I want to know the best way to ship carded wool batts so that the fibres stay lofty and easy to draft.  So I did some experiments.

A batt is the result of preparing the fibre on a drum carder.  It can be a giant drum carder like they have in a fibre mill, or a tiny one like mine.  Not that I mind tiny.  To me, it's just the right amount for what I'm doing now and I'm hoping my carding adventures will earn my way towards a bigger, better, bolder machine.  

To be brutally honest, I never paid much attention to my Etsy shop.  It's there if people buy stuff, that's cool.  I might go through a phase once or twice a year where I take more photos and list stuff, but over the last 13 years, the number of hours I've put into improving my shop is pitiful.  Until this year, most of my sales have been wholesale, but with the uncertainty ahead and being stuck at home on the farm, I finally had the time and the need to increase my Etsy sales.

​My favourite yarn to spin and most popular in the shops are something I call Singles Boucle. I learned this technique from the book The Intentional Spinner, and it's one of the most popular yarns to sell at the local shop.  It's also one of my favourite yarns to spin as it requires minimal fibre prep and is like combining pying and spinning all in one action.  

For this tutorial, I borrowed an e-Spinner Super Jumbo.  Lat's face it, I'm not much of an e-Anything, but having a wheel with huge bobbins, massive yarn guides and orifice, and can spin at a quick speed!  This e-Spinner Super Jumbo is tailor made for spinning this kind of yarn.

​As social distancing restrictions ease in my province, I can't help but worry our personal social distancing is just at the beginning.  Living with a family member who is immune suppressed and having several co-mobility factors myself, I suspect it will be months if not years before we can re-join society.  But it's not too bad with five acres and a house full of introverts.  We've been keeping busy.

​One of the things I set out to learn during lockdown is dyeing with acid dyes.  I bought a couple of kits from Ashford where 10g of dye is enough to colour 1-kilo of fibre!  With two years of fibre saved up for the local mill, which closed its doors last fall :( , I have a lot of wool (and alpaca, and llama, and silk, and...) to practice on.  It's been a massive amount of fun, and I feel I'm only just scratching the surface of what is possible with this fantastic art.  

​Standing on Gonzales Hill, one can see almost the entire city: the buildings struggling among the trees.  Look the other way, and spy the saltwater squeezed between our little island and the Olympic Mountains that look like storm clouds silent on the horizon.

The sheltered waters and pleasant beach of Foul (now Gonzales) Bay seem the ideal resting place.  Yet, beneath the calm water is a danger that gave the bay the name Foul.  The gentle cove an inviting shelter for sailing ships proved riddled with kelp, driftwood, and other underwater hazards.  The vessel quickly fouled - became overwhelmed and encrusted with the goodness from the sea - so they could not sail. Foul Bay.

Last year, with the help of so many beautiful people, I published two books!  One paperback Homegrown Linen and the other an e-book Clean with Cleaners you can Eat.  Thank you, everyone.  

It was wonderful discovering that I had something worthy of sharing with the world.  I especially love hearing the stories of people going out and trying new things.  

As good as this all was, something else happened.  It was too much goodness.  I was overwhelmed.  I was fouled (and not in the chicken kind of way).  I lost momentum; my rudder stuck in the kelp forest.  
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From time to time, I get a mild ear infection.  An itching sensation in the right ear, like ants, crawling about inside and a deep swelling feeling like a softball is trying to grow its way out of the side of my head.  The ear, nose and throat doctor suggested a drop of olive oil from time to time, but for the most part, these things are supposed to clear up on their own.  The olive oil helps a bit, but the sensation never really goes away.  I started looking for other solutions.

One day I found this ginormous plant growing in my field.  It had big fuzzy leaves and a five-foot-tall flower stock.  Could this be mullein?

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​Meet George

George is one of my silkworms.  These greedy-samas (sama is the Japanese honorific title added at the end of the name, like 'san' but with more respect) are going to help me transform leaves into cloth.

These are my very first silkworms and I want to give a shout out to Peggy at Flourishing Filaments who helped me with the research and found a way to send silkmoth eggs to Canada.  At the time of writing, it is legal to import Bombyx mori into Canada and to export from the USA without a fancy certificate (but check with the government before attempting it for yourself because things change).  

While researching silkworms online, I noticed that a lot of people name their worms.  They grow attached to these little guys.  I didn't want to feel left out, so I named them.  I named all 200 of them George except for the big one, his name is Harold.  

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We have officially entered stage four drought conditions, which is apparently the worst we have.  It means that the government can start making emergency legislation to reduce water usage including industry and farming.  It also means that we are at risk of not having enough drinking water next year if the drought continues through the rainy season.

Since water-less and water-free farming is the main focus on the farm, I wanted to share some updates on what's working and what techniques we are still developing.  It's all experimental.  There's lots of theories on what works, but what works for one may not work at another location.  That's why it's so important to try things for yourself.

​Yes, you can use your handspun linen singles for weaving.  Weavers for thousands of years of history did.  You can too.

Most linen warp is spun from the long, luscious flax fibres called line.  These make for strong, shiny, and fine yarns.  When wet spun by an expert, the yarn is smooth.  All these qualities make it perfect for warp and weft.

But what about poor tow?  This often discarded fibre is described as hairy and weak.  Not suitable.  A waste of time and space.

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