers. Right now I’d say it is a 90% chance of us coming, but if the rain is bad we will stay home. Check the web site by 7am if you want to know for sure. I will post if we are not coming, otherwise, assume we will be there.
Thanks,
Gretchen

Greetings!!!
The last day of November. The gift of warm weather we have is not to be wasted, and I’m trying to dye as much yarn as possible. I can make way better colors when my fingers aren’t frozen and it isn’t so hard to get the pots hot. I think I have some beautiful new colors! Sue is helping me be way more productive by taking the dyed yarn home to her farm to rinse and dry. I finally had the black walnut dye pot ready. There have been three large muck buckets filled with black walnuts soaking for maybe two months? three? I used just one of them and ohhhh, the first batch came out the most beautiful deep, dark bittersweet chocolate. The other two tubs I decanted and am saving for later. So I wish I had a photo for you, but alas…not yet. Next week I will show new yarn colors.

However, we will bring some of the new colors with us this weekend. Two markets! Saturday we have our special appearance at the Leesburg Farmers Market. We are looking forward to seeing our Loudoun neighbors and hope we can attract some of the Loudoun Needleworkers, Blue Ridge Spinners and Weavers, Waterford Weavers and Loudoun Knitters to come see the new yarns and visit with us (Guild members get a 10% discount).

Sunday we will be (as usual) at the Dupont FreshFarm Market.

Here is what we are bringing this weekend:
Alpaca/Merino lace weight yarn
The Border Leicester Sport weight nature dyed yarn (the most beautiful black walnut is this one!)
Corriedale/Corrie cross yarn
Targhee 3-ply
Border Leicester Bulky
and a Leesburg favorite: the odds and ends bins
I’m also bringing some special jars of honey with comb inside. It would make a special holiday present for just about anyone.

okay, so I spent all my time today dyeing yarn, so I’m really rushed for this email. Sorry. Next week I’ll do better, but here are some photos of Sue’s new Karakul lambs to make up. First…Mr. Brownie:

and another set of twins, way to go Sue!

Greetings on such a gray, warm, strange day. So November and yet…the frogs are jumping in the pond and singing in the bamboo. This is really pretty weird. If you aren’t here in the mid-Atlantic, we are having warm weather. It’s been up to 70 degrees. Weather like this is a chance to do some of the too many chores that should be finished by now. A wood rack that should be assembled and wood nicely stacked, the new mailbox that needed to be put up last March, the tractor party lights that are still hanging on the porch. And yet, am I using this nice weather to do any of these seasonal chores? Nope. I’m dyeing yarn and fleece and doing that as fast as I can. Took a bit of a break to pick lettuce for dinner tonight and saw the sunflowers and had to take some very November photos of Solitude to share:

These are some of my favorite colors, gray, green, rusty orange, bronzy brown. Fall colors like this used to make my heart swell. Now the lack of light seems to make me sad. I’m searching for the thrill. Ohhh November.

But! Sunday the sun should be out and we will all be happy, getting ready for the first best holiday of the season: Thanksgiving.
We will be at Dupont (DC Farmer’s Market) with:
The Romney again…bring your copy of Knit Local, pick out 5 colors of the Romney to knit the fabulous gloves therein…and get one of the skeins free.
Icelandic nature dyed yarns
Corriedale/Corrie cross (new handpainted colors not on the web site yet, sorry)
the Border Leicester bulky yarn (one skein makes a very handsome scarf suitable for a special gift)
Alpaca/Merino lace weight
the odds and ends bins
roving
Sue Burke’s designer bags (with the designers eye for color selection, beautifully knit and finished)
and honey!

wanted to let you all know that we will be at the Leesburg Homegrown Farmers market on Dec 3rd and 10th. come see us in our home County!

and last, a note to Karen A.: got your email asking for yarn recommendation for the Pole sweater. I sent you a long email but it came back undeliverable…help! contact me again please.

