Field trip !!!!!!!

Yesterday was a great day for a field trip.  It was sunny and pleasant weather for the 90 minute drive from Cheyenne to Mitchell, Nebraska (outside Scottsbluff.)  When you're in Scottsbluff, you're close to the Oregon Trail, Chimney Rock, and Brown Sheep Company yarn factory.  Brown Sheep is the only mass-produced yarn made 100% domestically.  Fallout from the 2012 Summer Olympics has turned into a business boon for them:  After the hubbub about USA Olympic team uniforms being made in China, Ralph Lauren (who has the contract for USA Olympics) contacted them for wool for the 2014 Winter Olympic uniforms.

The tour was absolutely fascinating.  The Brown family, who started the company, still run it 50 or 60 years later, and plan to for another generation.  They have introduced some devices that save energy and water, and those have now been presented to the industry.  The whole production line was amazing.  Watching the machines draft the roving before it goes into the spinners was insane!

Keep an eye out for Brown Sheep boucle yarn, being introduced this year.  I got to handle a skein (but not knit with it, drat the luck!)  I really liked the feel of it.  I usually don't like knitting with boucles, because they are generally acrylics and get very "splitty."  Because this is wool, it holds to itself rather than splitting, which gives a lot more integrity to the finished product.  I think it is premiering in 24 or 26 colors soon.

And now to the best part of the day -- the factory store!  They have a store that sells mill ends and seconds for bargain prices.  So let's go shopping!

I got 8 skeins (2 pounds) of their machine-dyed worsted for $13/pound, in a scrumptious teal that is my favorite color.  Their hand-dyed yarns are $26 per pound.  So I got 4 skeins of Legacy Lace and 4 skeins of  superwash worsted for about $50. 

Then I hit the jackpot.  At the end of the tour, they have huge cartons of roving that didn't get used in wool runs. Think about the cartons that Baskin-Robbins uses in their coolers, then picture them standing chest-high and an arm's-stretch across.  Then imagine them heaped over with roving, and you have the sight my eyes feasted on.  Then think about $6.50/pound for the roving, and imagine me diving in with both arms!  Here's what I came away with, for about $25.

There is about 1.5 pounds of the teal, about 1.6 pounds of the heathered greys, about .6 pounds of the camel, and I just grabbed the other colors for fun!

At the end of my shopping spree, the total added up to just over $100.  (I personally think I exercised a great deal of restraint!)  So, the moral of the story is this:  For an interesting day and the pot of gold (or wool!) at the end of the tour, make a side-trip off of I-80 to Scottsbluff Nebraska, to Brown Sheep.

Too busy knitting to post about knitting!

The holidays have been a time of busy-ness coupled with hustle and bustle.  I decided at Thanksgiving that I was going to knit each of my girls and their guy something for Christmas, so I got busy.  Liz got a green Homespun yarn slouch hat and Josh an orange acrylic yarn hat (orange being the only color one should knit in for Josh!)  Courtney got a pair of socks in bamboo and elastic  (Knit One Purl Too yarn, I think) and Chris now has a watch cap in Red Heart Team Colors yarn blue/red, which are Ole Miss colors (his alma mater.)  Kyle now has a pair of mittens in acrylic yarn (Loops and Threads Charisma) that can wash easily if they get dirty while performing all those homeowner chores that he will have now that they bought a house, and Hilary has the fingerless mitts and hat set pictured below.  The pattern is called Architecture, so it was appropriate for her.  Thankfully, everyone seemed to like their presents, or they have good manners!  Courtney put on her socks immediately and wore them all evening and the next morning, and all the others immediately modeled their gifts.  The hat may not be right for Hilary, who doesn't really wear hats, but I think she liked the fingerless mitts.

And if all those items weren't enough to keep me busy knitting, my prayer shawl group agreed to do some knitting for the St. Joseph Childrens Home and the Boys and Girls Club of Cheyenne.  The Childrens Home needed about 30 older boys caps/hats, so I got into the stash of Red Heart that my mom gave me when she quit knitting, and produced about 15 hats in varying sizes and boy-friendly colors.  When our group's organizer contacted the Boys and Girls Club to see if they had a specific need, the director said, "Oh, it would be great if you could make hats for all our kids!" When asked how many that was, she said, "About 160"  I nearly choked when I heard that!  But now that the Childrens Home hats are done, I guess I'll get started on the B/G Club hats.  This will give me the chance to do some hat patterns that I've been looking at for a while, mostly earflap hats.  So if I don't appear here for a while, it just means that I'm snowed under (figuratively) in hats.  And I have resolved to knit something for myself in the New Year.  More on that later.