Profile- Joybilee Farm glorious fibers

One of the joys of my life is that I have found the most wonderful community of fellow travelers all over the world, through the marvels of the net. For many years now, I have been a member of a delightful Canadian list of fiber fanatics.

One of the other list members is the delightful  Chris Dalziel of Joybilee Farm,in BC.

I have enjoyed following her fiber adventures over the years.

In just a few days,  on Saturday, August the 8th,

Chris and her family

will be hosting the 2nd Annual Linen Festival….

(details at the end of this article).

It’s going to be wonderful! Wish I could be there…..

I asked Chris a list of questions and she has graciously responded to them…. So without further ado, here is the profile of Joybilee Farm in beautiful British Columbia, Canada….

1.  You are well known for the wonderful fibers, natural dyeing  and ethical animal husbandry practices that you have developed. Can you tell us a little about the process of how you have created this incredible life and body of work?

It started with wanting to teach our children the value of industry. By industry I mean home industry, working with your hands and using your time wisely. As a family, we learned to spin, dye with natural dyes, weave and as so often happens, added just a few angora rabbits. We traded a pair of angora rabbits for two angora goats and then we needed more space… its an often told story of how learning to spin on a drop spindle leads to a move to the country and building a barn for sheep, goats, llamas, and rabbits.

We love this life, working together as a family, working with our hands, caring for the sheep, goats and rabbits, walking with integrity on the earth. Natural dyeing is a strong part of that. Too many water ways have been permanently damaged by the use of chemical dyes. In India, Mexico and other developing countries the use of chemical dyes has caused serious harm to people, animals, and the earth. And ironically, we, in the developed world, are blind to the damage while we are dazzled by an inexhaustible, insipid colour palette. Yet, plant dyes abound, with their regional colour palettes and rich beauty. We are missing so much aesthetic pleasure in our reliance on chemical dyes. Natural dyes have life, beauty and depth and we can gain it back one skein of yarn at a time.

At Joybilee Farm we take each animals fleece, shear it ourselves, dye it with natural dyes, card it on our Pat Green Cottage Industry carder for felting or hand spinning. We also send some of our fleece to Custom Woolen Mill to be spun into yarn, which we then dye with natural dyes.

2. Do you have a favorite product or aspect of all that you do and make on Joybilee farm?

I love it all, except maybe cleaning out the barn. Capturing linen from flax, harvesting the natural dye plants and extracting their dye, and creating a special item from each fleece that best utilizes the qualities inherent in that individual animal all bring me joy. And then passing on the knowledge and joy to others is very fulfilling.

We teach workshops at the farm and this summer we have benefited from short stays by WWOOFers.[ WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms)  www.wwoof.ca ] They come to learn how to spin, or dye with natural dyes and help us with the farm work. Its been a wonderful blessing to learn about their cultures and share our mutual love of the fiber arts. Our WWOOFers have come from New Brunswick, BC, Mexico and Israel and its been richly inspiring to get to know each one and to teach them the things that they are interested in.

3. What aspect of being a designer, workshop presenter and artisan is most challenging to you?

We are farming full time at Joybilee Farm and we are unusual since we are a fiber farm not a food farm. We don’t raise animals for meat, although we are not vegetarians. So every penny that we need to raise the animals and take care of our family comes from our artisan work. It can be scary when the economy tanks or BSE drives down the value of Canadian livestock.

My most challenging issue is learning to rest and let it go, rather than worrying. I worry about a lot of stuff – whether my work will sell, whether the tourists will visit the studio, whether we can pay for the winter hay. But I am learning to do my very best and trust Providence. To learn that I don’t have to “make a living”, I just have to work, create something that is beautiful and useful, do my best, and Providence will take care of the rest.

4. What part of it is the most rewarding to you?

My greatest reward comes in sharing the work with my family. Working alongside my husband and my children, sharing the joy of new discoveries and seeing miracles – red from woad leaves (woad usually gives blue) – new lambs – a flax field still standing after a hail storm – simple miracles. Even the sorrow of loss has an undercurrent of joy when we experience it together as a family.

5. How long have you been designing and crafting your fiber arts professionally?

We started selling our work in 2002, a year before we moved to Joybilee Farm, near Grand Forks, B.C. We started making soap from our goat’s milk and handspun, plain vanilla yarns, dyed in a rainbow pot with weak acid dyes. Lots of people do that. It was easy but not empowering.

