Spinnery News

Cap Sease’s Tekle sweater is one of last year’s most popular sweater patterns.  This cardigan is knit from the bottom up and features a rich textured stitch pattern achieved by alternating knits and purls.  This subtle design catches the light and makes the finished sweater look far more sophisticated and complex than it is to create!

We’ve found that mill visitors often comment on the sample we have in the shop, and wonder aloud how one would wear a cardigan that doesn’t have buttons.  Our scourer Meghan popped it on this week and we followed her on her various adventures to see how practically the sweater wears in real life.

The pattern calls for a DK weight yarn and that knits up with our Blue Bayou Mewesic (as seen here) into a lightweight layer that is perfectly suited to shoulder season use.  As early summer (and late fall) temperatures swing from dawn and dusk lows to mid-day highs, or even when a partially cloudy day has you alternately warm and cool, Tekle can be tossed over your shoulders to keep you comfortable.

Meghan found that she reached for it to warm her for an after work canoe launch on the Connecticut River and as an extra layer for a walk along a country road to gather flowers at lunch time.

It is perfect to have handy in the back of the car to throw on in anticipation of cooler air-conditioned spaces like a movie theater, an office or the produce section.

Adding a fun pin or broach to pin it closed can dress it up, add a bright pop of color, and change the silhouette of the sweater to a more figure flattering and feminine one. Layering your sweater like this can also allow you more wear of your favorite sundresses that might be too cool to wear comfortably except in the height of summer.

Meghan has been known to grab whatever is handy to act as an impromptu closure.  Who among us doesn’t have a convenient dpn on hand in a pinch?

We love the idea of enjoying hand knits every day. The recommended hand washing of our knitwear shouldn’t relegate your sweaters to the closet only to be worn for special occasions.  Tekle is as perfectly suited to the greenhouse as it is to the coffee house.  Loose soil can be brushed off. Stickier mud can be allowed to dry before a similar treatment, and spot washing with gentle detergent is always an option.

We hope that you’ll get more wear out of your favorite hand knits before summer’s heat motivates us to put them away until Fall.  And take another look at Cap’s Tekle cardigan.  You may find it as appealing  and useful as Meghan does!

We get visitors of all kinds at the Spinnery.  This week we enjoyed visits from members of the Greater Boston Knitting Guild for a tour of our mill; and several fiber producers such as our friends Andrea Colyer of Greenwood Hill Farm and Bambi Freeman of Sterling Brook Farm who dropped off wool that will soon be spun into luscious skeins.

This week we also were very grateful for a visit from Rob Davis, a longtime friend of the Spinnery who has provided invaluable help over the years keeping our production line humming along nicely.

Many visitors to our mill are curious about how we keep our antique machines in running order.  And we often tell them that yankee ingenuity, duct tape and baling wire have served us very well for decades.  Since this machinery is no longer being manufactured, finding replacement parts can be tricky.  Laurie, who runs the card, has learned over the years how to make use of parts from other machines to keep things running smoothly.  Our carding machine now includes parts and belts from tractors, motorcycles and old elevators.

We process fiber in a sequence that runs from organic to non-organic and light to dark, concluding with color.  We process about 250 pounds of fiber a week; and once we’ve carded approximately 2500 pounds, we pull the carding machine apart for a very thorough cleaning.  This allows us to ensure that when we restart production with organic and light wool, the carding machine is as pristine as we can make it.

This week, we disassembled our carding machine for a more elaborate repair.  We decided that it was time to replace the leather belts that “cut” the fine woolen network that comes off the last roll of the card into the strands that become our pencil roving.  The last time we swapped out these belts was over eight years ago.

As you can see, it was a messy job; and one that took about four days to complete.

The machine is now ready to get back to business and we couldn’t have done it without the help of our friend Rob Davis.  He worked for many years at D&T Spinning  in Ludlow, VT where he ran eight carding frames similar to ours that produced (of all things) the woolen windings that went into baseballs.  Rob knows these machines inside and out, and has regularly come out of retirement for the day to provide us with help.

We are grateful to all of the members of our little fiber community that make our jobs so lively and allow us to make such wonderful yarn.  We hope that you’ll have a chance in the near future to stop on by and share in the fun.