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.