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 in a series of on-farm, direct experience learning about sheep breeds and their wool

K A R A K U L

RedGate Karakul sheep in full fleece

We want to share with you the way we get to learn about wool of different breeds of sheep: meet them, hang out and watch them, then stick your hands into the raw fleece on a skirting table, and if you like, knit with some Karakul yarn.
Sue Bundy, Solitude Wool partner and Chief of Fleece is inviting us into her farm, RedGate, just outside of Leesburg, Virginia. Sue raises and shows (mucho ribbons) Karakul sheep. Karakul is a rare breed and Sue works hard to promote and save these sheep. Sue will talk about the breed and introduce her sheep. You will also get a chance to see their chickens, turkeys and bees.

Sheared ewe with her lamb

other RedGate critters

freshly shorn Karakul fleece

During the day we are offering a Knitting mini-workshop: Karakul knit-to-felt
Knit and felt a coaster using Solitude Karakul yarn (including yarns specially dyed for this workshop), then take home enough yarn to finish a set of four. You should know how to knit, but it will be simple knitting and kids 8 and older may participate.
Two sessions: 12:30 and 2:30, space limited, reservations suggested (advance payment to reserve)

Or, bring your knitting (or spindle, or crochet…) with you, sit near the pasture and just soak up a bit of farm: sheep, chickens etc…

field trip details:
date: Sunday, June 3, 2012
when: Noon to 4:00pm
where: RedGate Farm, 17883 Running Colt Place, Leesburg, Virginia 20175
how much: $15 entrance (and you get a $10 coupon towards Solitude Wool purchase that day)
workshop (optional): $30 includes instruction, pattern and yarn

Reservations suggested for the Knitting mini-workshop (limited number of participants), but if there is space left, you may join the group that day.
To reserve, send an email to Gretchen at: f-fsolitude@mindspring.com, she will send you a PayPal request to complete your reservation.

what season is this?

the wonderful part of growing things is you get enjoy them so many times: anticipate how great they will be, then appreciate them at their peak…and again when you get to eat…or dye with them! This year’s daffodils will get put to use very soon, but as you fiber folks know, textile arts require many steps and mucho time to finish (slow yarn!). If you want to knit in season though, you’re in luck. There are daffodil dyed yarns available in the Border Leicester/Leicester Longwool, the Icelandic, and one skein in the Border Leicester sport.

This Saturday, St. Patrick’s day, we will be in Vienna Virginia at the Community Center for the Uniquities Fiber Farmers Market. This is a gem of an event. Do you want to get to know the growers of natural fibers in the DC fiber shed? This is the best place to start. We are going to have a guest with us this Saturday, Kathy Owens, a new knitwear designer. Kathy is almosty ready to publish several patterns (they are in the final editing stages). Three of the patterns were developed with Solitude yarns and Kathy is offering them (draft previews) free with a yarn purchase from us. Too nice of her! They are good patterns.

Then Sunday we will be at the Dupont FreshFarm Market in DC. Even though it is feeling like summer…it is still the winter market and hours are 10am to 1pm. We will pare down our offerings a little (Sue and I couldn’t fit in the booth last time), but are still trying to figure out how to bring it all…

Hope to see you this weekend, or via the website!
Gretchen

Good evening! Hope you have had a nice leap day.

Well, I’m pretty well fixed. Sue and I will be back to the farmers market this Sunday at Dupont Circle in DC. Thank goodness.

I haven’t mentioned it, but a generous offer and unbelievable opportunity came our way thanks to Mary Ellen Taylor of Endless Summer Harvest (a fellow Loudoun County Farm and vendor at Dupont). We have taken over a corner of their big warehouse. I’m sure I haven’t thanked Mary Ellen and all the folks at ESH enough (a fault of mine, I need to follow Mary Ellen’s example, because she is so good at expressing her appreciation for everyone!). This is life altering for us. Here at Solitude and at RedGate, we were about to suffocate in mountains of fleeces and yarn. We are still moving and organizing and it is already great.

One of the great benefits of crawling from under our fiber seems to be creating a little clear space in our minds to think about things in a new way. It may take awhile for us to work it out, but we are going to try to bring a selection of all our yarns to every market. We hope you will find just what you need and we aren’t just telling you about a yarn that we don’t have with us. We will have to bring less of each batch, but can check how much is available and will deliver next time we are at market or ship (no charge). From us to DC usually takes only one day. Over the next few markets we would love to have your feedback. Is it better this way or would you rather go back to the old way?

