Proverbs 31:18-20
A good thing to note before reading this post: In times of stress and uncertainty in life (for instance- looking for a place to move) I tend to live more fully in a fantasy world of subsistance farming or post-nuclear apocolyse or zombies-attack-my-house or any number of scenarios that seem for some reason or other less stressful than my current situation. So this post can be taken with a grain of salt.
I've been pretty interested in the textile arts for quite a while now, and I've recently been thinking about following my current yarnish hobbies to their inevitable end. To their source. Sheep, goats and llamas. Maybe some rabbits.
i've enjoyed knitting for years, although I haven't really progressed from the hat and scarf stage. Part of it is laziness of course, but there are also financial concerns. Acrylic yarn is cheap and plentiful, but not that great to work with, and any quality fiber or wool varietal "merino, alpaca, angora, cashmere, yadda yadda) is pretty freakin' expensive. If you want to make a Lazlo-size sweater you're talking $50+, and you're probably going to make it all wonky and three-sleaved the first time anyway. Not a great investment. I can support my habit as long as it's just a batch of scarves/hats every Christmas, but when I start thinking about the natural progression from knitting to weaving... Well as you may know, it takes a lot of warp to weft a weave...or something.
This is where we head to the source. You can buy a wool fleece, fresh from the sheep, for around $1/lb. Higher quality fleece costs more. Given, a good size modern spinning wheel doesn't come cheap, but I could use a drop spindle until we win the lottery. And okay, okay, sure floor looms are expensive! But so are clothes, damnitt! And now I can make all our clothes! Right?!?! Right. What color of woven pants would you like to wear today, Lazlo? Well we have home-dyed dandilion green, home-dyed baby-poop yellow, and this reddish color I made from the bodies of crushed insects I harvested from the llama flock! I used Alum as a fixing agent! Alum!
I get a little crazy at times like this, planning an alternate reality on a 15 acre farm in Manor, Tx, complete, of course, with livestock. I feel more at home in another century, or at least in that movie Witness, than I do on the outskirts of downtown L.A. Of course my alternate reality still comes with front-loading washing machines, refridgerators, laptops, and those little chips you can implant in your dog's ear for when they get lost. Poor Ramona; she's not too bright.
Do it! Do it! Do it!
Sounds messy. I don't think I could get past the origins of a baby poop dyed sweater even if it was washed and washed and washed in the front-loading washing machine.
bryan is angry that you broke the covenant. he's never speaking to you again. but that's mostly my fault since i called my step-dad for tips on how to shop for lamas.
i never know where the circle of trust ends and the much wider circle of betrayal begins. if only i had some kind of map...
what? is Ramona's hair not good enough for spinning thread? too fine? Maybe I can have Heiffer Intl send you a baby alpaca. it's darned soft.
Hi! I've been lurking for ages, but now that you're going to be living with Wess and Emily who I've actually met (once), and hope to see again this summer, I feel free to chime in and say I have this fantasy too.
Raising chickens in city backyards has also become a fad in San Francisco - not quite as high fashion as knitting, but then that makes it way cooler. And then you could use your leftover insect based dye to color your eggs too. Maybe the baby-poop yellow wouldn't work so well for pre-consumer food items.
Hi! I have been lurking for ages, but now that you're going to be living with Wess and Emily, who I've actually met (once) and hope to see again this summer, I feel free to chime in and say I have the same fantasy.
Raising chickens in city backyards has also become something of a fad in San Francisco - not quite as high fashion as knitting, but then of course that makes it way cooler.
great to meet you (sort of) robin!
some friends of ours have chickens, actually due to a horrible botchilism (sp?) incident, it's now chicken singular. i keep trying to talk lazlo into chickens, but he thinks they'd be too much work, and if they got out ramona might eat them.
i had chickens when i was little, and lived on a farm. one of my chores was getting the eggs. it's a sweet memory and i'd love for wren to be able to do that.
We had stray roosters once. They woke up at 5 to start crowing about the sun that didn't rise until 7. Other than that and their horrible demise, it was a very pleasant experience. I would definitely get hens. Surely they are quieter.
The farm part is a little too much for me, but I'm all over the post-apocolypse, or zombie filled world. If it was just a farm, I would still want the conviences of a big city, but in the other two I wouldn't be so concerned about driving to get felafel.