Our day of learning with wool (6 hours of spinning practice barely scratched the surface!) ended with a visit to the source of the precious fibre: Jóhanna Erla Pálmadóttir’s family sheep farm on the lakeside at Akur, outside Blönduós.
We got to visit the barn that serves as home for the new lambs and their mothers in the first three days of their lives, before they’re released to the healthy air of the spring fields then summer highlands. How remarkable to be in the presence of such vital new life, the often fierce protectiveness of the mother sheep, and the beautiful raking sunlight — Old Master paintings in-the-making all around us. Thank you, Jóhanna!