Wool and Mohair in San Angelo
Who knew we would be back in San Angelo so soon? And without kids? And with a little extra time to spend? I wanted to find a wool and mohair warehouse and talk to someone about it. We found Western Wool & Mohair just off Highway 67 near downtown.
We found the owner, Linda Turner, in a back office with two friendly dogs. They stayed to guard the office, while Linda took us on a tour of the building. “This isn’t the best time to see a wool warehouse,” said Linda. “You really need to come back in the spring.”
Late in spring, the warehouse is filled, upstairs and down, with sacks of wool. Buyers from anywhere in the world come by and pull a little wool out of a bag to check it. If the wool meets a buyer’s need, they bid on the lot. Some ranchers prefer to accept or decline bids on their own wool, while some rely on Linda make the decision to sell or not.
Even at this late time of year, we did see some bags and bales of wool at the warehouse. The big bags are packed tight and weigh between 150 and 200 pounds. They are almost 5 feet tall. “This bag isn’t worth much,” said Linda, pointing to a bag of black wool. “Most buyers want the fine, white wools like Ramboulliet.”
Once a lot of wool is sold, warehouse staff bind sets of five bags into bales. The numbers written on the bales show who the seller is, what lot the bale belongs in, and the weight of the bale. The bales on the right weigh 936 and 850 pounds.
The wool goes primarily to carpet and fabric manufacturers. I’m afraid hand-knitting yarn is not a very large segment of the wool trade.
Knickerbocker Yarn
“What’s a ‘knickerbocker’?” asked Charles. He was reading a book, in which a woman was described as having the ‘best knickerbocker lineage.’
“Eye-oh-no,” I said, because I was too busy crocheting to enunciate. Then I said the words dreaded by schoolchildren everywhere: “Why don’t you look it up?” Had I said this to 11-year-old Eva, she would have said, “Aw, Mo-om!”
Not being a schoolchild, but an intelligent and curious grown-up, Charles looked it up right away, with no whining. The lady in the book was descended from the Knickerbockers, a nickname for the original Dutch settlers in New Netherland, which was later split into New York and New Jersey (USA). There was actually a man surnamed Knickerbocker, who was one of those original settlers.
“Hey, here’s Knickerbocker yarn!” said Charles. He’s a good guy—always thinking of me. Knickerbocker yarn is flecked with different colors. A surprising (to me) number of web sites give information about this yarn, which is also called Knicker yarn or Nepp yarn. You card small balls of wool or silk noil into a longer fiber and then spin it all up together.
So I guess this pretty yarn, handspun by my friend Joan L., would be Knickerbocker yarn.
Hints from a Judge
Judging the Garment and Home Accessories Competition at the Taos Wool Festival was hard work, but it was also fun and very satisfying. My fellow judges Donna from Colorado, and Deb from New Mexico, were experts in dyeing and weaving, which made for a great judging team.
Luckily we didn’t have to drive all the way home from Taos in one day, so Eva and I had time to shop at the Wool Festival. It was a sloshy mess, but the true fiber lovers were there and they were spending.
We made the round of the Festival booths, many of which had buckets and interesting layouts so that the merchandise could stay dry. We came back to Plain & Fancy Sheep & Wool Co. (Henderson, TX), so I could buy this hand-dyed yarn. Reminds me of pansies or crocuses. I don’t have a firm plan for it yet. The company, which is owned by Ken and Grayce Aggen, doesn’t have a web site, but I would be glad to send you their email address.
Ellen Sibelius’s booth was filled with fantastic knitted creatures of her own design. We bought the Monarch Butterfly pattern and a pattern for a dragon. She had many more, including dinosaurs. Ellen doesn’t have a web site, but if you’re interested in her patterns, I can send you her email address.
Last year I bought a color sample card from Weaving Southwest, whose gallery and yarn shop are on the main street of Taos. All year long, I plotted and planned the colors I would buy to make a wall hanging. Weaving Southwest was our last shopping stop, and it was a dry and warm haven. Here’s what I bought.
Then we packed up and drove through the rain and fog in the mountains and the rain on the plains. I enjoyed seeing my favorite sights in the Texas Panhandle Plains: grain elevators, mills, gins, and trains. Oh, and it was all in the rain.
