This one-of-a-kind encyclopedia shines a spotlight on more than 200 animals and their wondrous fleece. Profiling a worldwide array of fiber-producers that includes northern Africa’s dromedary camel, the Navajo churro, and the Tasmanian merino, Carol Ekarius and Deborah Robson include photographs of each animal’s fleece at every stage of the handcrafting process, from raw to cleaned, spun, and woven. The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook is an artist’s handbook, travel guide, and spinning enthusiast’s ultimate reference source all in one.

With this compact portable reference in hand, crafters can quickly and easily look up any of 100 different sheep breeds, the characteristics of their fleece, and the kinds of projects for which their fleece is best suited. Each breed profile includes a photograph of the animal and information about its origin and conservation status, as well as the weight, staple length, fiber diameter, and natural colors of its fleece. This is a great primer for beginners, and a handy guide for anyone who loves working with fleece.

Explains the crucial factors that spinners, knitters and weavers need to know in order to create yarn, describing 21 different breeds of sheep, their characteristics and history and the structure, grease content and fiber diameter of each one's fleece.

Discover the satisfying fun of spinning your own yarn! This step-by-step guide shows you how to create 80 distinctive yarn types, from classics like mohair bouclé to novelties like supercoils. Covering the entire spinning process, Sarah Anderson describes the unique architecture of each type of yarn and shares expert techniques for manipulating and combining fibers. Take your crafting to a new level and ensure that you have the best yarn available by spinning it yourself.

• A comprehensive guide to raising sheep, goats, angora rabbits, and alpacas for producing fiber • Provides practical information on housing, fencing, feed, grooming, shearing, plucking, basic health care, breeding and birthing • Includes a comparison of popular breeds and how their fiber differs from breed to breed • Features a frank discussion of the energy and commitment that it takes to raise livestock, and how much room and land each animal species will need • Contains essential biosecurity practices to prevent spreading pests and infectious animal diseases, as well as advice on hand spinning and crafts to utilize your homegrown fiber

The renowned knitter shares her year-long adventure through America’s colorful, fascinating—and slowly disappearing—wool industry. Join Clara Parkes as she ventures across the country to meet the shepherds, dyers, and countless workers without whom our knitting needles would be empty, our mills idle, and our feet woefully cold. Along the way, she encounters a flock of Saxon Merino sheep in upstate New York, tours a scouring plant in Texas, visits a steamy Maine dyehouse, helps sort freshly shorn wool on a working farm, and learns how wool fleece is measured, baled, shipped, and turned into skeins. In pursuit of the perfect yarn, Parkes describes a brush with the dangers of opening a bale (they can explode), and her adventures from Maine to Wisconsin (“the most knitterly state”) and back again. By the end of the book, you’ll be ready to set aside the backyard chickens and add a flock of sheep instead.

Although none of the luxury fibres, including silk, is produced in large quantities, their particular and unique qualities of fineness, softness, warmth and pleasurable handle mean that they occupy a very important place in the luxury apparel and fine furnishing trades.This book covers all aspects of the growth, physical characteristics, production, marketing and consumption of silk, mohair, cashmere, camelhair, Alpaca, Llama, Vicuna, Guanaco, Yak and Musk Ox fibres. The image of these fabrics is of course all important and the book describes in detail those rare occasions when a lower priced and lower quality version of a luxury fibre has damaged its overall reputation. Some natural fibres covered here including spider silk are also increasingly finding applications within the technical textiles sector where their high performance thermal properties and bio-mimetic qualities in particular, are very useful.This is an essential reference for all those involved in any part of the luxury fibre trade. - Covers all aspects of the growth, physical characteristics, production, marketing and consumption of silk, mohair, cashmere, camelhair, Alpaca, Llama, Vicuna, Guanaco, Yak and Musk Ox fibres - Describes the rare occasions when a lower priced and lower quality version of a luxury fibre has damaged its overall reputation

Modern knitters are faced with greater risk of musculoskeletal injury than knitters of a generation ago. This book explores risk factors that impact knitters' productivity, efficiency, and safety. Strategies for reducing risk of injury including early intervention and prevention are discussed. Methods for increased knitting efficiency and productivity are also explained.

Fiber artists will welcome this opportunity to learn how to use and control color with this monumental and exquisitely beautiful book. Whether they stitch, quilt, weave, work in macrame, hook rugs, knit, crochet, or experiment in mixed media, the artists will benefit from the authors' techniques for solving color problems. Color and Fiber is divided into three sections. The first section presents essential terminology, ideas, and definitions about light and color as preparation for the problems, projects and ideas which follow. The second section describes how light, dye and pigment work with fibers because individual fibers, yarns and fabrics differ in their responses to light and color. The ability to solve color problems depends on the artists' understanding of the fiber's light and color relationships. The third section presents the practical applications for the information gained in the first two sections. Besides color mixing and special effects such as iridescence and opalescence, this section examines projects that artists or classes can do to understand color's part in determining spatial effects, emotional impact and color systems.

Introduces the processes of spinning and dying yarn and explains how to match homespun fiber and yarn to knitted projects.