Junebug Farms Yarn

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If you’ve read even a little bit of my blog, you know about my friend Cari. We met online back when Paul and I were planning our move to Tennessee. I had questions about chickens, so of course I turned to Ravelry. I searched for someone in NE Tennessee who’d posted about chickens, found Cari’s blog, and the rest is some of my happiest history ever.

Over the years that Cari and I have been friends, Cari’s fiber genius has exploded. She knits, spins, crochets, dyes like a crazy color savant, and along with her hubby, Jay, has started a small fiber farm. With goats!

Here’s a picture of Cari and Jay that ran in the local paper.

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They started out with two female angora goats and early this year added two boys. This is when they were bringing the boys home in their car!

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It’s all been big fun to be part of and watch develop. And now! Oh, my gosh! The yarn!!!

This Spring, Junebug Farms got their first batch of processed fiber back from the mill. It is crazy gorgeous. Cari gave me a skein of the natural color that I’ve been saving instead of knitting with (I know, I know), and then she started turning out these glorious colors. I had to jump in.

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I’ve had the Fetching pattern in my queue for ages. It seemed good for trying out a new yarn since, with a little cabling, some stockinette, and a picot edge, I’d get to see how it behaved with a number of different techniques.

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So I can’t figure out how to photograph the squish (which is OUTRAGEOUS), but hopefully the photos at least show how beautifully the yarn knits up. The stitch definition in the cabled areas is nice and crisp, yet there’s still this lovely bit of mohair haze that just kills me.

I couldn’t stop with the mitts. I mean it. I just had to keep going. So I came up with a matching hat.

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This hat and these mitts make me so happy! I’d love them even if the yarn weren’t from Cari and Jay’s precious goats and dyed by Cari herself, but those things make them extra super special.

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I knit the first mitt the night the Cubs won the World Series (!!!!), and I’ve been wearing them ever since,  even though this is the most un-winterlike November I can remember. Now, all I can think about is what I want to make next with Junebug Farms yarn!

19 Comments

  1. caribayb
    Reply

    You are too kind and sweet, as always. I’m more happy you like the yarn than I am about anyone else liking it. My favorite thing about it is that I personally know every animal’s fleece used. The alpaca is local to Only The Finest Fibers alpaca farm and the wool is from Hobbyknob farm. I love being able to support my good friends and fellow fiber farmers, Louise & Elizabeth, by producing a truly local yarn.

  2. caribayb
    Reply

    It’s cheesy, but you often see artisanal items on Etsy and the like that include “love” as an ingredient. I know our goats are loved as much as our cats and chickens are – they are family and pets more than livestock. I hope that the next three batches of yarn come out as nice as this run did. That’s the risk with very small scale limited run products: you can’t ever exactly replicate your results if your ingredients change slightly with each run. We have 20 skeins left of this one, and in December we’ll pick up 55 skins of worsted, and 20 each DK and fingering. 🙂

  7. melinda
    Reply

    Thank you, Paula! I do feel lucky. That’s been one of the best parts of moving to Tennessee. When we lived in Chicago, I had access to wonderful yarn shops and workshops and those kinds of things, but I’d never personally met a fiber animal. Now that we live in a more rural area, I’ve gotten to meet goats, and sheep, and llamas, and alpacas, and lots of other animals who don’t tend to hang out in Chicago. Lol! I really do love having that opportunity.

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