There are some new yarns to highlight this week:
Alpaca/Merino lace weight yarn: we have two new dyed in the wool colors to add to the palette. Both these yarns are primarily white alpaca. One is 80% white with 20% dyed Merino wool that is a lovely tropical teal color

and the other new color is white with some black alpaca and 20% dyed Merino in purples (skein and knitted sample on the right). I photographed it with the black and gray alpaca with 20% dyed Merino in pinks and purples for comparison.

On the web site, quantities of labeled skeins available are indicated, but we have lots available. This yarn is dyed in the wool and blended at the mill, meaning there are no dye lots: the whole color lot matches. Sue is almost finished knitting a lace shawl out of the black. Maybe she will have it to show this Sunday? It also works beautifully as a soft fine weft in weaving. Available on cones.

Another great thing that is possible because of more working room: fabulous new skeining equipment. We can make longer skeins which opens up new opportunities for me dyeing yarn. The larger skeins make it more successful to handpaint heavier yarns and the first experiments are with the Romney aran weight. I only got a couple done before the P-neumonia got me. Here is a peek:

These handpainted skeins are longer (than the solid and undyed skeins): 205 yds/187 meters; 7 oz./198 grams and are $49
In addition to the summer solstice color above I have one with dark blues on gray yarn. Plus, three new solid dyed colors: two blues and a new honey orange 2. Will have them at the market and up on the web site next week.

Hope to see you this Sunday or hear from you via email or web site.
Thanks,
Gretchen
f-fsolitude@mindspring.com

Greetings on this rainy, gray day.
Sorry to say that I am still sick. Turns out, it is pneumonia. I am improving, but it is very slow. I’m going to listen to my body and stay home. Solitude Wool will miss the Dupont Farmers market again this week. Sorry! Promise we will be back with bells on asap.

Since I don’t have regular business, seems like a good opportunity to share with you wool appreciators one of the things shepherds have to consider to produce the best wool: when to shear. What time of year?, before lambing?, after? how often? Not doing it right can wreck a fleece. As I bet you all are learning, different breeds of sheep grow different types of wool, and how fast they grow it is pretty wildly different. Most Fine wool, Down type and Medium wool breeds grow wool slowly and usually get sheared once a year. Many Primitive breeds grow their fleece so fast (up to an inch a month), that they need to be sheared every 6 months. And then there are the Longwool breeds that might make it a full year, but those last two months might really dry out or mat the fleece. As a rule of thumb…it is a good idea to shear ewes about a month before lambing. So, for spring lambing, much of the shearing happens from January through April, but farms might shear nearly any month during the year depending on their own circumstances.

Sue (our Chief of Fleece) is just starting her busiest season. Every fleece that we buy is hand selected one at a time. And the way Sue likes to do it is on farm, on shearing day as they come right of the sheep, still warm. Sue tells me all the time that she wishes everyone could sink their hands into hundreds of fleeces and how much they would learn. It is, however, both very hard work (I attest to it!) and one of the most important factors that distinguish our yarns. We can’t make really good yarn without really good wool, and all fleeces are not equal. It isn’t complicated, but takes real love of wool…or you might start to cut corners. Not Sue. On the other hand, we want to provide a market for wool from small local farms. We want to buy as many good fleeces as we can for the fairest price. It’s a balancing act.

This Sunday, WeatherLea Farm will get their Romney sheep sheared (fingers crossed for decent weather). We have been buying fleeces from WeatherLea from the very first year Sue and I started Solitude Wool. Their fleeces were in our first batch of Romney yarn and I think, just about every batch since too. WeatherLea is like many Loudoun County, Virginia farms in that it is small and works hard on several fronts to make the farm “work.” The Baldwins have a vineyard, sheep, llamas and a beautiful 1790′s farm that is a wonderful venue for weddings, events and weekend getaways in a charming cottage. They use their wool to have custom blankets made (available for sale) and occasional other wool products, but those great sheep keep growing good wool. We love that we can buy it from them.

So…we have been talking for a couple years now about having a Solitude Wool…something?… at WeatherLea… sometime. Maybe this spring when there are new lambs?
If we have an event…what would you all be most interested in? a knitting class? a wine tasting? farm touring? learning about Romneys…??? We would love to hear what you would like, and if it is worth a day trip to the country. And to get you interested, here are WeatherLea farm reps to invite you out:

Thanks!
Man, do I hope I’m back to the market in two weeks!!!!!
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

and wooly Season’s Greetings!

