Naming Skeins

If you read a lot of knitting and spinning blogs, you will learn that projects have names. "Are you making an Emily?", or how's your "Frederick coming along?". "Do you think I should change the increases on the sleeves of my Annabelle?" Typically, these are names of patterns, but the point is that knit-bloggers understand the concept of a project having a name.

We name some of our skeins, too. Actually, we don't so much name the skein as call the skein by the name of the alpaca it came from. If we hand you a skein or a scarf and say, "This is Georgia." we're not talking about the pattern or the spinning technique. We're talking about Georgia, our herd-boss female alpaca -- the dark brown one with the soft fiber. The yarn has been spun from Georgia's fiber and the scarf has been crocheted from that yarn (my knitting isn't to the point I'm willing to touch handspun alpaca with a knitting needle).

When we go to craft fairs -- and even fiber shows -- our customers don't necessarily understand that projects have names. If you hand somebody a skein and say, "This is Georgia." you can sort of watch the gears turn in their head. Some will be looking at the identical dark brown skein, and you can almost hear them thinking, "Is that skein named Mabel?" Others will catch on a little more quickly and ask, "Is that also Georgia?" Still others will stand there, rather slack-jawed, and you can just imagine them thinking, "You named the skein. What are you, wacko? It's a skein of yarn for gosh sakes!"

So, if you ever meet us at a show -- and we hope you do -- and we hand you a skein and say with great pride, "This is Georgia." Please remember that we're proud of our alpacas and what we are really doing is showing off what we have done with the fiber shorn from our alpaca named Georgia. After all, she's a wonderful dark brown alpaca with rich red tones and she's still soft even after three cria. We think Georgia is a pretty special alpaca.