Then I discovered natural dye colours – amazing palettes of colour that are regionally unique because of the water and growing conditions that each plant lives under. To grow colour sustainably and spin special yarns from the hand dyed fleece was uncommon. No one else has my water, which is from a mountain spring, rich in calcium and magnesium salts – that contribute to the bright clear colours that we achieve from natural dyes. And our land is in the mountains, subject to summer frosts. Vegetable growing was a complete failure. But dye plants thrive here.

There is a world wide natural dye revival and we are one thread in it. That’s exciting for me.

6. What triggers your creativity?  What is most inspiring to you?

My Christian faith is the well spring of my creativity. When I struggle with creative blocks, advertising that seems ineffective, yarn that won’t cooperate or animals that are stubborn, I pray, tell my problem to God and God gives me a solution or a creative image or an inspiration. Sometimes it comes as a feeling, or a verse from the Bible or a memory or image. Sometimes it’s a sense to change direction.

7.  Are the fiber arts your main focus?

Yes, we don’t raise animals for meat. We can’t grow vegetables. Natural Dye plants, basket willows and the fiber animals seem to grow best at Joybilee Farm. Then we process the bounty that the land produces – and add value in the yarn, rovings and wearable art.

8.  What is your favorite way of getting your work out into the world?

I love to sell it in person, at my studio, at the farmer’s market or at a fair. I am energized when I hear the oohs and aahs when someone caresses an angora shawl for the first time, or fondles kid mohair locks. I participated in my first joint art gallery show this Spring and it was thrilling to hear the kind comments as people reacted to my work.

9. Does where you live influence your work in any way?

I am influenced by colours and textures – the rich, bright colours that come out of the dye pot are dependent on the minerals in the mountain spring water that we use. . I’m also influenced by the texture of the individual fleeces. It is wonderful to be able to take a fleece and decide “Sapphire” will be hats this year, with her soft Rambouillet fleece, while “Hollyhock” is going to be a curl yarn with her lustrous, black young mohair locks. Angora bunny is perfect for my “eternity poncho” design, with its cuddly halo and soft warmth. The unique texture of each fleece feeds my need for distinctiveness and vision to escape from the homogenized sameness of so many available fibers.

10. Where can people buy your work? (links, please),

The Grand Forks Art Gallery Gift Shop in Grand Forks, B.C. and Rags, Relics, and Rutabagas in Rock Creek, B.C. and online in my Artfire store http://www.joybileefarm.artfire.com/ or my website http://www.fiberarts.ca

11. Do you maintain a blog or website? If so, what are their urls?

http://www.fiberarts.ca

http://www.joybilee-farm.blogspot.com/

http://www.tinctorium.blogspot.com/

12. Do you have a crafting or arts community that influences you and is important to you? (online or ‘real life’).  Is it important to you to be in touch with your peers?

I’m a member of Canspin, and Fiberarts Business on yahoo groups, and find the friendships there inspiring. Its wonderful to have a question or conundrum and to be able to ask about it right now – even in the middle of the night. My online friends are very supportive and encouraging.

I’m the president of our local Spinner and Weaver Guild and also the president of our local artisan association, so I am called to solve problems for others. Its nice to have an online group of mentors like Laura Fry, and yourself to bounce ideas off of.

13. Do you have an all time favorite piece that you designed?

Yes, the “eternity poncho” is knit in one piece from handspun 100% angora bunny sports weight yarn. It is knit to look like fur pelts, with a mobius twist at the shoulders. I never tire of knitting it. The pattern is available on my website.

14. Is there a project or product that has ever flummoxed you and just refused to work out?

I find the challenge of learning to hand felt a fine, thin, stable fabric a challenge. I have a few failures that decorate the studio as examples of different fibers. Also a few successes. But I haven’t mastered the technique yet. Each time I start a new piece of felt I’m not sure if it will work out or not.

Weaving on my floor loom has been another challenge, but this one is the mental challenge of the fear that the project won’t work out the way I envisioned. But I just found out that our local fair has added two weaving categories to their craft competition, so that may be the impetus I need to get warping.

15. Is there anything that I have missed that you would like to share with the readers of Hankering for Yarn?

We have two special events each year at Joybilee Farm. One is the Annual Indigo Dye Day where we invite the public to come and buy a dye blank or two, play at the resist table and share in a natural indigo vat. We have families that come every year to share in the fun.

The second one is Saturday August 8^th, our Annual Linen Festival. This is our biggest event of the year at Joybilee Farm. We will be harvesting the linen field, breaking and scutching some flax, demonstrating spinning of linen thread and generally celebrating the flax plant. Randy Cowan of Plant Fibers Canada will be at Joybilee Farm talking about the current state of flax fiber usage in Canada. There will be music, food, and hands on fun and educational activities for the whole family. We have visitors from all over Western Canada planning to attend this year.