We have entered a whole new and challenging time

Yep, I’m talking about the COVID-19 Pandemic. It has been surrounding and impacting the world significantly for almost a year now, and it seems like forever, and there is no end in sight. Well, almost no end. There has been talk of a viable vaccine soon to be revealed, but I’m not holding my breath.

The impact of this pandemic has been fierce! To date over 275,000 people have died as a result of the Coronavirus. Tragedy has never seemed so profound. Without a leader to join us together and offer support, I think we have very little chance against this virus. People have politicized masks and even the virus, not believing there really is a virus and it is a hoax. Personally, even if it is a hoax, I’m going to double down on wearing a mask and social distancing just in case!! I’d rather look like a fool than be dead!

So I stay at my little studio and weave. It is the perfect thing to do during a pandemic, and I am the perfect introvert to stay by myself and not feel alone. I have my two shop dogs for company and protection, Thor and Taco, formidable chihuahuas that will take you down shoelace by shoelace! They understand English, I understand dog, so we get along. Wish they had opposable thumbs. Then they could earn their keep by weaving for me! Don’t laugh! If bears could be taught to ride bicycles back in the day when people thought it was cute rather than animal abuse, I think dogs could be taught to weave. And I think they would be happy doing it since they get so bored every day that they sleep most of the time. Sheesh!

I was without a microwave and a clothes washer for a couple of months. Now THAT was hardship! I can’t believe how much I found that I needed to reheat and had to use the stovetop! But I did find that the microwave was a great place to store opened boxes of crackers or bags of bread, to keep them out of the reach of the mouse invasion I had this summer. I even ended up putting my potatoes in the microwave because those dang mice had resorted to munching on my potatoes! I think I have caught them all now. 14 so far. Ewwwww! I think they got in this summer and took up residence when we had the entry doors open and the screen door with missing weather stripping at the bottom offered a perfect entry for a couple of mice, who then told two more, and so on. Those rascals! Anyway, I think I have caught all of them because I haven’t seen any more signs that they are around. I used to have a lot of empathy for them, but once they got into my house and started getting into my food and clothes, I started thinking of them in much different terms!! I don’t think they are so cute anymore.

Being without a clothes washer was a humbling experience. Truly! It brought me back to the days of my twenty-something years and hauling my laundry to the local laundromat. But flash forward to now and I had natural fibers in the wash that I didn’t want to put in the dryer. I also thought that 25 cents for 5 minutes in the dryer was highway robbery. So I would bring things into town to wash, and that was kind of a bonus because I could use multiple washers at the same time and get things all washed in about 30 minutes. Cool! But carrying all that wash out to the car when it was still wet, and then unloading it and carrying it upstairs to hang on the clothes line, well . . . at a minimum it had me talking to my husband about installing a dumb waiter!

But I recently snagged a deal on one of those internet selling platforms for a very nice microwave. It was actually meant for a deeper installation, so it sticks out from the cupboards kind of far. But that’s okay. Just more space inside the microwave to heat things up!

Now, the washer we bought NEW! And holy cow! All the bells and whistles!! It even has a steam cycle. So maybe I could have gotten a smaller microwave and steamed the broccoli in the washer! Okay, that thought makes my mouth pucker.

So, I think I have brought you up to date after such a long sabbatical away from this blog. I can’t guarantee how often I will get back to writing. Things are busy, busy in the Mill!

It all started when...

 

. . . I tried to find linen yarn locally.  I searched for over a year, calling and emailing yarn shops, universities, research centers, and finding that flax production for fiber had left the US between the 1930's and the 1970's.  There was no linen being sold in any sort of quantity in the whole western hemisphere!  I would have to import my fiber for weaving.  Even so, I continued to research, in hopes of possibly finding a small pocket of linen producers closer to home.  It seemed at odds that I would be weaving such a perfect fiber in terms of having very little negative ecological impact, and then have huge fuel carbon emissions added to it's footprint by having to have it shipped from half way around the world.  Then I stumbled across Fibershed.com, a wonderful green resource of information centered around fiber!  "They might know about linen!" I thought.  But they were just starting out, and they were focused on wool and animal fibers.  But, I ended up becoming a research assistant to Rebecca Burgess, the founder, and researching ways to combine wool and a bast fiber (hemp) in the processing line as it became yarn.  While doing this I learned much about Fibershed and its philosophy.  It was as if I had finally found a home for my value system!  I traveled around Minnesota, establishing relationships with small cottage fiber processing mills, while continuing to research for Rebecca.  I was still weaving linen, but I hoped that somehow, we could influence farmers to start growing flax for fiber, and to promote others to establish bast processing mills.  As ideas often do, my idea of having a flax/linen industry spring up around me started to shift as reality made me realize that this would take a very long time.  But I still wanted to take action somehow.  I wanted to do something about our failing earth so my children and their children would have someplace to live other than a toxin-ridden planet.  The thought hit me that I could establish a small weaving mill and provide a weaving service for local fiber growers.  I could do what I loved doing, and help the earth at the same time!  It was a 'water (fiber) shed' moment!

