Llama Yarn: From Beast to Skein

In the past decade, knitting has come back into vogue due in part to interesting and beautiful yarns being produced. People from Hollywood starlets to hippies and soccer moms all over the country can be seen working away on scarves, hats, and sweater vests. Recently, I visited Bahr Creek Llama farm to learn about the process of making yarn, from beast to skein.

Llamas have hair, not wool. Hair is hollow and therefore much stronger, warmer, and softer than sheep wool. Llamas were not originally bred for their coats, but for work animals and as result llamas have a course outer coat (guard hair) and a soft under coat (down). To remove the hair from the animal, it must be sheared off or brushed off. It takes two full years for the llama’s hair to grow back after sheering, but brushing can happen every year. A shearing can yield between 5 to 10 pounds of raw hair, while brushing yields only 3 to 4 pounds.

At Bahr Creek, owner Bridgett DeMaster chooses to shear her llamas. Shearing is done much like sheep, with electric shearers. The raw hair is then sorted into guard hair which can be made into rope and other coarse materials, and down which is made into yarn. Debris like hay is picked out by hand. Bridgett then packages the fiber and sends it to a mill. At the mill the fiber is washed by hand then fed into a machine called a “carder”. The carder looks like a big brush and is used to align all the fibers and straighten them.

The fiber comes out of the machine in long coils now called roving. The roving is sent back to Bridgett where she prepares it to be spun.

The yarn is spun onto a large bobbin that is turned by a foot pedal. The fiber is drawn onto the bobbin while Bridgett twists gently with her fingers. This is called drafting. It determines how thick the resulting yarn will be. Once the bobbin is full, the yarn is unwound, made into skeins, and sold in her store for about $20 each.

view my photo essay on flickr at www.flickr.com/erincoppersmith

memories

Memories for me are tricky. When I think about my early memories I always wonder if I am actually remembering the event or the picture I have of it. I have a big family. I am the much younger sister in a family of 5. My grandmother also lived with us. There are more pictures and 8mm film of me than all the other kids put together—they were all so excited to have a baby in the family. There are pictures of EVERYTHING! The big things—like first steps, learning to ride a bike, first day at school—and the little moments, me coloring, me with my dolls. Add to that the fact that my family is big on story telling. They love the stories of our family and they tell them over and over and over. My poor husband patiently sits through the tale of my weird Uncle Dick getting run over by the ambulance at my Aunt Lois’ funeral every Christmas and laughs every time.

I have come up with a test for my memories. I know that they are actual memories if I can remember the way something smelled or how something felt, not just they way they looked. That way I know it’s real. I have two memories that are vivid, both from when I was about 4. My oldest sister, Kerry joined the Air Force that year and the day she left sticks out in my mind. There is a picture of the whole family standing on the front yard with Kerry, bags in hand. I remember mom crying. And I remember that the neighbor was cutting his grass. To this day I don’t like that smell. Later that summer the family (sans Kerry) rented a cabin in the North woods. There are lots of pictures of all of us from that week, but the memory that I know is real is me on a tire swing. The kids pushed me from behind and the swing swooped over a small ledge at the edge of the lake. I remember the feeling of butterflies in my stomach every time the swing reached its apex and I could look down and see only water.

It’s hard to determine what real memory is and what my mind has filled in from pictures and stories. I think that in the end, your memory is all three. It’s the “pictures” your mind has made together with the stories that go with them. Looking at your family album triggers the stories.

Portraits

I had a difficult time with this project because I'm not the kind of person to be able to go up to a stranger and ask them to take their picture. It was an easy choice for me to choose my daughter. I wanted to convey the fact that she is on the cusp of becoming a teenager--still enjoying childish things, but wanting to move on. For the other subject it was harder to express his personality with his surroundings. I tried to make the backgrounds and props simple, since he is a very simple man.

Imaginary Reality

“As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure.”

Sontag writes this while she is describing family photography. As I understood it, Sontag’s point-of-view is that photos create a rose-colored view of the past and reality.

I can’t disagree more with this statement or her essay in general. I think her tone is so bitter that I really couldn’t relate to anything she tried to argue. This statement about pictures being imaginary memories just got me mad.

The thing I thought about when I read Sontag describe my “unreal past”, was my grandmother. She lived with us while we were growing up—as important in our lives as our parents. She is now 99 and has been in a nursing home, slowly deteriorating for 6 years. She rarely even wakes up to say hi, and if she does, she doesn’t know me. Without pictures of her as a young woman, or even as an active grandma, my kids (10, 7, & 3) would only know her as an old woman in a wheelchair sitting vacantly looking out the window. But that’s not who she is. She is a vibrant, feisty woman, who played kick ball and made Christmas cookies with me every year. And my kids will know that because I have a picture of us doing those things on my wall. The pictures are reality; the woman in the wheelchair is not.

After reading this essay I felt almost guilty that I love photography and photographs; like she was calling me shallow for just seeing the simple beauty in capturing faces and moments. Maybe that was her point. Maybe her mom shows everyone pictures of her in the bathtub and she’s embarrassed. Maybe she just never had a grandma.

DOCUMENT--Color

http://www.flickr.com/photos/erincoppersmith/sets/72157602214616230/

The reason I took this class is to become a better photographer. I wanted to challenge myself and grow. When this project was first assigned, I immediately thought about documenting an abandoned house, in black and white, with stark shadows and contrast. But then I remembered why I took the class and changed my mind (that and I couldn't find any abandoned houses). Black and white is what I'm comfortable with, it's what I am drawn towards, and it wouldn't be a challenge. My document will be color in it's basic form. I want to document color and texture out of context. I'm picturing a table full of apples, so close up that you stop seeing apples and only see red. Since I started my color project I'm really surprised at how much color I have been seeing. Things that I took for granted before, like a bright blue dump truck, have been standing out. I think that I will learn through this exercise that color can be just as dramatic and interesting as black and white.

Link to my light photos

http://www.flickr.com/photos/erincoppersmith/sets/72157602038038838/

time of day

I guess my favorite time of day is night, because I'm certainly not a morning person. My favorite time to take pictures is morning though. More important than time, to me, is the cloud cover, because I love overcast days with filtered light. The reason I like filtered light is because the colors seem the most true and vivid. I like the way people's eyes look when photographed on cloudy days; they seem to sparkle.

flickr link

http://www.flickr.com/photos/erincoppersmith/

my camera

For this class I will be using a Canon Power Shot A530. I have always been a 35 mm film user, and resisted purchasing a digital, but as my kids get older and more active I knew it was time to follow the masses. The camera has a 4x optical zoom, which I am finding limiting compared to my Sigma28-300 lens. However things like the LCD display, the lightweight body, and user friendly controls are exciting, and I know I'll have fun learning it. The thing about digital that I like the best so far, is the money I'm saving on developing. I am only printing the shots that I like, and I'm not stuck with duds.