Artisan Felted Fabrics, Garments
As we wrote in this blog last year, the Fourth of July is Lee’s favorite holiday. Besides celebrating our country’s birthing process it’s that time when he reflects on the year just past. This year we are doing our reflection in pictures. It has been a year of great delight, friendship, health and gratitude. Happy Fourth of July to all of our friends, near and far.
Happy Fourth of July. Celebrate safely and please remember all of our men and women in active service. Sandy
It has been two years since we participated in the East Mountain Fiber Farm & Studio Tour. And, WOW!, are we glad the dates worked for us this year. The Tour occurred this past weekend and it was a smashing success.
In preparation, Lee and I turned my fabric design studio into a Pop Up Shop, which meant putting away collapsible work & cutting tables, the steam press, my project bags of fiber and fabric, sweep the floor (poor spiders…), and created order where order does not normally exist. (Just ask Lee.) While we were at it, we inventoried our processed fiber. Boy, do we have an inventory of fiber, but that’s another blog.
We decided to put garments, scarves, hats, bags and other items created one to four years ago on deep discount to move product. The studio was repopulated with sale tables, racks and other display areas. Danita Coulter did her usual masterful job of cleaning up the barn so that we could showcase this year’s fiber clip. We also put new mom & cria into a barn catch pen so our guests could “ooh & ahh” six-day-old Normandie. (D/D for short).
There were already three car loads of visitors waiting at 10 AM Saturday morning when Lee went down to open the ranch gate. This foretold what was to be a constant stream of visitors both Saturday and Sunday, start to finish, with never a pause in the day. Not even to take a bite of my well-planned, pre-made sandwiches for lunch.
So much product sold we ran out of our special Whispirit shopping bags. We were so exhausted Saturday evening we just couldn’t bring ourselves to repopulate the sales tables and racks until Sunday AM and then the ranch gate was opened and it happened all over again! We have nothing left but a pile of hangers and empty tables where all the handmade vests, coats, jackets and accessories use to be.
The best part of both days was showing old and new friends what we do, how we do it and introducing our newborn cria. Sundance & Atticus (our Great Pyrenees herd guard dogs), always vigilant to strangers on the property, were the biggest winners as they got petted and loved by EVERYONE. Lee was jealous. Our raffle attracted over 100 entries. CONGRATULATIONS to Pattie S. from Albuquerque who won the purple shawl featured in an earlier blog.
My, what a great time. A special “Thank You” to our fellow Fiber Tour participants who worked diligently to publicize and find sponsors for this year’s Tour (especially Bill Herman, Sandra Holzman, Robin Pascal and Ginny Zvoch). Robin and Sandra are the dean’s of this event. Thanks, as always, to Danita, who helped us look so good. And of course, to the many, many people who spent part of their weekend with us, we specially say Thank You!!
Until next week……… Sandy
This week’s blog will focus on the artisans to be found at stops 4, 5, and 6 of the East Mountain Fiber Farm & Studio Tour, which is this coming weekend June 11 and 12. Get your map here.
Stop 4. The Woolshed at Maple Winds Farm
This stop on the fiber tour is owned and run by Victoria and Robert Collins and is truly a hands on fiber producer. Victoria is proud that this operation is literally from sheep to shawl. They sell fiber for all uses, wool, angora rabbits and alpaca from local producers. They feature handspun wool yarns as well as blends. The Collins are dealers for the well known looms Majacraft and Louet and have many commercial products to sell.
Stop 5. Hollywick Farms Alpacas
Kathy and Bill Herman own and operate Hollywick Farms. Their herd of alpacas are used to visitors and have just been shorn. Come meet the alpacas, feel their fleece and shop for roving, yarns, fashion garments and accessories. Be sure to enter Hollywick Farms’ drawing to win a pair of soft and comfortable alpaca socks.
Annie McHale will also be at Hollywick Farms with her amazing weavings. Annie is a passionate and prolific Inkle weaver. She saw her first Inkle loom when she was 17 years old and with the help of a library book and her dad, Annie built her own loom. Inkle looms produce warp faced bands no wider than 6″. Annie weaves straps for cameras, guitars and other musical instruments as well as belts and other personal accessories. See her endless ways of combining colors into patterns and clever use of new materials, techniques and inspirations.
