Many sheep on the Island are raised primarily for meat but that doesn’t mean that their fleeces don’t have value! Healthy sheep produce good wool. The Vancouver Island Fibreshed Shearing Support Program assists farmers, helping to improve their revenue streams…
We have many different breeds of sheep here in our Fibreshed and their wool characteristics differ. Jill studied 10 different local breeds to try to see which would make the best socks – a garment we all need. Suitability of…
The Gabriola Arts and Heritage Centre was abuzz the weekend of November 6-8 as the Gabriola Island Fibreshed Working Group hosted the second iteration of Refugia, a multidisciplinary event exploring fibre, music, and storytelling. Ursula LeGuin’s essay on the Carrier…
What makes a good yarn for weaving rugs? Bobbie has been exploring different breeds of wool in her rug making. Sometimes she processes and spins her own rug yarns but it’s always nice when she can find a commercial product…
Local fibres, local dyes, local labour. The fibres we choose for our projects are important. But so are the dyes! And colour can tell such stories – of who we are, of where we live. Here, a member of the…
A short story of a long project When I declared to my guy Jim that I wanted to grow flax and make linen textiles, he said, “Well if you do that, I want you to make me a linen suit.”…
by Janet Ware Last Spring, when I first saw this large fleece from Alexa at Somerset Farm, I was first taken with its lustre. But, as a spinner/knitter, I was then quickly impressed by the soft yet tough feel of…
This project has been, and will continue to be, a Work-In-Progress! Two Vancouver Island fibre artisans – Bobbie and Karla – have combined their talents to create something special – a rug woven entirely of fibre grown or harvested from…
The Gabriola Fibreshed pod wanted to prove to island farmers that local fleece is well worth processing, so we sent a number of fleeces from Alexa Boultons’s Somerset Farm off to Custom Woolen Mills in Carstairs, AB. We got back…
The first post of an occasional series about different sheep breeds raised on Vancouver Island and the uses for their fleece. by Heather Cameron Sabine Blackburn keeps three East Friesian sheep for milk on her small farm in Cedar. (They…