Juniper Moon CSA Shares

This year I became a CSA share holder in Juniper Moon, an organic, no-kill farm that produces yarn and fiber from humanely-treated sheep and goats. I first read about Juniper Moon in Country Living magazine, and it's exactly the sort of enterprise I like to support. Also, I just thought it would be cool to get some yarn directly from the source.

In return for investing in the farm I receive a share of their clip, which arrived last week:



The wool is a lovely creamy white, and still smells like the sheep at the farm (this is because while it's beautifully milled it's not washed, and arrives with all the lanolin still intact.) To get it ready for my project, I had to first wash it in some Dawn and rinse with vinegar:



Once the skeins were clean they fluffed up quite a bit, as you can see from when I put them out on the back porch to dry:



After drying them in the sunshine I then began winding them up into balls (for crocheting it's easier for me to work with a ball versus a skein):



Now every morning I'm using my yarn to work on a holiday project. Crocheting is something I can usually do without thinking about it, especially if I use a simple, in-the-round pattern that I can easily memorize. This also gives me time/space to think about the current WIP and all my other writing projects, or just relax and think about nothing at all.

As you might guess with my crabby fingers it's slow going, but that's fine; I'm in no hurry. The wool is amazingly light and has a very smooth hand, and while now and then I have to pick out a stray dark hair or a tiny bit of grass it's been a lot of fun to use. As to what I'm making, you'll have to wait and see, but here's one block to give you a hint: