{"id":2051,"date":"2013-12-21T16:55:50","date_gmt":"2013-12-21T22:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=2051"},"modified":"2013-12-21T16:57:45","modified_gmt":"2013-12-21T22:57:45","slug":"crafts-in-paksworld-yarn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=2051","title":{"rendered":"Crafts in Paksworld: Yarn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Herdwick-yarn-12-21-13\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yarn spun from the wool of Herdwick sheep, purchased from Crookabeck Farm.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This is close to the kind of yarn that Paks would have learned to knit socks and darn them with.\u00a0\u00a0 This yarn is undyed–the lighter yarn from older sheep, the darker from younger.\u00a0\u00a0 In the uplands of northern Tsaia and Fintha, and southern Fintha into the foothills, the sheep would have to be hardy and tough, like the Herdwick breed, and their fleece would probably have been fairly coarse, not soft and silky.<\/p>\n

Paks’s family sold fleeces, not finished yarn, to a contractor who came to Rocky ford or Three Firs (more rarely) to buy from the hill farms.\u00a0\u00a0 But they kept back wool to be combed and spun and then made into garments by the family members.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Spinning would be largely by drop spindle, but the spinning wheel–if a family owned one–was a treasure.<\/p>\n

Paks’s family also sold sheep for meat “down the valley” or traded them for other meat and supplies.<\/p>\n

In the larger towns and cities, lowland fleeces would be spun into finer yarns, and the yarn dyed, then sent to weavers to make into furls of cloth of various qualities.\u00a0\u00a0 The upland sheep and goat breeds would have their fleeces spun hardly finer than Paks’s mother could spin,\u00a0 some dyed and some not,\u00a0 and made into carpets and tent canvas and coarser cloth for garments.\u00a0\u00a0 Duke Phelan bought the coarser, but very hard-wearing and weather-resistant cloth for uniforms, the recruits’ uniforms either from dark undyed, or more likely brown-dyed yarn, and the regulars’ uniforms in maroon.<\/p>\n

This yarn certainly can be dyed, though I like the natural colors of the fleece…for now.\u00a0 If I like the yarn as much as I think I will,\u00a0 I may try dyeing it myself.\u00a0\u00a0 Crookabeck Farm does special-order dyeing, but it’s pricey.<\/p>\n

Herdwick lambs are born black, so the first shearing (which I didn’t buy) is much darker than the dark above.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It would be fun to have some of that, too, but again…pricey.<\/p>\n

When I’ve knit some of this, I’ll post a picture.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At any rate, this gives you an idea of the everyday working farmer’s yarn, and an idea of what people working in a field might be wearing.\u00a0 The better-off would have some colored clothes; the poorest would have these soft earthy colors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yarn spun from the wool of Herdwick sheep, purchased from Crookabeck Farm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[108],"class_list":["post-2051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-background","tag-background"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2051"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2054,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions\/2054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}