Sue and I will be speaking at Dog House Yarns 3rd Annual Spring Knitting Retreat on Saturday, April 20th at Graves Mountain Lodge in Madison County, Virginia. We are really looking forward to a lovely day, meeting knitters and getting to tell our story and share info with lots of samples of different types of wool and talking abut yarn structure and how they go together. There are still spots available, but you need to be pre-registered.

note May 1st:
Thank you for having us Dog House! we had a great time and are looking forward to having your group up soon to she Solitude Wool corner of the warehouse to talk wool some more.

Can’t share photos of my lambs yet. I was off gallivanting at fiber festivals and events last October and late to provide a date for my ewes. Most shepherds, however, are either all done or in the thick of it. The little sweetie above is a Montadale lamb from Child’s Montadales in West Virginia.

I was on a mission to get some photos of Montadales and see if baby lambs would like our Montadale baby yarn; they did! They were really cute and their curiosity overcame their caution pretty quickly. That little black one was the flock trouble maker, first to touch it.

I asked Dick Childs what he did with his wool. He answered “you don’t want to know.” Well that answered my question, but I asked again anyway. “I burn it” he said. Mr Childs is a realistic farmer. Unlike some of us (read: me) he isn’t willing to lose money just because you (read: I) think it’s worth it. Even though he has some very nice sheep (champion show sheep), it costs him more to hire a shearer than he can sell the fleece for.

This is the story that Sue and I heard so often that motivated us to start Solitude Wool. He was really interested in what we were doing (especially paying a much higher price for fleece) and said if we were interested in his wool, he would hire a shearer (he is clipping them himself now, just getting the wool off). I don’t think we can this year. We are pretty full up of Montadale, but I want to! I just hate that good wool goes to waste, and it does!

You all can help. What we need is people to rediscover what a fabulous fiber wool is and appreciate and buy it…at all levels, from spinning fibers to yarn to crafted items and manufactured goods too. Save the sheep. Save the Farms. Save open pasture land. Okay, I worked myself up. No more coffee this morning and I’ll step down…

Montadale baby yarn on cones

The wool in our new batch of Montadale Baby yarn (a big box just arrived!) is from Saffer’s Montadales in Maryland. They have a good sized flock and Sue and Bill went just after Thanksgiving for shearing day. I had dyed all of our first batch and have been waiting for this to arrive so I can do more. But right now we can offer it undyed on cones. Okay all you weavers: how great to have a soft, washable wool to weave a baby blanket, or something nice for a big baby of any age? We pulled out a few 1 pound and 8 to 9 oz cones to get on the web site. Sue and I are not very skilled on the web site and need help (calvary is on it’s way) to get both the skeins and the cones up correctly…but there is a bad version that will let you order the 1 pound size on the site. Know that with all our yarn on cones, we most likely have lots of cones of different weights. We can put together an order to closely match your project needs.

Jacob sheep, see it now, spin it later…?

Sue and I visited Shiloh Manor Farm in Loudoun County, Virginia to see their small flock of Jacob sheep in full fleece right before they were sheared. Oh they are so attractive! We hope to have some Jacob roving this year.

I really should save these photos and send them out when we actually have product to sell, but I’ll rationalize it by helping you understand how long it takes even to make roving. The clock is starting. Will let you know when we have it made. But also, I wanted to show your these Jacob lambs. How cute are they?!

Farmers Markets this weekend (rain could be a problem)

We will be packed up and ready to go with Alpaca/Merino, Karakul (three new colors), Tunis, Romney (two new handpaint colors), the Shropshire double twist, Suffolk/Dorset (on sale), Montadale baby, yarn on cones for weaving, roving, odds and ends and I have three sheep pelts this week. The weather forecast is not so promising, but if it’s questionable, I will go with the most optomistic forecast and hope for the best. I don’t want to miss! Check the web site by 6:30 am the morning of the market if you want to know if we are NOT coming. If there isn’t anything, we will be there. Falls Church, Virginia market on Saturday from 9 to noon and Dupont Circle, Wash DC from 10 to 1.