Sue and I and all the folks we drag into the Solitude Wool endeavor (Joan, Bill and Debbie) wish you a warm and wonderful holiday. Hope we get to pass on those wishes in person to you this Sunday at the Dupont FreshFarm Market in DC (our last market of 2011).

And if you are more together than I…and can look ahead to January, we will be at Vogue Knitting Live in NYC again this year. It is Jan 14/15 and sounds like quite a line up…mucho knitting celebs. More about it in January…

Merry Christmas!!!
G

Howdy,
We will be at the Leesburg, Virginia HomeGrown Farmers market again this Saturday and the Dupont FreshFarm market on Sunday.
All different yarns this week:
•Border Leicester aran weight. This is our newest Border Leicester yarn (different than both the ones we had last week). It is a silky feeling, lustrous big hank of yarn that will drape beautifully and knit up fast. The palette to start is pretty traditional, some very handsome colors. Have a preppie person in your life (or yourself…) that prefers to express their creativity anyplace else besides their wardrobe? These are the colors for them. But they also can work for those of us who get excited by off the wall color combinations, here is the anchor to build on. And…right now, the yarn isn’t on the web site. You will have to come to the market to see/touch it. Soon though we will get this batch up.

three of the four new colors this week

some of the rest of the palette...

• the Karakul, the Tunis, and the last of the Tunis/Romney cross yarns. All the fabulous ingredients you need to make your own knit-to-felt bucket bag. We have the pattern, designed for us by Sue Burke. It is fun to knit, a magic transformation to felt and will be a handbag that will last, both in style and strength.
Now…if you don’t want to knit it, or don’t have time, we have several already made by Sue Burke, different color combinations and different sizes. They are beautiful.

• the Romney and the Shropshire double twist yarns. These are the two yarn ingredients in Joan Hutton’s Kimono vest pattern. I love this knitted vest. It is comfortable, very flattering because it has a vertical orientation, is easy to knit…and it uses a solid color (the Romney) in combination with a handpainted color (the Shropshire double twist) in the same way you can when you are weaving. I love handpainted yarns in a warp (and this vest). the colors move in and out with more grace and mystery than they do in most knitting.

detail of Joan Hutton's Kimono vest

Over the last few weeks of lucky warmth, I’ve been dyeing some new Romney colors and several new Shropshire handpainted yarns with this vest in mind. There are a multitude of new pairings. Too fun for me. I will display some together this weekend. I would love to suggest colors, especially to those of you who can’t make it to the market. If you are interested, email or call and we can discuss options.

the Romney and Shropshire together

• Kits! we will bring the yoga sock kits and the bottle cozy kits. Both are quick, small projects great for gifts: either for a knitter, or for you to knit for friends/family. they are both useful, different and wooly!

• bringing lots of wool roving beautifully prepared and ready to spin or felt. We have quite a many breeds and colors in 4oz. bags, enough for a hat or fingerless mittens. Two will be enough for a pair of socks or scarf, three enough for a generous scarf. We won’t bring more than one of each kind, but if you need more, we can get it to you. New this week: Dorset in undyed white. Socks anyone?

Last, anyone here read the Yarn Harlot’s blog? Well, that’s a silly question, I should ask if anyone doesn’t know the blog. Wow! Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is a knitting celeb. Stephanie bought one of our Dorset boot sock kits at Vogue Knitting Live last January. We, being farmers and not at all hip didn’t recognize her, but we did know of her (which shows you how much of a celeb she is, because we are really out of it!). I have been waiting all this time, hoping first that she would knit the kit…and then holding my breath that she would like it. Yeah! she did!. And that was the start of our excitement! We have been filling orders, dyeing yarn, filling orders, winding, balling, stacking, printing, cutting bamboo, filling orders and generally being amazed!

Thank you Yarn Harlot!
and hope to see you all this weekend, or hear from you!
Gretchen
f-fsolitude@mindspring.com

Hope everyone who got one likes it. I still have a list of orders I am working on filling, but there are some new kits back on the web site this afternoon. Get them while they last! That is the sad thing about artisan yarns. It is limited, I have only two more colors I can dye and soon we will have used it all up…until next year!

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