I have been saving and working to raise funding for the purchase of weaving equipment for about two years.   It has been a very enlightening and demanding effort, with lots of ups and downs.  But I have now achieved my funding goal, with the bank administrating the loan for the remaining funds in June, 2017!  In just a few short months I will have set up a small weaving mill that will provide weaving services to the people raising and growing fiber, and who have gotten their fiber processed into yarn and are looking to enhance and add value to their product by weaving their yarn into fabric they can then take to be sewn into final products for sale.  I also plan to provide bespoke yardage woven from these local fibers to local fashion designers, retailers, interior designers, fabricators, and furniture makers.

The intent of this project is to help the local growers and farmers make use of fiber they may not have been able to use in the past.  It is a fact that many of the smaller sheep farmers end up throwing their fiber away, composting it, or even just giving it to the shearer as payment for services.  It has been cost prohibitive for them to send their small amounts of wool or fiber east to the giant textile mills.  By providing weaving services for the local fiber farmers, we contribute to building a better, stronger local economy, and help communities thrive as they have not been able since the corporate farming practices took over.  We also want to help spread the great farming research and knowledge provided by Fibershed.com, in order to help draw carbon from our atmosphere down into our soil, and help build a more healthy way of living.

When first envisioning this project, I had planned on purchasing several automated floor looms and purchasing a facility to house them.  As I got further into planning and researching equipment, I decided to take a step back and proceed a bit more conservatively since there was no current business model by which to navigate.  I decided to make use of real estate we already own, and utilize 2 looms we already own, and purchase a semi-automated industrial dobby loom.  This keeps our risk lower, and our ability to expand easier.

Now that I have probably given you way more information than you ever wanted, can I ask you why you managed to read this all the way to the end?  Do you raise sheep or other fiber?  Are you a weaver?  A farmer?  A Fibershed follower?  Please contact me to tell me a bit about your interest in fiber and weaving mills.  And please, feel free to ask more questions if I didn't answer what you were wanting to know.

We are really looking forward to opening our doors and letting the sun shine in!

Waiting for Godot

Making room

I just received an email from AVL mentioning that they would like to ship my AVL Industrial Dobby Loom this week!  EEeek!  But a great day-brightener!!  So I need to scramble to weave off the last of the long warp that I had on my sweet little 48" AVL 16 harness, Compu-dobby loom, which I will probably have to part with and sell.  (Anyone interested, please contact me via the contact page in my website.)  I am weaving linen Bath Towels measuring 42" x 72".  They are all turning out beautifully and I will be posting pics of them as soon as I hem, wet-finish and cold mangle them.  I might have to keep one for myself!  :)

Making room

When I started weaving with linen, I searched for over a year to find local linen or at least linen that was grown and processed in the Western Hemisphere.  In that search I became acquainted with http://www.fibershed.com/ and Rebecca Burgess, it's founder.  Her philosophy meshed so perfectly with mine, and she had brought it to a finely sculpted point.  Because of Rebecca, I was inspired to stop talking about saving our earth and instead start taking some action.  By encouraging local farmers to grow local fibers, we are reducing carbon footprint by lowering our use of fossil fuels both from shipping possible fleeces to and from the bigger operations in the East and possibly around the world, and also helping farmers gain more from their sheep than just selling them for meat.  I did not know that many sheep farmers, who need to maintain their flocks (shearing their fleece is a necessary requirement to raising sheep; just part of their maintenance) often give the shearer the fleece as partial payment, or they throw the fleece away by burning or composting it.  They don't raise enough wool to make it profitable to have it shipped east to be processed.  But now by having local facilities processing the wool from fleece to yarn, and then having a local mill weaving the fiber into a useful fabric, we are enabling the farmer to reap more from his resources, and we are helping to build the core population, that was once the backbone of America but has been squeezed out by corporate farming, politics, industrial and residential development, mining, and general discouragement.  Please check out Fibershed.com and consider joining one of the 2 Fibershed communities we have in MN!  Oh, and don't forget to follow us on our journey as we establish the first cottage weaving mill in the Midwest!

In the beginning . . .

