knitting

The Farmer’s Cowl

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This month’s free and easy Pattern for Homesteaders and Everyone Else! is The Farmer’s Cowl.

It’s the season for gifting, and this month’s cowl pattern is a quick knit and a great gift. This basic pattern can be fancied up in all sorts of ways – colorwork, cables, lace, etc – but for right now it is a few rows of garter stitch at top and bottom and several inches of stockinette in between. Essentially, you’ll be knitting a rectangle 24 inches wide and 10 inches high. You’ll sew one straight seam in the back of the cowl and you will have a fantastic winter layering piece ready for gifting to a loved one. You can also keep it and spoil yourself a bit. A nice warm cowl knitted with some lovely fleece makes all the difference when a cold wind is whipping and you need to feed the sheep.

Choose a soft yarn for this project since it’s likely going to be up against skin. If you’re not sure that a yarn is soft enough, hold it and/or rub it against your throat. Alpaca, alpaca blends, fine wools, and even some synthetics should be soft enough for next to skin wear. “Fine wool” is a pretty big category and if you’re new to knitting with wool, you generally can’t go wrong with yarns made from the Merino family; Merino, Rambouillet, Debouillet, etc. CVM/Romeldale is a heritage breed also known for producing very soft and beautiful wool. Shetland, Jacob, Hog Island, Finn, and some of the down breeds can all be very fine, but because there’s a lot of variability in each breeds’s wool you’ll want to select carefully.

I used some of my handspun yarn for the cowl. It’s 50% suri alpaca and 50% CVM lambswool. I spun fingering weight singles and then chain-plied them. The result is a heavy worsted/bulky weight yarn that knit up pretty fast on US 13 needles. I am not the world’s greatest chain-plier, but I love the slightly rustic texture that comes from knitting with imperfect yarn. If you’re buying yarn, look for something soft that will give you around 3-4 stitches per inch. You’ll want about 150 yards for this project. Gauge isn’t super important as long as you’re using a heavy weight yarn.

Download The Farmer’s Cowl pattern by Holly Callahan-Kasmala

The Farmer’s Cowl (1)Download

New Series and an Easy Pattern

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As gardeners/homesteaders/small farmers, we spend a lot of time thinking about the food and medicines that we consume. And that’s great! But, in my opinion, we don’t spend enough time thinking about the fibers we put in our homes and on our bodies. It’s wonderful to eat fresh foods, but how healthy are we really if we’re wearing things that are shedding microplastics into our water sources at the same time?

I’m introducing a series here on my website that will feature a free monthly pattern for anyone who wants to make their own textiles but isn’t very experienced yet. The majority of these patterns will be knitted rectangles that can be seamed into various garments. I’ll be using handspun yarn for the samples, but will make suggestions about what to look for if you’re buying commercial yarn. The goal of this project is slow cloth and slow fashion, just like the slow food movement.

If you’re new to knitting, or you’re a spinner who isn’t sure yet how to use the yarn you’ve created, then this series is for you! My goal is to share the type of patterns I would have loved to knit when I was starting out with fiber arts 20 years ago. These will be simple, useful designs that showcase the beautiful textures of handspun yarn, and put the power of cloth making into your own hands. I’ll alternate large and small projects so there’s something for every type of spinner and knitter.

These patterns are also knitted flat for the most part, which is easier for someone like me who has both nerve damage in my wrists and arthritis in my hands. I sometimes have a terrible time with double pointed needles, especially if they’re small.

If you don’t spin these patterns will still work for you! If you want to source handspun yarns or small mill produced yarns, the Livestock Conservancy’s Shave ’em to Save ’em program is a great place to start. I want people to feel free to use their wool (or any other fiber), or to source yarn from a local farm. For that reason, these patterns will not be fussy or too precious. They don’t have to be perfect, they’re meant to be used! Wear those mitts in the barn or to the farmer’s market. Making your own things can lead to a deep feeling of accomplishment and encouragement to try more new projects.

The fashion and textile industry creates as much as 10% of the world’s total pollution. That’s a staggering amount. In addition, up to 60% of the textiles created each year are plastic based. It may feel like your one pair of mitts is hardly a drop in the bucket, but it does make a difference.