Thank you!

Gretchen

Hi,
It’s raining. Not drizzle, rain. And the radar leads me to believe (I no longer trust forecasts on Sunday mornings, I think everybody is sleeping in) that there will be more this morning.

I’m really sorry. Before I was a farmer, I was a farmers market shopper. I was mad when I went to get something and the vendor wasn’t there. And it’s present buying time. So. I’m staying home…sending two orders along with Mary Ellen to the Endless Summer Harvest booth for pick up, and any phone or online orders today (from the lower 48 states anyway) get free shipping. I will be happy to help shop by phone: 540-554-2312.

Gretchen

Happy Thanksgiving everyone

Personally, I’m going nuts trying to put the house/life back together before Thursday (and no doubt it will be good enough, deadlines are oh so effective). In spite of the fact that I’m not behaving like it, I know Thanksgiving isn’t about a clean house, or a turkey. I will be trying to stop and consider how incredibly much I have to be thankful for. The list is long including the wonderful people in my life, the farm and animals, a great business partner (thank you Sue!), excellent help (thank you Debbie, Susan, Bill, Deborah, Caroline, Ava, Ben…Alice, Connie, Cheryl, Dave and John), a great landlord (thank you Endless Summer Harvest) and especially all our customers and supporters (happily way too long to list, but thank you each and all).

This is a good start and I can refine and expand my gratefullness over the next two days.

Then it’s back to work! Hope to see you if you are here over the weekend. We will be at the Falls Church Farmers market on Saturday and the Dupont Circle, DC Farmers market on Sunday.

Bringing: Romney, Shropshire double twist, the Corriedale/Corrie cross, Leicester Lonwool/Border Leicester, Alpaca/Merino, preview yarns: Montadale Woolen, Montadale baby and Cotswold lace, odds & ends, prepared roving for spinning and felting.

Plus, if you are looking for a fabulous gift for someone, we do have Susan Burke original felted bucket bags…or yarn makes a pretty fabulous gift too.

Hope you have a warm, wonderful Thanksgiving.

Gretchen

Greetings!
Have you missed us? I’ve missed you all.
We are all looking forward to the other side of the cold front arriving with cooler, dryer weather, especially the sheep! It is getting darker and darker…hope I can get this email out quickly before we lose internet or power.

Jasmine, just waiting for cooler weather

This Saturday is the Uniquities Fiber Farmers market at the Community Center in Vienna, Virginia from 1 to 5 PM. This is one of our favorite events. We like all the folks at Uniquities, we like to see our local farm friends and boy do we love the air conditioning! Since Uniquities has developed a great spinning community, we will be showcasing spinning fibers: prepared roving of many breeds, all from local sheep. We will also bring some washed fleece (just Romney I think) and some dyed fleece.

We have a few new rovings to introduce this Saturday:

white Romney with dyed Cotswold

Leicester Longwool

Targhee handpaint

Targhee forest

Cotswold lambs wool

Tunis

We are also bringing two of our new yarns. One, some undyed preview skeins of a Montadale yarn that we had spun at Bartlettyarns in Maine. It is a true woolen spun yarn; for you spinners, this mill uses a mule spinner that is like a long draw spinning method. Bartlettyarns made a video of it being spun if you want to check it out. This yarn is very light and warm. I think it is the perfect winter hat yarn. Check it out and feel free to suggest colors, I’ll be dyeing it soon.

The other yarn we are introducing is Targhee 2-ply, worsted weight, woolen spun (not quite as woolen as the Montadale though). I’ve started dyeing some of this and I’m feeling inspired to create a color wheel for some bright fun knitting. Back to school! The handpainted colors will help with a little color theory…red plus yellow make orange etc. This yarn is pretty versatile, good for all sorts of things, but seems especially nice for sweaters to me. Ohh, can hardly wait for sweater weather!

Look for several batches that we have on clearance sale at 20% off: Shropshire baby yarn and Leicester Longwool and Border Leicester nature dyed.

