These rain days finally gave me time to finish weaving and twisting fringes on the blanket that I started during the MacRostie studio tour! It is all washed and ready for sale and we’ll be bring it with us tomorrow, Nov 7th to the Zion Lutheran Church’s Wandering Reindeer Bazaar from 9-3 (event flyer with details is attached below).
Some of you were watching me weave at the studio tour when I realized I’d messed up on my planned log cabin checkerboard for the center of the blanket… 🫣 I could have unwoven a couple inches of fabric to go back and fix the error, but instead decided to roll with the randomness that often comes from humans doing handcrafts. So the center “log cabin” design is not the planned square checkerboard I had set out to create, but instead i just changed the pattern direction when I felt like it. I have to say it was very liberating.
The blanket ended up being 38″ wide by 64″ long – the perfect size to use as a comfy throw blanket on the couch, a lap blanket for two next to the fire, or a generous shawl on these chilly mornings.
It’s made of about 15% my handspun Cormo wool from a farm in Iowa, 15% my handspun alpaca from a farm in MN, and 70% wool yarn purchased from a company who salvages commercial wool cone leftovers. It’s super fuzzy and drapey and I love how it turned out with the texture and softness of handspun yarn!
If you aren’t too busy deer hunting tomorrow on opening day, come see Casey and I at the Wandering Reindeer Bazaar at Zion Church in Grand Rapids. In the meantime, enjoy some pictures of the new blanket that I’m currently obsessed with:
What a great time Casey and I had last weekend during the MacRostie’s fall studio tour! We met so many lovely people who drove all the way out to our home to see the looms and chat about weaving and spinning. (We had such a good time that we forgot to take pictures.. Oops!)
Everyone who came during the tour was encouraged to weave a few picks on the antique rug loom and enter a drawing to win the rug that everyone helped weave. The lucky winner was Chris V.! Congratulations!!
I got the end header of the community rug woven, then wove 1 more rug on the same warp threads before taking them both off the loom together. They both got cut off the loom, had their hems sewn, got washed, and are hanging to dry. The winner will be picking up their rug next week, and the other will go into inventory for our next sale at the Wandering Reindeer Bazaar at Zion church on November 7th.
Here’s what the “finishing” process looks like for my rag rugs:
Weaving the header at the end of the rug with the same type of threads as the warp. A matching header started the rug. First, the warp threads get cut right after the end header.Then the rug(s) get unrolled from the beam and cut off the front apron rod. Then the “filler” (the purple/white fabric) gets removed. This is put in place before the rug starts in order to space out the warp threads evenly. The hems on each end get folded over & pinned so they don’t unravel. Then they get sewn with a straight seam & a zigzag seam for good measure. The finished rug before washing! Beautiful job weaving, everyone! Hanging to dry in front of our woodstove. While Walter sleeps through it all…
We’re so honored and excited to be part of the MacRostie Art Center’s Fall Studio Tour for the first time ever, and we’re busily getting the fiber studio and farm ready for visitors. The event runs October 3rd & 4th, 2026, 10am-4pm both days.
If you’ve ever wanted to try weaving in person, come see us this weekend! There will be multiple hands-on fibercraft activities so you can:
Weave on the rag rug loom and then enter a drawing to win the community-woven rug at the end of the weekend
Weave on a 100-year old antique ‘toy’ loom, a replica of a 1700’s era loom, and a modern rigid heddle loom
Learn how yarn is spun by hand and with a spinning wheel and make yourself a yarn bracelet
See how a wool throw blanket is made as I weave one with a fun checkerboard pattern
Of course you can browse our handwoven rag rugs and wool throw blankets for sale, along with other farm products including rustic log benches & end tables, and our freshly milled cornmeal that we grow & process on the farm (and teach classes about!)
There’s a lot going on here – come check it out. See you at the farm! -Shara and Casey
Photos: (left) 360 threads being put onto the loom for the throw blanket. (middle) The roller mill grinding the flint corn into cornmeal. (right) The kernels after their first of many passes through the mill – on its way to becoming delicious cornmeal ready for chili and cornbread season. Yum!
Casey and I got home a bit ago from the Wirtanen Farm fall festival. This was our first year selling at this event and we had a lot of fun! It is such a beautiful space with neat historic buildings, plus really nice people organizing, vending, and visiting.
We enjoyed getting to chat with people about wood working, yarn spinning, and weaving. There were great musicians, including a woman playing a traditional Finnish string instrument. Between guests and another vendor, we were also able to meet other weavers and spinners. It’s fun to meet others who “speak the same language”!
Coincidentally, we had our own “pioneer farm” activity to work on once we got home – braiding our flint corn to dry! We literally had to chase the blue jays out of the corn patch while harvesting, so it was just in time. After getting home from the festival, we braided about 1/3 of the harvest, which is roughly 250 ears of corn. They’ll all air dry in our basement near the dehumidifier for the next few weeks until they’re ready to shell and grind for cornmeal.