I have a few different patterns for fingerless mitts, but this is by far the simplest and easiest of them. You will knit two rectangles and sew one seam up the side of each, leaving a hole for the thumb. I wear my mitts every day while I do barn work for about 4 or 5 months of the year. I never used to believe that fingerless mitts did anything to keep your hands warm so I never bothered to knit any. With age has come some wisdom. Mitts keep your hands surprisingly warm and still leave your fingers free to collect eggs, give out treats, or just to use your phone or camera. Plus, they’re some of the oldest knitted garments out there.

The pattern for November, 2024 is Ribbed Barn Mitts.

Barn Mitts (1)Download

Spinning in the Hog Island Grease

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Limpopo and Anita, Hog Island Ewes

Hog Island sheep have lots and lots of lanolin in their wool. Lots. And lots. Just petting them is enough to leave your hands coated and shiny. Because they evolved on a coastal barrier island, Hog Island sheep needed high lanolin production to give them protection from the elements. The women who lived on the island would have taken on the work of processing the wool and hand spinning yarn. One of the questions I’d like to answer while researching the sheep on Hog Island is whether or not the islanders fully scoured the wool or did they spin it raw – in the grease? Probably a mix of both.

Lanolin is a waxy substance secreted by sebaceous glands on sheep. It coats their wool fibers and keeps them reasonably weather proof, protecting them from having to carry around pounds of soggy wool. You can find lanolin in many skin care products; it’s extracted from wool after shearing. It’s considered an emollient – it moisturizes skin, as well as an occlusive – it creates a barrier on the skin to seal in moisture.

I’ve been planning to spin and knit something in the grease for a while now, and the stars have finally aligned. Pete and I ended up hand shearing all of our sheep this year, and Limpopo’s fleece really stood out to me. It’s very soft and fine, very greasy, and has a staple length around 4″. It’s open and lofty and looks like a good candidate for my experiment. It also looks like it would make an exquisite shawl, but that will require scouring and carding before spinning, so I’ll put that off until later.

I didn’t want to gum up either my drum carder or hand cards with lanolin, so I planned to either spin from the fold, or pull open the locks and spin from the cloud. Can you even make a cloud from raw wool? Yes, it turns out that you can. I didn’t want to gum up either of my two new wheels, so I’m spinning the greasy yarn on my old Ashford Traditional.

Raw wool yarn – pretty junky until I started cutting the tips off!

Doing work around the farm and garden means my hands are in and out of water all day, and my feet get sweaty in barn boots and shoes. My skin gets dry, even in the summer, and I wondered if I could put some of the greasy Hog Island handspun yarn to work on the job. So, I’m currently spun raw wool and planning to knit either mittens or socks, or both. Eventually, I’d love to experiment with knitting a hat or even simple sweater with greasy yarn, just to see how they would work in everyday life around the farm.

Tips for successfully spinning in the grease –

  1. Freshly shorn wool. Lanolin is at its freshest right after the wool comes off of sheep. Over time, it will solidify and the fibers won’t slide past each other anymore, making drafting a sticky nightmare.
  2. Warm temperatures. Along with fresh wool, spinning in the grease in late spring and summer help keep lanolin liquid. Warmer air temps help delay lanolin solidifying and keep drafting smooth.
  3. Staple length. I find longer staples easier to spin in the grease. I’m generally spinning worsted (inch-worm) style from the cloud, but if you have shorter wool, try long draw or supported long draw.
  4. Deal with dirty tips. Raw wool often has dirty tips. You can simply flick open the ends, or you can cut them off if they’re really dirty and damaged. In the case of my Hog Island ewes, the tips are often weathered and full of junk and don’t clean easily. I’ve spun them after flicking them open, but the yarn I spun after cutting off the tips is much nicer.
  5. Greasy Breed. This may seem self explanatory, but not all sheep produce lots of lanolin. Hog Island is one of the greasier heritage breeds. CVM/Romeldale is another good candidate. If you want to try spinning raw wool that isn’t super greasy, try a freshly shorn Jacob fleece.