Hope to see you Saturday!!
Gretchen

Oh man, it’s Summer! Still have a few hours of Spring left, and actually it doesn’t feel horrible yet, but it’s coming…
I was out at first light firing up the dye pots and rinsing yarn dyed yesterday, Sue is washing (and drying at lightning speed) just sheared llama fleeces (they stick to you in this weather…Sue says she is covered) but, the animals are cooled out, hanging around napping in the shade. It’s best not to consider who is smarter sometimes.

This Sunday we finish up our Spring market season at the Dupont FreshFarm Market in DC. I haven’t heard or looked at the forecast, hoping it’s cooler!
We are going to bring:
• Alpaca/Merino
• Border Leicester sport weight (nature dyed)
• Leicester Longwool/Border Leicester (nature dyed) (20% off)
• Shropshire baby yarn (20% off)
• Romney aran (couple new colors)
• Shropshire double twist
• Suffolk/Dorset boot sock (some new colors)
• Targhee 3 ply (some new colors…)

Market customers have had an advantage…because I have not updated the web site with all the new colors for way too long. But that is one thing that is going to change during our Summer market break! I will send an email out announcing updates! We have a big to-do list going…dyeing and preparing information for several new yarns: a new Targhee 2-ply, a Montadale baby yarn, A Montadale woolen spun heavy worsted yarn, a Romney variagated single…very interesting, and another single that is North Country Cheviot blended with Romney (weaving yarns!). What else? A Cotswold lace yarn and new breeds and dyed-in-the-wool colors of roving. Busy! And Sue is off to farms to buy more fleece! wash more fleece! go! go! No napping under the trees for us! We are also going to do some business planning (not as fun, but really important).

Coming up soon: The Tour de Fleece spin-along (we spin yarn during the Tour de France) check out the group on Ravelry, we have a team: Peace & Solitude. Starts Saturday June 30th
shortly to be followed by…Ravelympics. Yep, we will be knitting athletes. Again, it is a group on Ravelry and we have a team: Peace & Solitude. Cast on during the opening ceremonies!

Then our next outing will be the Uniquities Fiber Farmers Market on Saturday, July 21st at the Vienna Community Center in Vienna, Virginia. 1 pm to 5 pm in lovely air conditioning…

Hope to see you this Sunday at Dupont!
Thanks,
Gretchen

Good Morning!

Thank you to everyone who came to the Field day at RedGate last week to meet and learn about Karakul sheep. It was a beautiful day and Sue and I are still happy because everyone had a good time. You know how sometimes a party just has that magic and you know it’s good?, we felt it. We are working on the second one and it’s tentatively planned for Sunday, September 16th, save the date!

I so love this cool weather. Once again, I’m rushing the email because today (and maybe into tomorrow?) is barn cleaning day here at Solitude. Normally I would have this done already, but hey, I’ve been busy. Here is the before, from afar so you can’t really see how bad it is:

I’m visualizing the after…today the John Deere and I get a bit of a workout. See the goats relaxing in the barn? They hate cleaning day because they get booted out. I would be happy if someone would come clean my house, but they will feel very put out.

WWKIP day
WWKIP day, if you don’t know, stands for World Wide Knit in Public day. This year it runs from June 9th through the 17th…eight days long, hmmmm. We will start this Saturday, June 9th, at the Falls Church Farmers market. Our booth is right on Park Avenue, on the grass by the brick sidewalk under big trees. It is the coolest spot at the market and is a perfect place to sit and knit in public for awhile. Bring a chair, some money (for coffee, a yogurt smoothy, donuts or a crepe snack from the market) and of course…your knitting and join us! Just in case you don’t have a project going and need to pick up some yarn, we will bring a swift and ball winder. We have four prizes to offer, so if you come you can put your name into a hat and we will do a drawing once an hour on the 45′s. Come early, winners get to pick out their prize, so first one has the best choice. Must be there and knitting in public to win.

prizes: Leicester Longwool (lemon chiffon) roving, a skein of the Alpaca/Merino lace weight yarn, a pattern and yarn to make knit-to-felt karakul coasters (from last weekends mini-workshop), or a $12 Solitude Wool coupon. If we all have fun, maybe we can do it again next week also at Falls Church? This week and next will be our last two Falls Church markets until the end of August. During the market break we will be busting something making yarn for you all: using Summer solar power to wash/dry fleece; dyeing dyeing dyeing; rinsing, rinsing, rinsing and drying, drying, drying.