Back to Taos
I never finished telling about our trip to the Taos Wool Festival, so back we go, in spirit, to Taos. My button class was on Thursday. We had a great, great time, but it was so exhausting that I didn’t have the energy to pack up afterwards. Thank goodness I was in the same room the next day. We were so busy that I didn’t take any pictures, but here are the buttons I made as examples in the class. By the way, students will make a button like this in my “Wooly Buttons” class at the DFW Fiber Fest.
Friday was Color Composure, and I had another great group of people in the class. The approach of the class is to start simple, with one color and various shades of that color, then to add another color and then another, until there are lots of colors. This sample, by Emilie, was the class favorite. Emilie had muted pastel colors to start. She was not convinced that the new colors she added would look good. “Keep going,” I always say, “because the new color will lose its relative importance as you add more rows.” The class cheered her on.
Then we did collages with torn-out magazine pages. The idea is to collect pages with your assigned color, then see how they fall into color families. We ran out of time before we could knit samples based on the collages. Too bad. The assigned colors for these collages were turquoise and green.
Saturday was the first day of the actual Wool Festival. After a rainy start, the day turned gorgeous. I didn’t get to shop, though, because I was busy judging the Garment and Home Accessories Contest. Next time, more about judging and about the yarn I bought on rainy, muddy, squishy, sloshy Sunday at the Wool Festival.
Wool and Archeology in San Angelo
My husband went to a Texas Archeological Society meeting in San Angelo, Texas, last weekend. We tagged along, because San Angelo is a quirky and interesting city. It has a small university, a big art community, and attractions like the International Water Lily Garden. It’s big enough to have a lot of commerce, but not so big that you can’t find your way around. You can see a lot of local flavor in the businesses, but the big retailers and food chains are moving in along the loop around the town.
A quick check of the yellow pages revealed a category for “Wool.” West Texas was a big producer of wool and mohair until the government subsidies were removed. Still, for San Angelo and surrounding areas there were a dozen listings under “Wool,” which included:
Ballinger Wool & Mohair
Eldorado Wool Co
Ozona Wool & Mohair Co.
San Angelo Wool Processing
Santa Fe Grading
Sonora Wool & Mohair Co
Southwestern Wool & Mohair Inc
West Texas Wool & Mohair Association
Western Wool & Mohair Co.
Wool Growers Central Storage
You’d think that such a wooly place would naturally have several yarn shops. Nope. The only listing under “Y” is “Youth Organizations and Centers.” No category for yarn, nary a yarn store. Oh, the local Hobby Lobby probably has yarn, but it’s not the same.
San Angelo makes up for this sad lack of yarn by having lots of art and artists. We visited the Chicken Farm Art Center. Among the wonderful painters’, potters’, and batik artists’ studios, we found an artist who works in mosaic. Her name is Mary Swain, and here is some of her work. I love how she uses natural materials among the tiles. This mirror frame has antlers worked into the design. Another mirror frame had fossil snails in the design. Mary coats the finished mosaic with some sealant, which gives all the components a glossy, wet-looking finish, and unifies the design elements. She said that a mirror frame takes her about two weeks to complete.
Mary’s mosaics are featured in other parts of the Art Center, like this step in the Gecko Gallery. She also decorated parts of Inn of the Arts, a bed and breakfast on site.
The Adult Literacy Council was having a used book sale–$1.00 for hardbacks, 50 cents for paperbacks. We couldn’t pass that up. A shop for really fabulous and colorful fashion and home decor was J. Wilde, also downtown. They had lots of knit and crochet fashions, plus lots of garments that combined knitting and crochet. Hey! TextileFusion at work!
My three-year-old ran out of energy about 4:00 in the afternoon, so we went back to the hotel, but not before I got a shot of this cute San Angelo mosaic is by an unknown artist.
Polymer Buttons Find New Home!
Nana Sadie Rose sews and sells tote bags for knitters, crocheters, and teachers, using fabric that her customers choose on-line. The bags are roomy, full of pockets, well-proportioned, pretty, and beautifully-made. Lucky knitters who own Nana Sadie Rose bags just love them.