Stop 6. Whispering Spirit Alpacas
This stop is our alpaca breeding and fabric creating location. We have a herd of 30 alpacas and two llamas (yes, you will notice the difference). Stop up at the barn, where Lee will introduce you to the animals, especially our new cria Normandie (born just yesterday) and show you this year’s harvest. See how we skirt the fiber to ready it for the mill. Then come down and join Sandy in the Fabric Design Center (a/k/a the garage). She will show you the equipment we use to make our textiles and will have deep mark downs on our Whispirit designs from this past winter. We will also have several new offerings fresh off the design table and ready for the boutiques. You get first dibs before we deliver. And, we will have felted fabric, prefelts, bags of felted remnant, batts, roving and raw fiber for sale. The purple scarf pictured above will be raffled off at our ranch.
Check out last week’s post for info on the other half of the tour, and join us this weekend! We look forward to seeing you.
This weekend one of our sons, Chris, who did his culinary training at Le Cordon Bleu and has worked in fine dining restaurants in NYC, Boston and Girona, Spain explained the subtlety of the wonderful French verb “soigné(e)” to distinguish between fine dining restaurants and excellent restaurants. Fine dining restaurants are staffed, physically designed, and completely orchestrated to create a unique form of excellence in each and every aspect of its service (reservations, welcoming, restaurant decor, plating, delivery, accompanying beverage, check out, attention). Every role in the restaurant — from the individuals plating the food to the cook to the sommelier to the person selecting the ingredients — must perform his or her part with the same commitment to perfection.
Soigné is a word that has also been historically associated with haute couture to describe both a daily style of exquisite dress as well as the highest achievement of design. To Google the term, unfortunately shows that today’s fashion world uses this elegant word to infuse mass produced inexpensive apparel with a sophistication it does not deserve. Oh, where are the word police when we need them? Mass produced, sacrificing quality of materials for less expensive, overseas labor. Yes, you too can buy a trendy dress for $19.99. It is so inexpensive you can buy 6 and next season throw them out and buy 6 more. This, I believe, is a misuse of the word.
Some in the world of fashion who are trying to re-find the sense of excellence in all dimensions — sustainability, fabric, design, quality of production and artisan creations have coined a far less elegant phrase: “Slow Fashion Movement.” I have to fight the image of a chicken cooking in my crock pot, but the Slow Fashion Movement really is another name for the wearable art that has existed in unique shops created intentionally, by design by talented, intentional and yes, slow moving designers. Their’s is not the mass produced wearable which dominated this century as “off the rack” designs. Whispirit is part of this movement.
Each of our garments at Whispirit is created with the very best of creative commitment. Our ingredients are the luxurious natural alpaca fibers … milled by hand into amazing batts … hand felted into unique fabrics … designed to match the qualities of the fabric to your comfort … sewn by hand seamstresses using their highest level of skill … finished with handmade artisan buttons and closures that is artfulness. Each garment is made, one by one for you the ultimate consumer. Soigne!
We, the Whispirit team, work hard to combine artfulness with the highest standards of sustainability, teamwork and production excellence. Each of us bring our best to the effort, combining seemingly unparalleled skills of animal husbandry, shearing standards, milling excellence, textile production, garment creation, button creation, sales and customer service to create a unique personal experience — soigné, slow fashion, that is a memorable fashion experience for you.
Treat yourself to one of our our new creations that will be appearing in our partner boutiques and in our on-line store shortly.
Til next time. Sandy
All of us at Whispering Spirit Alpacas are concluding a much needed break over the winter holidays which graced us with travels to Spain & France, time with parts of our family and opportunities to ponder ideas for our Whispirit 2016 creations. Traveling gives us a great chance to change our rhythm, take in new vistas, and be inspired by other artisans.
Now returned and as we settle back into running the ranch and designing new garments for Whispirit, we are impressed again by how much creativity and productivity there is in New Mexico, our chosen home and how many new ideas we have bouncing around. New Mexico is where our imaginations and our dreams take shape.
As we collect with our creative partners who help us pull our ideas into Whispirit products, we are excited to take on several new projects, which we will describe in future blogs
We are excited and hope you will follow us throughout this year.
