Our Local Fibershed

I went over to Robin’s this morning to talk about her Jacob sheep display for the upcoming State Fair. While I was there I noticed the beautiful Fibershed map on the wall. This features a map of wool, cotton and other fiber producers within about 100 miles of San Francisco and notes whether they are dyers, weavers, and so on.

I conducted my first natural dye experiment on Thursday, and was enthusing to Robin about it. She pointed me to Rebecca Burgess’ new book, Harvesting Color, a treasure in itself but one that strongly encourages use of local plants for dyes (and, even better, INVASIVE ones: French broom, here I come). I’d still like to plant a dye garden, though, that would include indigo and madder and coreopsis and marigolds and sunflowers. Don’t need any coyote brush though, we already have that!!

Foxfiber is a grower of organic cotton up in the Capay Valley, definitely on my list of places to visit in any Fibershed tour.

It’s the Tour de Fleece. I’m spinning my first fleece, one of Robin’s Jacobs, a ewe named Summer (how appropriate). It’s 101 degrees outside. Spinning is cooler than knitting, people…