A tricky pickle, this.  Managing work flow while moving looms, ordering heavy equipment like 1,000 pound compressors, air dryers, setting up the install of same into a building meant as a lakeside cabin.  Waiting on one guy to determine whether I order something else from another.  Waiting, waiting, waiting for my new AVL IDL!  AVL is the brand, and "IDL" stands for 'Industrial Dobby Loom'.  They are busy in Chico, CA manufacturing looms of all kinds.  I wait on my loom, so excited to really start this mill of mine.  But hey!  I have already started!  I continue to receive orders for the linen products I weave and sew.  LOVE that side of the work!!  After all, I LOVE linen!!

Let me distract myself from WAITING by informing you about linen.  Everything about linen asks me the question . . . Why isn't linen being used the way cotton is??  What does cotton have that linen doesn't??  You do know that linen comes from the flax plant, right?  Yep!  And the Characteristics of linen are really impressive!  It is about 20% stronger when wet, making it very suitable for the washing machine, or for fabric being used in active-wear, while still coming out looking great.  It is known for its spectacular durability and long life.  The tensile strength (the resistance of a material to breaking under tension) of linen thread twice as high as that of cotton and three times that of wool.  We're talking STRONG!  Linen is anti-bacterial and anti-microbial, just plain not attractive to tiny bugs and microbes!  Cool!  And linen is highly hydroscopic!!  Hydroscopic??  That's when a "material has the ability to attract and hold water molecules from the surrounding environment".  Flax fibers have tiny microscopic nodes along their length which absorb moisture, then swell and release the moisture to the outside air, creating an evaporation cooler!  You know how much cooler your skin feels when water is evaporating from it!  Linen does this same thing and you don't have to be doused with water to feel the positive effects!  Now that really is cool!  But that's not all!  Linen can absorb up to 20% of its own weight in moisture while still feeling dry to the touch!  This is one of the many reasons why linen cloth always feel cool and fresh to the touch.  Now, remember when I said that little bugs and microbes aren't attracted to linen?  The same goes for bigger bugs such as moths, so they won't eat at your linen clothes, like what happened to your favorite wool sweater.  Dang!

So why aren't we making use of this great fiber more?  Why did cotton pull out in front?  I have a feeling it was more because the plantation owners in the 17-1800's in the South (USA) were growing cotton and had the use of (despicable) slave labor.  They were also rich and powerful men, influential both politically and socially.  To add to that pressure, there was the Cotton Gin by Eli Whitney, which basically was the catalyst for the Industrial Revolution.  Whitney's invention made upland short cotton into a profitable crop, which strengthened the economic foundation of slavery in the United States.  It also caused the price to dramatically drop for cotton goods.  And it just picked up speed from there.

But conventional cotton, produced on the grand scale of corporate farms both in the US and in huge cotton nations such as China, India, Pakistan, Brazil and Uzbekistan, have been the biggest users of pesticides and herbicides in the world.  While using only 2.5 percent of global cropland, conventional cotton growth uses up to 24% of global sales of insecticides and 11% of global sales of pesticides!  Cotton is also a major drain on water resources.  Growing cotton accounts for 2.6% of the world’s yearly water usage. One t-shirt made from conventional cotton represents 713.265 gallons, and a third of a pound of chemicals, which often contaminate water supplies.

"Most people think of cotton as a “natural” product. The reality: Cotton is one of the most chemically intensive crops in the world. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 84 million pounds of pesticides were applied to the nation’s 14.4 million acres of cotton in the year 2000, and more than two billion pounds of fertilizers were spread on those same fields. Seven of the 15 pesticides commonly used on cotton in the United States are listed as “possible,” “likely,” “probable” or “known” human carcinogens by the Environmental Protection Agency. And cotton defoliants are “the most toxic farm chemicals currently on the market,” says Fawn Pattison, executive director of the Agricultural Resources Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the use of harmful pesticides. "  This quote is from the National Wildlife Federation; (https://www.nwf.org/News-and-Magazines/National-Wildlife/Green-Living/Archives/2006/Cotton-and-Pesticides.aspx)

But that, of course, is what regular cotton grown around the world is about.  Organic Cotton is completely separate from these statistics and a whole different story, and I would really enjoy having the opportunity to weave some of that wonderful fiber!  There are wonderful emerging farms and cooperatives in the south such as Allred Farms (http://www.allredfarm.com/) in Texas, and Vresis (http://www.vreseis.com/) in California who are working diligently and steadily to be able to save us from ourselves and the likes of 'Fast Fashion' summers.

But even though linen has yet to catch on in the US, I believe it is only a matter of time before it will grow into a US industry all by itself!  Then we will have organically grown wool, cotton and flax, and the world will be perfect and balanced without crazy politicians or celebrity gods!  I look forward to that day!

#allredfarms,#organiccotton,#vresis,#naturallycoloredcotton#linenislife