So good to get out of my rug hooking desert and visit a place where people hook!
Spent most of my time on my brother's farm. Took them the first chair seat to match the table runner I had hooked for Christmas for them.
I was out there weeding the blueberry bushes and thinning the beets. The mountain views were incredible in any direction. Yes, I was cold. They were in Tee shirts and shorts and I wore jeans and usually 2 shirts.
Yep, that's me on his antique John Deere tooling around the meadow. Didn't dare get past second gear.
But I found this wonderful lady not too far down the road with a wool mill. She is a fiber artist with the mill, leaving the corporate world behind. She weaves for the love of it and runs the mill obviously successfully with a year backlog. Susan Snider has run the mill since 2016 and knows everything about what she does. They run sheep wool, angora, alpaca, llama, and would probably try anything. It is all custom work. Your fleece can be 1 ply thread or crazy yarns, or roving or felt mats or whatever..
These machines make the yarn. If you don't want to stop at the roving stage, it spins the wool onto 12 bobbins at a time. The plyer can make a single ply for lace making into funky bulky ply yarns. The day we were there she was making single ply Angora as thin as thread for a customer making Angora lace.
She also has a retail area with looms, as well as dyed and undyed yarns (some for rug hooking or punching even!) , roving, and all kinds of stuff for weaving, needle felting, knitting,and spinning. She teaches workshops all the time.
Susan was such a joy to visit. We spent an hour of her "off" time as she gave my brother and I the grand tour, explaining the whole process. She may have even convinced him to consider raising sheep when he is ready to add critters to his farm.
Here are her details:
Mad River Fiber Arts and Mill
6163 Main St. Waitsfield, VT
(802) 496-7746
www.madriverfibermill.com email: Susan@madriverwoolery and she is on Facebook
Closed on Sunday and Monday
Susan, thank you for being so gracious and spending the time with us.
Stopped to visit my sister, Laura, on the way back and made plans for the Maine Harvest Hook-In and Green Mountain show coming up soon. Designing new patterns and working on new displays. Can't wait to get back to VT in October!
Back in South Carolina now where my first day back I found (and killed of course) a water moccasin. For those of you who live where there are no snakes, the water moccasin, or cottonmouth) is a pit viper that is extremely poisonous.
Maybe I want to live up North again....
Debra