Happy fall and happy farming, friends! – Shara & Casey
I was so honored to be asked to create a handwoven wool item for the Free Range Food Co-op‘s upcoming Raise the Roost event for their silent auction! It’s July now but winter is always around the corner in MN, so I thought a comfy wool blanket would be just the thing.
Here are some photos and details of the process with some weaverly and non-weaverly terms thrown in for anyone who might be reading… and lots of photos too!
Step 1: Sampling!
Some weavers love sampling, some hate it with a passion. I’m somewhere in the middle. This time I sampled to see if I liked the plain weave (on the right) or the twill pattern (on the left). The plain weave has 6 epi and 6 ppi, or 6 yarns per inch of weaving in both directions, going over/under in the most basic weave structure. The twill is at 8epi/10 ppi and is a 2-2 twill going over 2 yarns and under 2 as it moves across the warp. I chose the twill option for the blanket.
Step 2 is to wind the warp yarns (the ones that stay under tension on the loom). They were wound on the warping board at 120″ long in 3 bouts. You can see the bouts on the right which get daisy-chained up to keep them in order once they are done being wound around the pegs on the warping board. I wove this project full width on my loom at 45″ wide so at 8epi there were 360 warp strands total.
Step 3 is getting those cute little bundles of yarn onto the loom without them turning into a terrifying tangle. They get spread out in the ‘raddle’ (fancy word for my board with nails in it) to space the yarns out to have 8 strands in every inch. To keep them tidy, I keep each bundle under tension with a stack of books all of roughly the same weight, and as they get wound onto the back beam and the books slide forward on the table, I reset them and wind some more. The picture on the right shows what the yarns look like from the back of the loom all spread out in the raddle, ready to be wound onto the back beam.
Step 4: Thread the heddles. The heddles are the strings you see the yarns going through, each of them has a little ‘eye’ in the middle that holds the yarn. The photo on the left is from the back of the loom, and the photo on the right is from the front of the loom coming out the other side. When you step on a treadle it will lift the harness according to your pattern, and the heddle brings the appropriate yarns along with it to lift or lower them.
My loom is a 4 harness loom so there are 4 of the harnesses you can see with the wooden rails going across. Each harness holds heddles that get threaded depending on your pattern. Since this is a simple 2-2 twill, this pattern was threaded 1-2-3-4 with the 1st yarn going through a heddle on the 1st harness, the 2nd yarn on the 2nd harness, 3rd yarn on 3rd harness, 4th on 4th, and then starting back over with harness 1 and doing that over and over for 360 yarns…
Step 5: Sleying the reed. No, not ‘slaying’ the reed. The reed is the thing with the metal slots you see near the top in the left photo below. This reed has 6 slots/dents for every inch. Since my yarn is threaded at 8 yarns per inch and I need to fit that into a reed with 6 spaces per inch, I sleyed the reed at 1-1-2-1-1-2. This means I put the yarns through the reed in the same order they were in the heddles but it’s 1 yarn per slot, then 1, then 2 in the same slot and so on. The heddles still dictate the pattern but the reed makes sure the yarns all stay spaced out properly with 8 yarns in every inch.
In the photo on the right looking from the top down, you can see those 4 harnesses with the heddles, then the wood at the top of the beater that contains the reed which beats the fabric into place. At the bottom edge is where all the warp yarns get tied onto the front beam to get them under tension for easy weaving. The red thread is just spacer yarn to get everything spread back out after bunching the yarns to tie them onto the rod. I’ve already started weaving a little bit in these photos.
Step 6 is actually weave the whole project but y’all… it’s been a bonkers week and I was doing the weaving mostly in the evenings when my brain was already pretty tired so I simply forgot to take a process video of the actual weaving 🙁 But – I did take a video of when I was done weaving and got it unrolled from the front beam to take it off the loom! You get 1 bonus point if you can identify where I let slip that my brain was clearly turned off for the night when I filmed this video, buahaha 😀
Step 7: Finishing. Oh, finishing a project… why do you always taunt me?!? Sometimes I think if I didn’t have external deadlines for stuff I would never actually finish the weavings I make. Twisting fringes is easier with my fringe twister, and washing the fabric is easier in our little manual washing machine than by hand, but I still have to really talk myself into doing this step because it’s not as much fun as the warping and weaving. I use the pliers when I tie the fringe knots because my fingers have trouble grabbing the short ends to snug the knots down tight. 90 fringes later and then it gets washed to help the fibers bloom and soften the blanket up, then it dried in the sun.
Step 8: Admire the finished project! My opinion might be biased, but I think a functional and beautiful everyday object that represents over 12 hours of work all done by hand by a real, local human being is something to admire.
It goes from light, medium, dark across the warp and the same in the weft so the blocks of color change across the blanket. The greys are all 2 or 3 ply rug wools and the white and blue accents are my handspun yarn. This is a medium-softness blanket. It would be a little scratchy on bare skin, but as a blanket it is fantastically durable. It’s cushy without being too bulky, and it’s got a rustic vibe that I think is really gorgeous. It was woven 45″ wide and 72″ long on the loom, and by the time it relaxed from being under tension and then got washed the finished blanket size is 37″ wide by 66″ long which is a great throw blanket size.
