Meredith produces woolen wear, along with blends from many fiber producing animals, all hand spun into yarns, and knit into hats, mittens, and scarves, for the great tactile pleasure of wearing all natural, non-dyed, non-synthetic fabrics.
She has had a lifelong interest in ancient cultures beginning as a small child wandering the Metropolitan Museum of Art, through a Physical Anthropology degree, and now expressing herself through the production of yarns and fibers much as in the same manner of our earliest humans. It is estimated that we have been spinning fibers, both animal and plant, for tens of thousands of years.
From as early as the Bronze Age (ca. 3,000 B.C.) era archaeologists have uncovered not only the common clay spindle whorls, but also spindles made of gold in the tombs of wealthy women from sites in Turkey. Immersed as we inevitably are in our lives of glowing, beeping and buzzing technology, the art of processing natural fibers by way of earliest humankind's techniques is soothing to the hand and to the mind. My creations are my rebellion against technology and the preservation of and sharing of one of mankind's earliest endeavors, clothing oneself.
Final colors will vary depending on how the fleeces grow each year. I also acquire additional Maine fleeces that inspire me, or complement my own sheep fleeces with their natural palette. White is not just white, it's cream, ivory, and sometimes even a full-on white. Browns appear as milk chocolate, dark coffee, tree barks and mushrooms. Grays are heathered, with tonal depth of infinite increments . I take great pleasure in the ability to combine and recombine; thru carding, combing, having roving created - to arrive at a virtually limitless collection of shades. Pattern stitches can be repeated in brights and darks, but actual shades will change from one sheep to the next..
The fiber from different animals which I blend with my own sheep’s wool or goats’ mohair, can come in a variety of shades. Wool & wool blends in a range of shades of gray, ivory, almost blacks, browns and reddish browns which give way to an infinite variety of blends and patterning.
My focus in knit design is to explore the rich and varied possibilities of using natural fibers in the colors they grow on the animal. There are so many nuanced shades of non-dyed color. Not using dyes allows for a softer fiber as the more the wool is processed the more it can lose its original luster. Our fiber animals are a variety of soft, yet rich, colors allowing for beautiful complementary knit and felted designs.