West by Midwest

I shear fleeces from sheep throughout Northern California, grow natural dyes like weld and madder in my backyard, and am the author of Raw Material: Working Wool in the West. I knit, spin, and teach a variety of workshops at schools, community craft nights, guild meetings, and more. I am a founding member of the Northern California Fibershed Cooperative and currently serve as its president.

Lodestar Sport 2-Ply

Each skein of limited-edition Lodestar Sport is 310 yards, spun from undyed white Rambouillet with a  dash of Suffolk. The wool was grown in Plymouth, California and milled at Mendocino Wool & Fiber in Ukiah, California. Like its worsted-weight sibling, Lodestar Sport is a workhorse with a lot of life in it, very springy and smooshy, strong (no breaking, splitting, or pilling while knitting), with subtle luster. The range sheep give it light vegetable matter, some of which comes out in winding and washing.
Lodestar shows textured stitch patterns well, and brightens and blooms on blocking for a fuller, denser fabric (the photo with the gauge marker shows Lodestar after blocking, and was knit on U.S. 5 needles). Its 2-ply nature makes it perfect for knitting, crochet, and weaving, and it takes dye beautifully. Lodestar is named for Gary Vorderbruggen, who sheared this wool and taught purveyor Stephany Wilkes to shear. A lodestar is “a star that shows the way, something that serves as a guide or on which the attention is fixed.”

Lodestar Worsted 2-Ply

Each skein of limited-edition Lodestar Worsted is 205 yards, spun from undyed white Rambouillet with a  dash of Suffolk. The wool was grown in Plymouth, California and milled at Mendocino Wool & Fiber in Ukiah, California. Lodestar is a workhorse with a lot of life in it, very springy and smooshy, strong (no breaking, splitting, or pilling while knitting), with subtle luster. The range sheep give it light vegetable matter, some of which comes out in winding and washing.

Lodestar shows textured stitch patterns well, and brightens and blooms on blocking for a fuller, denser fabric (the photo with the gauge marker shows Lodestar after blocking, while the knit sample photo shows it before blocking). Its 2-ply nature makes it perfect for knitting, crochet, and weaving, and it takes dye beautifully. Lodestar is named for Gary Vorderbruggen, who sheared this wool and taught purveyor Stephany Wilkes to shear. A lodestar is “a star that shows the way, something that serves as a guide or on which the attention is fixed.”

Autographed Copy of Raw Material

One autographed copy of Raw Material: Working Wool in the West direct from the author, featuring numerous members of the Fibershed Marketplace.

Book Description: Follow a sweater with an “Italian Merino” label back far enough and chances are its life began not in Milan, but in Montana. Many people want to look behind the label and know where their clothes come from, but the textile supply chain-one of the most toxic on the planet-remains largely invisible. In Raw Material, Stephany Wilkes tells the story of American wool through her own journey to becoming a certified sheep shearer.

What begins as a search for local yarn becomes a dirty, unlikely, and irresistible side job. Wilkes leaves her high tech job for a way of life considered long dead in the American West. Along the way, she meets ornery sheep that weigh more than she does, carbon-sequestering ranchers, landless grazing operators, rare breed stewards, and small-batch yarn makers struggling with drought, unfair trade agreements, and faceless bureaucracies as they work to bring eco-friendly fleece to market.

Raw Material demonstrates that the back must break to clothe the body, and that excellence often comes by way of exhaustion. With humor and humility, Wilkes follows wool from the farm to the factory, through the hands of hardworking Americans trying to change the culture of clothing. Her story will appeal to anyone interested in the fiber arts or the textile industry, and especially to environmentally conscious consumers, as it extends the concerns of the sustainable food movement to fleece, fiber, and fashion.

Stephany Wilkes is a sheep shearer, wool classer, knitter, and the volunteer president of the Northern California Fibershed Cooperative, which owns and operates this Marketplace. Stephany writes regularly for The Ag Mag, and her work can also be found in The Saturday Evening Post, The North American Review, Hobby Farms, Midwestern Gothic, and other publications. She is fortunate to share this life with her husband, Ian, and “failed” livestock guardian dog, Dude.