Thank you everyone for coming! We loved having you. Our biggest THANK YOU to Terry and Paul Nelson, owners of Hideaway Springs Farm, for sharing their beautiful farm and sheep for a lovely afternoon. They get credit for extremely nice weather too! Terry and Paul are the most pleasant and helpful hosts. We appreciate all the work it takes to make a whole farm ready for company ??? ??? !!! We hope you had a good time and came away knowing something about Karakul sheep and their wool. Kathy Donovan, of Checkmate Farm, taught a rug punch class and I'm sure share ..read more

Driving to and from our warehouse I listen to WAMU in my car, and I learn all sorts of interesting things.  From two recent programs I learned about the absolutely horrific working conditions on sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic, and in cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Often when I hear about such nightmarish happenings in the world, I wish I had super powers and could do something right there and then to help the exploited human beings stuck in that hellacious situation.  Alas, I have no super powers, and truth be told, all the reckless driv ..read more

Do you love going to farmers markets?  I do. We habitually shopped at the Arlington (Virginia) farmers market when we lived there...too many years ago to mention. I loved the connection to farms and their products, and I tried to imagine what it would be like to be on the other side of the table. So be careful, you never know, you could turn into a farmer too ?!  And as an aside, I highly recommend visiting farmers markets when you travel. It is so interesting to see what grows in different places and seasons and meet the farmers. Farmers markets are also what slowly entice ..read more

Squared Up cardigan designed by ReahJanise Kauffman Knit in Solitude Wool Targhee 2   There’s more to this classically inspired sweater than meets the eye: Pattern published by https://tkga.org/article/squared-up-by-reah-janise-kauffman/?event=login so you know it’s been scrupulously tech edited, has fantastic schematics, and is loaded with knitterly details. All this means, your project has a high probability of coming out beautifully if you Read. The. Directions. AND SWATCH. Comes written for nine sizes (finished chest 32” - 64”). How’s that for inclusive sizing? Integrated sid ..read more

Greetings Nylon-Free Sock Yarn Testers and those who are interested, I got very involved (lost in so much detail) that turned in to paralysis through analysis. In an effort to break the logjam, let’s just get to the point. Neither of our test blends of 70/30 or 85/15 (Dorset/Cotswold) stood up particularly well in the test conditions. We all agreed the colors were gorgeous (thank you Gretchen!). Many have guessed correctly, the gold yarn was the one with 30% Cotswold. But even with three plies, neither blend made it through four months of wearing, walking and washing ..read more

Jasmine 2008-2022 This little lamb, one week old in March of 2008 when this photo was taken, has become the symbol of Solitude Wool. She has been my best model, fantastic mother and just generally wonderful ewe. I miss her. ?     ..read more

Kim here for Solitude Wool    This past weekend at Rhinebeck (the New York Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY), I spent much of my time in the back of our booth behind the cash register and out of the way.  I tried to greet everyone with smiling eyes (my actual smile was behind my mask), and with "Hi!  If you have any questions, please let me know".  Many of my booth skills had gotten surprisingly rusty during our pandemic festival hiatus -- counting change, for example, whoa, I needed practice!  Though one thing that returned to me rather quickly was bein ..read more

Do you ever wonder how dyers come up with colorways? I imagine that every dyer has a different process, and it might change all the time. This is how this special colorway for Maryland Sheep & Wool came about.  First, all the Solitude Woolies (as we frequently refer to ourselves) decided to do the special colorway on the same yarn as we used last year: Dorset hike. This yarn you can make a pair of hiking socks with one skein, or a shawl with two or three skeins. It’s hard wearing and machine washable (because of the Down type wool and added nylon). We all brainstormed ideas ..read more

It was another good Public Knitoxication. Thank you to the Fiberists for thinking up this great event in the first place...and hosting for three years now! Solitude Wool pledged to donate 100% of our profits from this event to support anti-racism efforts and are pleased to pool them with the Fiberists and other vendors of this event for the NFC Momentum Fund started by Karida Collins, owner of Neighborhood Fiber Company in Baltimore. We are really pleased to have this money stay in our Chesapeake Fibershed and trust NFC to do good things with it. We calculate our profit for the weekend to ..read more

dyeing from the garden: weld   My first experience with weld was a good long while ago when I was just learning about natural dyes. I got a call from a shepherd friend (Rebecca Brouwer from Shepherds Corner farm to fashion) asking if I wanted some weld to dye with; it was out of control and she was pulling it all out from her gardens (which were very large and beautiful!). I said “sure, I'll be right there.” There was a LOT of weld in her garden! We completely filled the back of my pick-up (up to it's cap) with the long stalks. I knew nothing then. I came home, looked up weld in ..read more