The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook ~ Love It!

Over the last couple years, my family has developed a ritual. When we get to the point where we need a nice night out, we head over to Brio's for an Italian dinner. Brio's, besides being a tasty treat, has the added attraction of being just down the sidewalk from a Barnes & Noble. In essence, once every six to eight weeks, we spend too much on dinner and then walk down the street and spend too much on books. It's a lot of fun!

When we hit the bookstore, tummies full, we fan out in four directions. The men head upstairs for Sci-Fi, the children's section and general fiction while I head to the back corner downstairs where they hide the craft books. The first thing I always look for is a book on tatting. I never find anything, but I figure someday, someone's just got to publish and excellent book full of innovative tatting projects. Then I pass a little time looking through the different crochet motif collections. I might pick up a volume on scrapbooking or jewelry making and lament that I don't have more hours to deeply explore all of the things I love.

On this particular visit, I was heading out of the craft corner empty handed when something caught my eye. If I were a shorter woman, I might have missed it altogether, for up on the highest shelf sat The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook. Of course I stopped dead in my tracks and grabbed the one and only copy like securing the last new release at the video store, back when we all went to video stores. My inner voice told me I should wait and see if they have it for less on Amazon, but I just couldn't put it down. Brio's and Barnes & Noble night is a dangerous thing.

Just as the slip cover indicates, the Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook details over 200 fiber producing animals and is full of amazing photographs both of the animals and of their fiber in various stages of preparation. To give you some idea of the depth that the authors, Deborah Robson and Carol Ekarius, went into, the book has a six page bibliography. The body of the publication includes four hundred and nineteen pages covering everything from Alpaca to Zwartbles. There are maps showing the regions or points of origin for each species. It's the most comprehensive encyclopedia of fleece and fiber that I've ever come across. It's gorgeous!

I can't wait to seriously explore my new favorite book. I get a lot of questions at Wind Rose Fiber Studio and with this on my bookshelf, I feel prepared for even the most obscure inquiry. Ask me anything, fiber lovers, I'm ready!