Finally. I've been so eager to meet Jen ever since I first found her Etsy shop...and then her blog. It's only recently that I've made connections with local bloggers and it's so nice when I get to meet them in person. Jen was my first link to Anna.
About a month ago Jen made arrangements for a wool dyeing party and invited me to join in. I was thrilled! As anyone who reads this blog knows, I love to work with wool but had never had the experience of dyeing it before. So this past Sunday we all met at Birdie's farm where she raises sheep. Birdie was Jen's neighbor when she was growing up.
I arrived to the farm late and with the baby in my arms so missed some of the steps, but tried to get my hands into it as much as possible (for more details see Jen's post about it here).
Anna carding the wool.
Anna again, showing me how to pull the wool from the carding machine.
Dye samples.
Dyeing the wool on the open fire.
Rinsing it out.
Dyed wool drying in sun.
Anna's mom spinning some wool into yarn.
And then we got to meet the beautiful creatures who gave us their wool.
Birdie is an incredible host. She was constantly on the move. Teaching us as she went through the entire process of dyeing the wool, checking on the coffee, putting on a video of the sheep being sheared so we could see how that was done. She moved on to getting lunch served, (she makes a mean rhubard cobbler and has graciously shared her recipe with us-click here and scroll down to the comments) then passed around her books on wool projects so we could all get ideas for the functional felt swap. And on top of all that, she even had time to give lots of love to Julen.
Thank you so much Birdie for such a great day! And thank you Jen for inviting me! It was wonderful to meet you both.
