The Pursuit of Happiness

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Shiny blue, white or red

Glistening ribbons

Flicker and dangle in your hand

Turning memory of long and lonely hours 

Into shimmering pride and a dancing spirit.

 

Raising sheep, knitting sweaters, baking pies is not done for big money. 

There is barely enough money made to replenish the pasture or buy more wool for the next project.

Whether I am competing or not I do these things to stay connected; to my honest animals, the beautiful sweater that is trying to emerge from a neutral ball of yarn, or the bread that delights the senses and has probably sprung from a too big zucchini.

Any shepherd, knitter or good cook can look back on long days in the barn, hours of studying a pattern or testing a recipe over a hot fire.

There is no real authority to make you succeed - no one policing your efforts. It’s just one’s own desire and intrigue with the process that inspires us to push through the daily flak.

I loved watching our friend and mentor win his ribbons. And I have loved reading the blogs of knitters and other artists who also sparkle in the day.

A ribbon won frees you from your private contemplation and tosses you into a sparkling moment of public celebration. And it is a moment that will hopefully carry you through the long and darker days of winter and your future work.

A favorite teacher, who has spent a lifetime teaching music says “ We don’t have time for disappointment, we barely have time to do the work.”

You know that’s how it is In the Pursuit of Happiness.

Nuno Felting

This is my biggest experiment to date with Nuno.

I have an abundance of wool and also a seemingly endless supply of scarves. The two I used today I have owned for almost 30 years and while they are full of precious memories, I wanted to bring them into my future too.

This blog will be more pictures then words because I know the pictures will be what you study.

If I had one small piece of advice, it would be to repeat what you already hear every day - "experiment!" Each scarf I used behaved differently with the batting. The one shown was able to receive the wool fibers easily, while the other one (not shown) with a tighter weave, required some additional fiber on top and on the edge to finally bind the scarf with the wool. However, I loved the way my other scarf crinkled in response to the felting process.

For fiber I decided to go with batting. Yes, the books say to use roving (although I think they mean top and you could certainly use both as long as the wool is fine)but that nice roll of batting was calling out to me, so I hand painted it using the scarf as my muse.
I knew the color would morph dramatically from the original design, but that is half of the fun!. And it gave me a starting point and confidence in my color lay down - plus I love to paint wool. I only mention this because many of you may do your Nuno with roving you have purchased and you may not monkey around with all this dyeing alchemy. But if you do, it's lots of fun. It just takes a little more time. In fact, I allow one day for dyeing and then rest for a day while the wool dries before coming back to the actual felting.

You can see how the colors blended and ran and held their own at the same time. It's one of the things I love about blended color. This batting has not been felted at all, it has just been gently put through a heat-set dye. I wrapped it in a towel, put it in a lingerie bag and spun it in the washer before laying it flat to dry.

After a goods night rest and many repetitions of examining and re-examining my roving stash I was finally ready to commit to felt.
I lay down the bubble wrap (bubbles down! - if you don't you will get tell-tale bubble marks in your felting.) I have to admit that I gently s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d the batting out until it was even and almost one-third larger then my scarf. Then I put the batting down on the bubble wrap, the scarf on top of the batting and finally I arranged some leftover robin's egg blue and turquoise roving on top of the scarf, again using the original scarf pattern as my inspiration. One other thing I learned while doing this is that I could have thinned the roving even more. I had done a great job with the batting, but I feel that if I had to do it over again, I would have thinned the roving even more.

This is the part where you get so excited you can't stand it. It's like looking at a bowl of cookie dough and wondering who invented baking? Why not just enjoy it as is?

Now lay an old sheer curtain on top of your fiber sandwich to hold the fibers in place. Then take some mild soap and cold water and sprinkle it over your sandwich. I wore rubber gloves because my hands get so dry and then just massaged the entire scarf for about 20 - 30 minutes. I kept peeling the curtain off to make sure it didn't bond with the scarf and it worked out fine.
Once you've massaged the fibers in the cool soapy water enough to see they are grabbing the silk, you roll them in bamboo and hard felt as you normally would, just forget about the hot water. I did this for quite a while - well over an hour and were my arms sore the next day! I just kept thinking about the Tibetan video from my earlier post and decided I could just get over it and keep rollin'!

Once the felting was done, I rolled it in a light cloth, put it through the spin cycle and then hung it to dry.

I can't wait to share the pictures!! they will be inserted here soon!

Transformation is a great exercise and it was so much fun to see the color, the scarf, and the wool combine and change and blend into something new.

Mongolian Felt Making

Nomads in Spirit

Sometimes I feel like a Nomad of the Intenet, wandering cyberspace searching for some creative nourishment. I am looking for an idea, information or presentation that connects me to the rest of the world in a soulful way. I am looking for something I have never seen before, but something I recognize never-the-less. I know it when I see it. A bell goes off inside me and says, "Yes. This has meaning. This is rich and rings of truth and came from a heaven I know. And if someone else made it, that means they've been to my heaven - we've both been there, even if we've never met." Even if we're all pretty much nomads wandering the earth.

