I’m from North Carolina. My husband and I travelled here on holiday in the early 1990s. He got a chance to work here, so we lived here for a year and we made friends and loved it. I took early retirement from my job with an airline and we bought the little cottage where we still live, halfway between Gort and Ennis. We decided this was where we would like to be so we moved here in 2005.
It was a culture shock at first. Both of us grew up in the city and had never been surrounded by farmland. I didn’t know anything about raising farm animals. We started with sheep because of the speciality crochet work that I do. I’ve been crocheting all my life; my granny taught me when I was very young.
I need a special yarn that I couldn’t find here. I started off with three sheep, bought a spinning wheel and taught myself how to spin my own yarn. That’s how I got started.
I have a Blue Faced Leicester, a Wensleydale and a sheep that’s a cross between a Wensleydale and a Shetland – they really have a nice fleece. I learned a lot by trial and error, but I have wonderful neighbours and they just helped me.
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I make natural dyes using plants. You can get all these plants just from the side of the road. They have no chemicals in them, and you can get some fantastic colours
The Wensleydales are wild. The Blue Faced Leicesters are easier to handle. For me, the sheep are very calming; when I go out around them, I just calm down. I love them. I hope to have them until I am too old.
My sheep have curly fleece, and I was looking for that for texture in the yarn. If a fleece is fine, you can use it for items close to the skin, such as scarves and hats. The coarser ones you can use for rugs, blankets and outerwear. There are so many good sheep breeds here and I don’t think people are totally aware because the sheep are bred for meat.
They are sheared once a year, in June. I share a shearer with my neighbour. We have our sheep sheared together. After they are sheared, it has to be skirted – I lay the fleece out and take out all the undesirable pieces, and then wash it by hand. After it’s dry, I card it by hand and then spin it or dye it.
I make natural dyes using plants. You can get all these plants just from the side of the road. They have no chemicals in them, and you can get some fantastic colours. The choices are endless – ivy makes green, meadowsweet makes yellow, madder grows here very well, and the roots give you an orange or red. A friend and I had a dyer’s garden planted. We share it and we use hollyhock, chamomile, calendula, and roses. With lupins you get a beautiful greeny-blue colour. The colours you get in nature are more subtle, and they all seem to go together.
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All of these traditional crafts, the natural dyeing, the weaving, the hand-spinning, it all goes back thousands of years. Before people had chemical dyes or machinery, they did it like I’m doing it. With crocheting and weaving, I like the meditative part of it. I lose myself in it. You don’t think about anything but what you are doing. I also like the feel of handling the wool, the natural fibres – it’s very textural.
I can make anything with it, but mostly what I enjoy doing are blankets, scarves and shawls that you can wear. Meet the Wool is my brand. I opened my studio and shop under Irish Fibre Crafters, which supports other craftspeople too.
These crafts need to be passed down to young people to keep them alive, I’m passionate about that. I teach dyeing, weaving and spinning, and I do a lot of demonstrations at festivals and events.
Another thing that’s important to me is adding value to the raw materials that are here in Ireland – the wool and the natural plants. A wool council is starting here to help the farmer to make money from the wool and not just from the meat.
Covid helped because people had to find things to do, and a lot of people started knitting again
I teach natural dyeing at home, and other crafts at the Irish Fibre Crafters studio in Ardrahan in Co Galway. All kinds of people come, but I’m seeing more and more interest from young people, which is very satisfying. Covid helped because people had to find things to do, and a lot of people started knitting again.
I meet so many talented crafts people. But just the whole concept of being more sustainable, being more aware of the environment and climate change, all of that is coming together now.
I love all of what I do. I love keeping the animals all the way through the whole process. The main thing for me is the satisfaction of seeing what can be – the products that come from what my sheep provide for me.
In conversation with Joanne Hunt
