slow clothes

If you’ve read RBG Ruthie’s story, you know she’s one special girl.

When it was time for her first shearing, I wanted to honor her harrowing arrival and celebrate how she continues to thrive on this farm…by hand processing her fiber from start-to-finish.

As with many things on the farm, it took work, planning, and diligent execution.

Here is the timeline!

RBG Ruthie made her arrival on 5/18/2020 - Day 1 - born with a couple inches of fiber!

RBG Ruthie on her birthday, dressed in a few inches of creamy white fiber, with her dam (mom) Demi and the c-section incision visible.

Watching Ruthie thrive & her fiber grow!

Shearing day was a sight! 4/27/2021 — elapsed time: 11 months

Watching the fiber come off was incredibly rewarding!

What a difference a haircut makes!

That fiber hides a lot!

She’s all leg & neck!

Her harvest yielded just a couple pounds - but they were such pristine locks!

And this is where the hand processing really begins! 6/1/2021—12 months

A few days on the skirting table to pick out the debris

And then the delicate process of washing began.

Lots of careful rinsing to clean without felting it.

I believe it took me two weeks to clean the fleece.

I did small batches at a time, in the hottest water I could muster from my black garden hose heated from the summer sun.

Each “cycle” would sit and soak until the water went cool.

I’d carefully remove it, marvel at the dirt in the water, before draining and rinsing again.

Each batch was about 4 ounces and took at least 4 rinses. I didn’t really keep track because I was doing this in between growing cut flowers, caring for Hammie...and renovating the house…

And then I used my drum carder to align the fibers as best as I could.

Sadly, I didn’t seem to take any photos of this. It was an insanely busy summer.

I carded it in batches as well, at least 4 times each to get it as smooth as possible.

I brought it into the farmhouse to spin in late July 2021 — 13 months

The roving that I made was as perfect as I could get it, but there were plenty of tangles and naps in it.

I decided to leave them because not only would it add texture to the finished yarn, but it would be an accurate reflection of her early life — lumpy & bumpy but perfectly beautiful!

The fiber was super soft and easy to spin.

I would often spin a little bit every day that summer — usually while taking a break during the intense summer heat we had that year.

I decided to make it a 2-ply yarn which ultimately meant that each of the two strands would pass through my fingertips (once again) a total of 3 times once it was plied together.

Some days I’d spin for just a few minutes. But as winter wore on, I spent the long nights spinning away!

I had my first skein of yarn completed right at the end of the year! 12/31/2021 - 19 months

To say I was excited was an understatement! Even though I still had a whole pound left to spin, I started beginning to think of what I wanted to knit with it…

It is a lumpy textured, DK weight yarn

I spun up the last of the fiber on 1/27/2022 — 20 months

Winding it into a ball got me super excited for knitting. It’s got that classic suri luster, with a cool hand.

I casted onto my needles on January 28, 2022 felt like the home stretch, but it would be several more months before it would be done.

The pattern I picked couldn’t have been more perfect to show off this textured yarn! It’s the Eclecticity Shawl by Cheryl Faust (available on Ravelry).

I passed many of the cold February days on the recliner knitting!

It was a methodical knit with a few new-to-me stitches.

Probably the most remarkable part was that I didn’t make a lot of mistakes. I still consider myself an advanced beginner when it comes to knitting. I’ve only been doing it a handful of years and with every pattern, there’s still a bit of a learning curve.

Inevitably, I make a few mistakes that I subsequently don’t discover until I’m onto or done with the next row…which requires me to undo a fair amount of work.

And since I try to knit for enjoyment & relaxation, it’s always a downer when I have to undo work. Usually it zaps my motivation because fixing a knitting mistake feels like disappointing work.

So whenever I’ve encountered a mistake, it will often mean the project gets sidelined until I find the motivation to get it fixed.

But that wasn’t the case for this pattern! Even with a few new stitches, I managed to get it almost completely done before making any errors.

To say this was an enjoyable knit is an understatement!

And knowing I did everything start-to-finish myself…

Including the breeding that produced the alpaca, assisting in her c-section birth, rearing her during those first critical months, shearing her, hand washing the fiber multiple times, delicately drying it all, then carding each fiber, hand spinning the first strand, then the second, and then plying them together, and finally taking that finished yarn and knitting a shawl from it.

I bound off on a very windy Saturday afternoon - April 9th, 2022 with the deepest sense of gratitude and accomplishment for 23 months of work.

The pattern worked so well for this naturally textured yarn.

It is just the perfect size, too!

It is supple and squishy, and has a bit of weight to it, perfect for these frosty spring mornings and evenings!