Created from one local fleece, the LocalSpun line celebrates the unique properties of a breed while honoring the sheep that produced it. I've visited the farm, washed the fleece and laid it out in the sun to dry. The line includes dyed locks, handcarded batts and handspun yarns. Every item is one of a kind and once sold, can never be recreated.
Today the batts are in the Boutique, with locks to follow this weekend and handspun yarns on Monday (along with a video showing how I spin these batts here on the blog).
The names for these batts are inspired by John Keats's poem "To Autumn". It's much too long to include in it's entirety in the shop descriptions, so I'd like to share it here, along with the batts inspired by it. Serendipitously, today is Keats's birthday!
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Next week there will be yarns from the same fleece, with names from this same poem (unless someone suggests another Autumnal poem!).
Happy Autumn!