I find it in theatre, music, dance, art, nature and of course wool. These connections. They are like a warm energy. They are a raison d'etre. They inspire, please, energize and comfort.

I imagine I am making a photomosaic of my response to life and while I am not yet certain what the big picture looks like, I do recognize the small images when they present themselves. So part of my work as an artist is to go through my day wandering in search of a flower or sunshine or shelter or stream of consciousness that I can paste onto the canvas in my spirit and say "Yes. Here's another piece."

This video is one of those images. Some of you may see it merely as a study in anthropology. I see it as a marvel of timelessness, humanity, survival, simplicity, art, engineering, and the life-saving connection to the world around us. I hope you enjoy it and maybe even paste it into your mosaic.

Wooly Mammoth Wins State Fair Ribbon

I love the State Fair. Always have. As a little kid, I used to hit the pavement early in the morning with my pack of cousins and end the day by crawling through the sawdust of the Penny Arcade well after dark. During those years the Ag buildings were a distant curiosity, the draft horses huge and intimidating and sheep still part of a nursery rhyme in dreamland. The bright lights of the Midway and the Fun House mirrors were the draw back then.


But not this year. Now firmly in my 'middle-age' (sounds as expansive as Middle Earth) and running our sheep farm, the State Fair has taken on a delicious new flavor. Now I wander through the cow, horse and poultry barns with great admiration. And it was in the sheep barn five years ago, that we first met our breeder and mentor Scott Crawford. Scott was showing his Crawford Rambouillets and his back pocket was overflowing with ribbons. We were embarking on this journey then and I am so grateful we jumped on the wagon.


This year, with Scott's sturdy support, we entered 2 of our own rams. The first was a yearling favorite named Mo, who was born during our daughter's wedding last June. Mo was a bottle feeder we all came to love and he took a respectable fourth place ribbon in his category. But the most exciting was our spring ram, Wooly Mammoth, the biggest and most handsome ram we have ever lambed. He began growing his horns almost immediately after birth and just outgrew every other lamb in our flock. So, with a few rush charges at the American Rambouillet Sheep Breeders Association we completed his paperwork and he became the first Mackenzie Fields entry into this year's Minnesota State Fair Competition!


After 3 years of helping Scott show his sheep, our two kids have a healthy understanding of how to set the feet of an animal properly, how to protect sheep from the eager hands of fair-goers and how not to let a sheep escape from the show ring. This year was especially fun because the kids had grandparents and friends in the stands cheering them on as they shepherded their babies in. Very appreciated at 8:30 in the morning, especially since they came bearing sugar-covered mini-donuts!

But seeing little Wooly Mammoth ushered into the second place spot was the highlight of the fair for me. He didn't know what was happening to him, but the rest of us were proud to see the judges recognize what we already knew. He was a special boy and headed for a great future. That and watching my youngest daughter 'living large' in her cowboy boots with ribbons hanging out her back pocket and one special one hanging off her ponytail as she swaggered up to the Milk Booth for a tall cold one.

Shepherd's Harvest Festival -
Shepherding has a lot of lonely moments from lambing in the dark nights of late winter to hauling hay and grain in the high heat of July. We find great solace in the country and in the peace of the animals but much of our experience happens in solitary.

Until festival time!

Shepherds, spinners, knitters and other magical folk come out of the woodwork for a celebration of spring and the bounty that this year’s wool harvest brings.

A county fairground in Lake Elmo, MN comes to life with musicians, shepherds, and artists. Booths overflow with all the fixings a fiber artist or just a fiber lover could dream of. There is raw fleece, roving, combed top, handspun yarns, woven rugs, knitted shawls, felted hats and slippers and more then the eye or the mind can inhale. Alpaca, llama, buffalo, goat, rabbit and sheep fill the outbuildings with their charm and unabashed personality. And musicians delight and relieve shoppers and vendors alike. Commercial America melts into the background and the peculiarities and extraordinary talents of this melting pot bubble to the surface and swirl around in a dazzling display.

My son Christopher said it looked like Diagon Alley – the great street in Harry Potter where witches and wizards go to shop. It’s true everyone had some magnificent woolen art to wear. Felted bags, woven shawls, knit sweaters, everything made with love from the hands. One vendor remarked that it was the only time of year when it was acceptable to pet a stranger! Something as simple as wool and plant dye becomes art and wraps you in a wonderful spirit of creativity, peace and nature.