This blanket is ready to go home with some lucky and generous silent auction bidder on Saturday July 18th at the Raise the Roost event!
It’s been a hot end of May but we are chipping away at the springtime “must do” list. Planting the garden, building the new perimeter fence, and keeping everything watered and alive during this heat wave has taken up most of our days.
Here’s some pics of the garden beds, most things aren’t germinated yet because they were just planted. Yeah the weather had been nice but we don’t really trust Minnesota weather to put tender plants out any earlier than the last week of May. We’ve been burnedfrosted too many times!
You can see in the 3rd photo that those beds are beyond a fence… That will soon be contained within our new perimeter fence. Gotta get that installed before the corn pops up and the deer find it!
Also used this hot weather to wash a few skeins of yarn I finished in the last week. 3 skeins of alpaca and 1 of angora rabbit from a friend. The rabbit’s name was Theodore and I’m pretty sure it’s the absolute softest thing I’ve ever touched 😍 I can hardly stop squishing it and saying “oh my god it’s So. Soft.”
Anyway, using this heat to quickly dry yarn is one perk I suppose. Now, back to finish watering the garden… 🌱
Have you ever woven cotton yarn into a hand towel to use in your home? This spring I’ve had the joy of teaching people how to do exactly that!
Some students had no experience with weaving, while others had woven before but wanted to try a new type of project. Using pre-warped 16” Ashford rigid heddle looms and a variety of cotton yarns, class attendees left with a handwoven hand towel to use in their home.
What does it take to prepare for a class like this? Well, for the attendees, they just have to show up and be ready to learn. Easy peasy! For the teacher, it’s a bit more involved:
I create handouts with info on the looms, yarns, project details, and techniques. I also type up ‘instructor notes’ to keep myself on track.
The loom for each student gets warped before the class. (Warping means all the ‘vertical’ white yarns that you see in the picture get put onto the looms ahead of time. In class the students weave in the weft ‘horizontal’ yarns.) The warping process takes about 1.5 hours per loom.
All the yarns get purchased and packed along with all the clamps, shuttles, pick-up sticks, scissors, pins, needles, the sewing machine for hems, etc.
On the day of class there’s about an hour of setup and an hour of clean up.
Even though the warp yarn is all natural colored cotton, there are still endless ways of weaving the weft yarn in to create a fun pattern! Since these classes were held in springtime, I bought yarns in a spring color palette. Folks had the option of weaving either a plain over-under weave or trying a more complicated pick-up stick windowpane pattern using any combination of patterns or colors they wanted. Take a look at the variety of towel designs woven with just 2 pattern and 7 color options!
I brought the sewing machine along to sew the hems, but many chose to knot the fringes on their towels instead. Either option works, though knotted fringes do have a tendency to wear out with very frequent use just because the ends of the strings fray over time. But it does lend a beautiful homemade touch!
When I was learning to weave I never thought I would get to the point of being able to teach others… not only did I feel like I didn’t know ‘enough’ to teach, but I was always the shy kid in school who would rather go live under a rock instead of doing any kind of public speaking. Through teaching my family and friends about weaving I realized I was able to share the joy I find in the craft with others by showing them how to do it too. It is so exciting to teach someone how to use simple tools to turn yarn into fabric and hear them say “oh my gosh, I’m making fabric! This is so cool!”.
Yeah, it really is so cool!
These weaving classes were hosted through the Itasca Area Schools Collaborative and their Community Education program. New classes are held twice a year in a wide variety of topics, and I’ve had a lot of fun teaching through their community ed program.
I also offer individual or small group lessons for specific projects, or can help tailor an intro-to-weaving program for a larger group like I did with the Deer River High School art class students this spring. Get in touch and let’s weave! -Shara
Every month on the first Friday, Grand Rapids hosts an art walk in the downtown area near Old Central School. We had the privilege of attending as artists on behalf of Free Range Food Co-op on June 6th.
There was an educational table introducing visitors to the process of harvesting, washing, and preparing wool. We had a basket of hand-spun yarn samples made by Shara to show different textures and sizes.
We demonstrated spinning on the new Ashford Traveler wheel, which was a big hit. Having a handcraft in motion seems to invite conversation and questions about what’s going on.
Free Range Food Co-op is working to open a community owned grocery store right now, so we also had a “community weave” project where visitors could add a few pieces of fabric or yarn to a small wall-hanging project on the rigid heddle loom. It symbolizes the process of combining smaller pieces into a larger, more beautiful and impactful community project.
The budding inventory of wool scarves, cotton rugs, and decorative transparent tapestries available for sale on display at the art fair.
Check out our Fiber Craft page for more information on spinning or weaving lessons. Contact Shara to see what’s available for sale or to discuss a custom project.