If we don’t see you, have a wonderful Thanksgiving and thank you for all your support. We are grateful.
-Gretchen
f-fsolitude@mindspring.com

Howdy!
So many good things are happening for us! First, Sue has lambs! The first two were born this week:

For those of you not properly introduced: meet Nell, a proud Karakul ewe from Sue Bundy’s RedGate farm, and her two new lambs Margaret and Madelyn. Karakuls have many desirable characteristics and one of them is they will breed “out of season” meaning just about any time of year they are allowed to. Sue loves fall lambing. If she doesn’t show up at market with me on Sunday you can guess that she needed to stay home for a bit of midwifery (my fingers are crossed that everybody decides to wait until next week…).

The other crazy lucky thing for us is not one, not two, but three bits of press for Solitude this month:
1. Piecework magazine’s November issue is all about wool. Deb Robson, author of (the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook) wrote an article about preserving rare breeds of sheep, focusing on four breeds. One of them is the American Tunis and there is a project for a hat to knit…using Solitude Wool Tunis! So cool.
I still haven’t seen the issue, but I’ve ordered it… You can download the chart for the hat designed by Kristi Schueler at the link above.

2. The Knitter’s Life List by Gwen Steege. Check out the cool sweepstakes at the link. This book came out in September, but I’ve just gotten over the shock of it now. I’m one of the people to meet on your knitting life list. You all can check off that one! It is a really nice write up about us and our yarns and another great photo of one of Sue’s Karakul lambs from a couple years ago.

and 3. Knit Local, Celebrating America’s Homegrown Yarns by Tanis Gray. Solitude Wool is one of 28 yarn companies in this book. There is information about us and photos of my Romney sheep (they are all full of themselves now). But the best part is the the Farmhouse Gloves that Kristin Nicholas designed using Solitude Wool Romney semi-worsted yarn. They are really wonderful. I think they are THE best pattern in the book, but just like shepherd’s all think their breed of sheep is the best, I suspect I am not very objective about this.

This book was just released on November 1st. Tanis Gray lives in DC. She isn’t doing a big book tour because she also just had a baby…but last Sunday afternoon she did a book signing at Fiber Space yarn store in Alexandria, Virginia where she teaches knitting, this Saturday (Nov 12th) she will be in New York City at The Yarn Company doing a book signing from 1-4pm (and they asked us for some yarn…hope the box arrived safely today) and the following Saturday, November 19th, Tanis will be at Looped Yarn Works for a book signing. Looped is just a couple blocks from the Dupont farmers market on Connecticut Ave. in DC. Easy for our DC/MD/VA customers! In fact, we need to thank Susan from Looped for telling Tanis about us in the first place. Thank you Susan!!!

As you can see in the photo of the Farmhouse Gloves…they use five colors of the Romney yarn. Well, if you buy five skeins of the Romney, you will have enough yarn for the gloves, a hat and a quite generous scarf to boot. We will work on figuring out the yardage needed for the gloves and make up some smaller skeins, but who knows how long it will take us to get that figured out and done. So we had an idea (hoping that lots of people make these fabulous gloves), if you show us your copy of Knit Local, you can pick out five different colors of the Romney yarn, pay for four and get the fifth one free. If you don’t want a lots leftover, maybe you have friends or family worthy of such fantastic gloves to make winter happier? or maybe knitting friends who would share yarn and you can do a knit along?

So, come by the FreshFarm market at Dupont this Sunday, or every Sunday now til Christmas (weather permitting) and see what we have on offer. This week:
Targhee 3-ply
Tunis (as in Piecework)
Karakul
Leicester Longwool/Border Leicester nature dyed yarn
Romney semi-worsted (as in Knit Local)
ready to spin or felt roving
just a few special knit/felted bucket bags by Sue Burke
and honey from Solitude (it’s hiding in a thermal bag keeping warm, so ask us!)

hope to see you soon, or if you can’t make it to the market, remember you can order from the web site: www.solitudewool.com

Thank you!
Gretchen
f-fsolitude@mindspring.com

Howdy, and welcome to all the new folks on the list that we met at Stitches East last weekend.

