I’m excited to share the next yarn for the “Story of a Yarn” series. This time we focused on Cunnington Farms Fibers near Moab, Utah. Cunnington Farms Fibers is located in Red Rock country near Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park.
The area is beautiful with red rocks and blue, blue skies. Sam Cunnington runs the farm and specializes in mixed-breed sheep to produce unique yarns and fleece. Cunnington Farms is a working sheep breeder registered with multiple registries and works with contacts from the nearby Navajo Nation. They care greatly about the well-being of their sheep and offer ongoing education and support for sheep people and buyers alike.
Each Cunnington Farms yarn includes a Sheep Name section. My 3-ply worsted CVM skein came from Vivian, Larkspur, San Jose, and Lazarus.
The sample yarn Sherri and I knit up and discussed on the Geminate Podcast was a mixed breed sport weight blend of CVM, Icelandic, Rambouillet, and Cotswold. I absolutely enjoyed knitting this yarn and feel like it would make an excellent and long-lived sweater! The sheep names section on this particular yarn is empty.
Stats of the Yarn:
- Name and from where: Cunnington Farms mixed breed sport weight
- Fiber Content: CVM/Icelandic/Rambouillet/Cotswold
- Weight/Yardage per Skein: 250 yards, sport weight
- Plys: 3-ply
- Feel of the Yarn: In the skein, the yarn feels solid and durable. Blended natural greys, browns, and tans.
- Knitting up: This yarn was a joy to knit. I swatched simple stockinette stitch, cables, and textured stitches. I used my normal US Size 4 needle for sport-ish weight yarn. That worked fine. The cables are well-defined and the stockinette stitch is excellent. I do feel the textured stitches disappear almost completely.
- Care and Washing: No information on the ball band. Experience says to hand wash gently and lay flat to dry. I’ve written a blog post about the process I almost always follow for hand-washing here.
- After Washing/Blocking: The fabric it makes feels like it will last for ages without pilling or degrading. The cable still has a bit of dimension to it. The stitch gauge for me stayed about the same after washing and blocking at more stitches per inch than normal for a sport-weight yarn. That makes me wonder if I knit it at a looser gauge than the yarn would like. The row gauge did change for me from 6.5 rows per inch pre-washing to 7 rows per inch post-washing.
If you’d like to hear more about this sheep and yarn, listen to us talk about this yarn and others in Season 4 of the Geminate Podcast.
Cunnington Farms Fibers offers a wide variety of choices at the Moab LYS Desert Thread. As with all small farms and businesses, the exact products they offer will vary with the seasons and natural cycles of the farm.
