My local yarn shop, Woven Art in East Lansing, MI, has been carrying Mountain Meadow Wool yarns almost since the company started in 2007. Right away I fell in love with the texture and bounce of the yarn, the lovely naturals as well as the brightly dyed colors. While I immediately purchased several skeins of Cody and spent several happy hours knitting swatches, it never made it into a completed design. I must confess I did not learn anything about the company until last year. But when I did, all that Cody yarn in my stash came out once more. Let me tell you why. Mountain Meadow Wool is a perfect example of the American Spirit. Owners Karen and Valerie (one of them is very smart, the other very funny and they are both very beautiful according to their website) saw a problem, sheep ranches closing all over Wyoming and most of the wool was being shipped overseas. They set out to make a change and created a company that works directly with ranchers. All the yarn can be traced back to the ranch it came from, to create a yarn line and fully functioning mill. They use environmentally friendly cleansers and non-toxic dyes to help preserve and sustain the ranch land that is so important to them.
We had the opportunity to meet Valerie and Karen at TNNA, the yarn industry trade show, last May. As well as being smart, funny and beautiful, they are extremely warm and generous. They were happy to work with two designers they had never even met. The result is Cody's Wildflower Scarf, the first scarf in A Knitter's Gallery of Mitered Scarves Club - see it in the background?