You can probably imagine how thrilled I felt when Nana Sadie Rose asked me to make polymer clay buttons for some of her bags. She will soon have bags available in this retro-kitty fabric with great colors. I mixed clay to match the turquoise in the print and then added other colors to make stacked buttons.
These swirl buttons match the brown and pink kitty footprint and polka-dot fabrics. The buttons look delicious, like chocolate and raspberry crème.
As you know, a knitter can always use another tote bag. A Nana Sadie Rose bag is the perfect gift for the knitter who has everything. Order before mid-November, if you would like your new bag delivered before Christmas.
One Down, About 600 to Go
I’m freeeeeeeeeeeeee! For those of us who filed an extension on our 2005 tax returns, today is the last day to get them in the mail. And we did it with over an hour to spare, even though our little post office closes at 3:45! Hurray! There’s even better news. I am caught up with my bookkeeping for the first time since Ella was born 3 years and 9-ish months ago. Hurray again!
Tonight I will celebrate by making buttons, which is one of the several hundred things I would rather do than complete tax returns.
My poncho is almost finished, due to many hours on the road to the Taos Wool Festival and evenings in the hotel. My pink and black yarn collections are visibly smaller. The poncho still needs trim. I’m considering an alternative to fringe, but don’t know what it will be yet.
Quilty Success
My computer was ready to pick up on Friday, a day later than promised. “It took a lot longer to download the updates than I thought,” said the computer repair guy. If he needed a day longer to get it back up to speed, it would have taken me a week longer, so I still came out ahead. But, oh, I missed my little computer!
He managed to install Windows Service Pack 2, a feat which I had not been able to accomplish, even after reading lots of Windows help files. When they recommended changing something in the register, the mysterious file that contains the DNA of the computer’s brain, I decided to turn it all over to a pro.
Enough about computers! We got home from Taos on Monday night, completely exhausted. We had a wonderful week. On Tuesday, Joy of my favorite Joy’s Fabrics (Stephenville, TX), left a phone message, saying “I have your quilt and your ribbons. Come by when you have a chance.” She emphasized the ‘s’ in ribbons.
The Town and Country Quilt Guild in Stephenville puts on a quilt show every year. It is called “Threads of Texas.” Joy was kind enough to deliver my snowflake quilt and pick it up, since we were away in New Mexico. The quilt won second place in “Mixed Media, Medium Size” and it won a Merit Award. I need to find out what that one is about.
More about Taos next time, also poncho news and eventually a few notes about entering your work in contests.
Taos is Tiring!
What an exhausting week! But it’s that good kind of exhausting, where I’ve done exactly what I love to do all day long.
Tuesday, we did the “Freeform Knit/Crochet an Underwater Scene” class. Stephanie combined elements from several pictures for the background, and crocheted a fish to live in the scene. It is a work in progress, she says. She plans to add some yellow seaweed to show the fish up a little better.
I made progress on my own crocheted underwater scene, adding a few pieces to the foreground. Charlene, another class participant, showed me how to achieve mitered corners for my binding. Hurray! It’s a very sensible technique, now that someone has explained it to me.
We knitted “Cables, Bobbles, and Braids” on Wednesday. So impressive and so easy to learn! We worked so hard, I forgot to take photos.
Thursday, we made buttons, buttons, buttons. The polymer clay buttons were favorites, of course, and everyone made a bunch. As usual, I was inspired by the color combinations that people came up with. Now I want to go home and play with clay for a few days. We also made felt buttons and needle-worked buttons. They aren’t quite as exciting as polymer, but we got some very nice-looking specimens by the end of the day.
Charles and the girls visited Sand Dunes National Monument yesterday. Charles said, “We’re going to go play in a huge sandbox with no cats around to mess it up!” They were three very sandy persons at the end of the day.
An Old-Time TextileFusion Tablecloth
People have done TextileFusion for a long time! Here’s a fabulous tablecloth that combines an Irish Crochet trim and eyelet embroidery. I don’t know its history, except that it is the last piece I bought before we moved away from Sheffield, England. It is in perfect shape.
In other news, the heart wall hanging is getting closer and closer to finished each day. Some days I get a lot of buttons sewn on, other days only one or two.