It was also a celebration of family for this world often presents multiple generations both in shepherding and artistry. For our part, we had the Loomis family wheel, circa 1870, to anchor the booth and attract onlookers. My daughter Heather (see picture above) wore a hat and sweater I made from our yarn, and spun our wool on one side of our booth while my daughter Kelsey knit her handspun to the delight of the shoppers on the other. Every grandmother in the world wanted to know if Kelsey’s large wooden needles – a gift from her own grandmother – was the secret to her skill.

We celebrated Mother’s Day in mystic Avolon style as Heather gave me a mobile made of twigs and wool and her handmade charms with glass images of 5 generations of women. After my daughter-in-law, Eszter, retrieved the fleeces from the competition we added our ribbons to the mobile and hung it all on the Great Wheel. Mystical and real all at the same time.

And to top the weekend off, I celebrated finishing up a felted sweater of my own design! I have sworn off knitting for at least 3 weeks so my little muscles can recover.

If you have a festival like this near you, I encourage you to go. You can travel to another world, uncover untold riches and never have to suffer an airplane.

Tuesday, March 15th - Shearing Day
Aside from hosting a wedding or some other once-in-a-lifetime event, this really is the biggest, single day of the year on the farm.

I spent weeks cleaning the barn so it would be ready to receive these beautiful fleeces! I scrubbed out horse stalls, power vacuumed the floors, set-up my fancy new skirting table, lay down tarps on the already clean floors, organized wood blocks with fleece numbers to mark the fleeces, gathered the notebook that keeps annual evaluations of each fleece, the genealogy records, etc, drew a How-to-skirt-Fleece poster for my helpers and then waited for the starting bell.

My husband Andrew put many long hard hours into cleaning the feedlot. Taking advantage of good weather days, he removed all the winter bedding, realigned gates and put temporary plywood flooring down for the shearer. We were nothing if not prepared.

Tim Kroll, our shearer is a real expert. I wish I had a picture of his hands. He removes a fleece in a single cut, and the sheep grunt as if they were having a massage at the spa. How he maintains his back after wrestling with these 300 pound ballerinas is more than I can figure out!

Monday, Minnesota was hit with a lot of snow. We were still able to drive but the roof on the barn was covered in white. That was merely beautiful until the snow started to melt with the high-noon sun on Tuesday. Madly, we rearranged gates to keep all the sheep out of the dripping snow, ready for shearing and able to be released into their proper group. We have three separate pens right now- one for the pregnant ewes, one for lambs and one for the ewes who are not pregnant. They all have different nutritional requirements and so must be housed separately. Therefore, managing their exit chute out of the shearing area became the challenge of the day. Having a move-as-you-g0 chute system to avoid snow melting off the roof and onto their coats made it nearly an Olympic sport!

My mother, step-dad and daughter-in-law came up to help as did our friend Kayla. All of us in winter snow suits, moving fleeces, measuring and rating them, skirting them, moving gates and generally responding to whatever the day brought. My mother and daughter-in-law loved the smell of lanolin. Every time we brought a fleece inside we were inhaling like mad.

Kudos go to my step-dad for bringing the coffee pot into the barn and running into town to get sandwiches for lunch. I dare say we would have collapsed into the wool out of exhaustion had he not kept us in coffee and food.

10 hours and 35 fleeces later we had successfully made it through the day. Most of the fleeces have been skirted and the rest will be done in a day or two but we succeeded in this the biggest, single day of the year. Now on to lambing.....

February 24th
I am just rolling up my sleeves to clean up the barn for shearing. We got a new skirting table this year to help us accomodate our growing flock and their lovely fleeces and I can't wait to get it set up. It's still cold in Minnesota and I am only good for a couple of hours at a time of working in the cold before I start to nicely freeze.

February 20th, 2006
Spent the afternoon cleaning and refinishing a fabulous antique spinning wheel, (circa 1800) which we inherited from the Loomis family home in Connecticut. I can't tell the exact maker as most of the label has worn away but the last letters of the name are NROSS. If anyone has any ideas please let me know. We used Murphy's Wood Cleaner to remove 150 years of oily dust and then soothed the wood with a Linseed Oil/Mineral spirit combination. I am missing I believe, the flyer and bobbin unit, but right now I am not concerned with using it as much as recovering it.


February 18th, 2006
My family went skiing for the weekend and left to my own devices I jumped right into the dye pot! I am color testing right now as I develop a color pallette for this year's wool. As always, color combinations will reflect the colors found on the farm. We are on a migratory path for Monarchs so those colors will be certain to fly through the fibers on my yarns, top and roving.

I had splendid success working on the Summer Marsh combination - it came out perfectly the first time.

My blue sky however was a beautiful ocean blue. Nice for a small project but I want to capture the pale blue of my big prairie horizon. I am seeking that almost transparent blue and I got the rich blue of the Carribean!

Playing with the antique color combinations from Karen Kahle's Dusty Little Dye Book, I got some rich tones for the Oak Forest in Fall. I can't wait to knit it up and then start dyeing in bulk for elven knitters !