Sunday we will be at the Dupont FreshFarm market. We will have all the same yarn and bring the swift and ball winder because in the afternoon, Looped is sponsoring a WWKIP event in the Dupont Circle. So if you are in DC and don’t have a project going…stop by our stand first and get fixed up!

At market this week:
1. Karakul
2. Tunis
3. Romney
4. Shropshire double twist
5. Targhee 3-ply (great summer yarn)
6. Dorset sock kits (already in balls with a pattern)
7. Fire & Ice kits (easy and small and great for the hot weather to keep your water cool)
8. Odds and Ends bin
and sale yarns (two more weeks!):
9. Leicester Longwool/Border Leicester natural dyed
10. Shropshire baby yarn

That’s it!
time to get tough and clean the barn!
Gretchen

Sale? Solitude Wool?
yes, very unusual for us. We are personally attached to our yarn, we’ve handled every skein from it’s fleecey birth to adding the label and we have a hard time letting it go. So I’m looking at this as a business growth stage for us, we need to grow up. Four different batches of yarn will be on sale this week at the Falls Church and Dupont farmers markets: Border Leicester bulky yarn, the Leicester Longwool/Border Leicester yarn, Clun Forest/alpaca yarn and the Shropshire baby yarn
20% off the marked price. This week will have the best color selection and I will bring as much of the inventory that I can fit in the truck. As always, if we have what you are looking for back at home, and you buy it at the market, we will mail it to you for free.

In addition, we are bringing:
Romney
Icelandic, natural dyed
Corriedale/Corrie X

Coming up soon!
Sunday June 3rd: our first Solitude Wool Field Day at RedGate Farm in Leesburg. Come meet and learn about Karakul sheep and see the farm and apiary. You can hang out and knit on your own or register for the knit-to-felt coaster mini workshop using Karakul yarns. There are two spots left in the 12:30 mini-workshop and three in the 2:30 workshop. You can pre-register by emailing me at f-fsolitude@mindspring.com or hope there is still space when you arrive. Email next week with directions and other specifics (or check previous blog post about it).

If you’re blowing time, there is a you-tube from Bartlettyarns just up yesterday of them spinning a Montadale yarn for us. I haven’t seen it, because I have awful satellite internet here and can’t get it, but Bartlettyarns uses a Mule-spinner which is a rarity these days. The spinner makes a woolen spun yarn just like I would on a wheel: with a long draw. I could never imagine it until Sue and I saw it in action at the mill a couple months ago. It is very cool! Search for Solitude yarn on youtube.com

Thanks,
Hope to see you at the markets this weekend (wear sunscreen, it’s going to be hot)
Gretchen

Greetings!
This Saturday will be our first time doing two events at once (a milestone I think): we will be at the Falls Church Farmers market from 8 am to Noon and we will be on the Loudoun County Spring Farm Tour at our warehouse location with Endless Summer Harvest in Purcellville from 10:00 am to 4 pm.

Falls Church: We had a lovely time last week for our first time at market. Thank you to our friends who came to welcome us and all the new local fiber folk. Our official spot is a little off the main path, so keep looking for us; we are under a lovely tree on Park Avenue, just to the east of the main entrance. Each week, we bring different yarns, but if you are interested in something not listed, you can send me an email and we will bring it for you. This week at Falls Church:
• Alpaca Merino lace weight
• Tunis, woolen spun, worsted weight
• Karakul (fabulous felting yarn, see felted bag samples)
• Border Leicester aran weight
• Corriedale bulky (we have a wonderful pillow pattern for this yarn)
• Dorset boot sock kits (not too many left after the Yarn Harlot knit a pair!)
• Leicester Longwool/Border Leicester nature dyed yarn
• Shropshire baby yarn
• Suffolk/Dorset boot sock yarn
• Tunis/alpaca nature dyed yarn
• roving for spinning or felting
do I really think I can fit all this in the truck…hmmm.