How could it possibly be the end of October…how? Everything is whizzing by and the faster I attempt to go, the faster time goes. Guess I need to get some zen back and try to slow myself down, maybe that would have the desired effect…
Here is my question: we will be at the Dupont market in DC every Sunday now until Christmas (barring rain greater than a drizzle). I think I should send an email every other week and list what we will be taking for both weekends. That is my plan, but if you would rather have an email every week with just what’s on offer for one Sunday, let me know: my email is: f-fsolitude@mindspring.com. If more than a bunch say every week, I’ll do it. I don’t want to get on your nerves. This was probably the wrong week to start this because we have so much new stuff it is really getting long. Sorry, just skim it or peek at the photos…

This Sunday, Oct 30th
First, to celebrate Halloween, we will brings all yarns orange and black…and they will be 10% off. Throwing in some spinning fibers too…

We’re bringing out one of our most popular fall and winter yarns: The Border Leicester Bulky. This is a true category 5, bulky yarn spun from natural colored fleeces. It is a giant 9 oz skein and one will make a generous size scarf. This batch is near sold out, but there are three new dyed colors: a turquoise, a red/orange and deep red crimson, plus a few green skeins. A scarf would be fast to knit in this yarn and it would be a wonderful holiday gift.

The highlight of our Stitches adventure was having an entry in the Friday night Fashion Show: the felted bucket bag designed and created by Sue Burke (our longtime best customer and person who know our yarns better than we do). We will bring that bag and others this Sunday along with the Tunis yarn that pairs with Karakul for a fun to knit handbag. This is a case of one yarn plus one yarn adds up to a better kind of texture. We still can’t completely visualize what the two yarns together will look like when felted, but it is always a wonderful reveal! Here are two of the Sue’s newest creations, the first pairing a solid red Karakul and a solid red Tunis:

the second is the natural gray heather Karakul with a random handpainted Tunis:

So of course, there was a mad dash to dye new colors before the big show. Here is a shot of three skeins of random handpainted Tunis. These were all dyed together and have a common color: a blue stripe. But beyond that stripe all sorts of different things happen in the skeins. They probably change patterning from the beginning to the end of the skein and skein to skein there are whole different colors as you can see. I like them…and they are fun for me to dye, a bit of a twist.

The Karakul is both a new batch of freshly spun white yarn and newly dyed colors. It is made with the best of RedGate’s fleeces that Sue was saving up for herself…but relinquished for this spin. We’ve also adjusted the length of the skein so it better matches our other yarns and you won’t have waste when making the felted bucket bag. It is the nicest, drapiest Karakul yarn I’ve experienced. There are six new colors, plus the charcoal and really nice black lamb:

Other yarns we are bringing this Sunday: The Shropshire baby yarn, The Dorset sock kits and also the solid skeins, the Romney and the Shropshire double twist yarns. And I finally finally finally finished formatting the pattern for Joan Hutton’s slip stitch vest that uses the Romney and the Shrop double twist. I’ll wear the vest Sunday, it is very comfortable and easy to knit. Sizing is easy, so it would be a good thing to knit for someone special…

Okay, change of weekend:
Sunday, November 6th:
Here is another freshly spun, introduced at Stitches East, batch of yarn: Border Leicester aran weight (a heavy worsted) yarn. This is a white yarn with wonderful drape and great lustre. The skeins are a generous 8 oz., 240+ yds. The un-dyed white is a beautiful ivory color for $42.00 and the dyed colors are $48. This first round is a very preppy palette: maybe rugby sorts of colors. Here is a yarn that can safely be used for men’s accessories or sweaters.

We will also bring the Corriedale/Corriedale cross yarn. I have two new solids and two new handpaints in this yarn:

And maybe I’ll have my market vest (using the Corrie X yarn) finished and can wear it. We have the pattern (designed by Andrea Price)!

Rest of what we will bring: The Suffolk/Dorset sock yarn, the Tunis/Alpaca yarn and the Targhee 3/ply.

Phew. Sorry, too much new stuff makes a too long email.
Thanks,
Gretchen