8 (8, 9, 10, 11)13, 14, 15, 16 skeins Wool Trip by Hannah Fettig (100% wool; 126 yd / m per 2 oz skein) in Mussel Gray or Rose.

925 (1025, 1150, 1275, 1400) 1525, 1675, 1800, 1950) yd / 825 (950, 1050, 1150, 1275)1400, 1525, 1650, 1800 m worsted weight wool

This pullover was designed as part of a sheep to sweater project called Wool Trip. It’s a practical sweater, designed with a practical yarn spun with wool from practical sheep.

Wool Trip is the result of a summer long adventure my family had producing our own small batch of yarn. The wool is sourced from a neighboring organic sheep farm here in Maine. We drove the wool to Green Mountain Spinnery in Vermont where we got a lesson in how woolen spun spinning works. Lastly we traveled to Quebec, Canada and hand dyed our precious skeins with Julie Asselin and Jean-François Mallette. The result is a practical yarn spun from the wool of practical sheep in a unique color palette. Wool Trip is a durable yarn with a pleasant hand and it’s own unique personality. Like the people whose hands have touched it along the way, it’s warm, friendly, and hard working. It’s beautiful, but it’s not fussy. It didn’t come from the fanciest of sheep, it wasn’t spun on the most modern of equipment, and it wasn’t dyed using the most efficient or precise process. But we wouldn’t have had it any other away.

Hold a skein under your nose and inhale, and it’s all there. The sheep at Noon Family Sheep Farm. The vegetable-based organic spinning oil that kept the wool moving through the machines at Green Mountain Spinnery. The colorful dyes in Julie and Jean-François’s studio. We take a sniff and can’t help but smile as it all comes back to mind. We hope that smell puts smiles on the faces of knitters, too, as they imagine where their skein of yarn has been, and then start knitting their own chapter into its colorful history.