Farm Tour: Come see our new digs at Endless Summer Harvest farm in Purcellville. Sue will be there to show off our new space. We are so thrilled to have room to store the yarn on cones, a great place for our new motorized skeining equipment, all our inventory, a big table for mailing off orders around the country (and occasionally across the seas), all the market tents and accoutrement and even a table for us to meet at. We will have yarn on display and for sale, Debbie will have the skein winders going, our friend Nancy will be there spinning plus…you can also see the Endless Summer Harvest greenhouses and get a lettuce wrap. The weather sounds great! Do come!

Coming up really soon: June 3rd Field day at RedGate farm to see/experience Karakul sheep and fiber. I will be sending out information to those of you registered for the knit-to-felt mini-workshops. There are still a few spots open, send me an email (f-fsolitude@mindspring.com) if you would like to save a spot, but if you want to just come to the farm, you don’t need to pre-register. $15 entrance fee includes a $10 towards a Solitude Wool purchase that day. Details here

And at Solitude…it’s spring rush:

This is what most of my photos of the triplets look like…a blur of jumping, running, butting, climbing. The lambs are already concentrating on the important things…eating. I will post more photos on our facebook page.

Thank you all, hope to see you at the market and at Solitude Wool warehouse.
Gretchen

First, our big news! We are really excited and proud to be new vendors at the Falls Church (Virginia) farmers market. This Saturday is our first time. We have made a few trips in in preparation and I can tell you it is a really, really nice market. There are several vendors we know from Dupont, but there are quite a few we didn’t know, including a vendor that makes mini-donuts right there (so dangerous!). I also got really great strawberries. The hours for Summer are 8:00am to noon, directions on the web site link above. I think the plan is for us to be on the grass at the front of the market but I won’t know until we get there. Do look for us! say hey!

Sunday we will be at the Dupont FreshFarm market as usual. And it is Mother’s Day! All you knitting, corcheting, spinning and felting mothers; wouldn’t you love a present of local yarn or spinning fiber? All you children of those mothers, consider a beautiful bouquet of skeins of yarn for your treasured mom. We are bringing lots of beautiful yarns this week to both markets:
• Border Leicester sport yarn in two undyed and many natural dyed colors
• Icelandic yarn in lots of undyed and several natural dyed colors
• Romney in four undyed and quite a few synthetic dyed colors
• Shropshire double twist, white and dyed
• Shropshire baby yarn, white and dyed
• Alpaca Merino lace weight in undyed black and a few dyed-in-the-wool colors
• Targhee 3-ply in white and dyed colors
• Roving: many breeds and colors including our new Cotswald pin drafted that is really beautiful

Brief report from Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival:
1. It was a great weekend, the weather much better than forecast (thank you!) and we were thrilled to see lots of old friends and meet many new ones.
2. Cindy O’Neill won a 3rd place ribbon for the crocheted capelet (her original design) made with our Border Leicester yarn and a first for another piece too. Congratulations Cindy!

3. I got my Knitter’s Life List signed by Gwen Steege (again!, thanks Gwen)
4. Rebecca Fox won the “Freddie” award for the weaver of the most unusual handwoven article in the Skein and Garment show with her blanket (mostly Solitude Wool yarns in warp and weft). Congratulations Rebecca!
5. We got to pick up two, freshly spun for us, yarns from mills: Green Mountain Spinnery and Battenkill Fibers. Thank you for saving us shipping costs! Look for these new yarns this summer…
6. Sue met a very fine Clun Forest ram:

I believe we are purchasing his fleece…can hardly wait to get enough wool for another batch of Clun Forest yarn.

Thank you all for reading this and supporting us! We appreciate you!
Gretchen