Herders to Home 2022: Luxury Mongolian Yarn and Fiber

The dyeing is finished, just need to wrap up spinning!
over 1 year ago – Wed, Dec 28, 2022 at 04:56:09 AM

Hey everybody,

Just a quick update to let you know that we are still making progress and that the remaining dye work is finished, and the dyed fiber has been delivered to the spinners as of yesterday. It took a few weeks longer than I was hoping, but I'm beyond relieved the dyeing is finished. I've run into some problems that I didn't even know could be problems this season. Even after all these years in Mongolia, I'm still constantly learning about production management.

I'm *very* wary about making time estimates at this point, but I'm planning for the spinning to be finished by the end of the first week of January. Adding a few days to finish up packing, getting the export documents in order, clearing customs, etc, getting things on their way to the USA by the middle of January seems like a decent bet at this point. Thank you all for your patience so far in this process. 

Happy holidays and happy new year! I'll send another update when things are picked up and on their way to America in a couple of weeks, or if we run into any other unforeseen delays. As always, please feel free to send a message to me on here or email [email protected].

Thank you!

-Jon

Still waiting for our 3 remaining colors to be dyed.
over 1 year ago – Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 05:05:20 PM

Hey Everybody,

I wish I could delay this update for a couple more days as I think we'll have good news soon, but I wanted to post an update by the end of this week at the latest to keep everybody informed. We have the dye and everything needed to make the last three colors, but we are still in the dyeing queue. We were scheduled for today (Thursday) and tomorrow (Friday) to finish everything up, but we still need a few more days due to some delays at the factory.

I know this isn't great news and the waiting game is really a huge source of anxiety for me, but I still think we're going to be back on track soon. When we are finished with the dye, the spinning should go rather quickly. So long story short, please bear with me for a little while longer.

For those interested in the dyeing process, I had the fiber moved to a different dyeing lab that had all of the dye that we needed. I had the dye 'recipe' for the three colors we need to make, so the crimson, cobalt, and burnt copper. After recreating the recipes, the colors matched up great:

The color matched crimson for this year is the handspun fluff at the bottom left that blends into the old cake of crimson from a few years back.

Our burnt copper camel that matched perfectly to the old skein of copper camel I had from two years ago:

The cobalt was a bit more complicated. It has three different dyes in the recipe. Two are red, and one is blue. Following the recipe, the samples were coming out a bit too red:

But after modifying the recipe a bit, we were able to get the correct color match for what we needed.

So, we're all good and the colors will come out great, we're just still stalled out a little bit longer. I've got everything crossed it's just a few more days, as I'm not sure how much longer I can stand it. If it takes much longer, I'll be buying a ticket back over to Mongolia to handle it personally and then flying back again with the yarn.

If anybody has questions for me, please send an email to [email protected] or send a message via Kickstarter and I'll get back to you ASAP. Thank you all for your patience. I will update whenever I have confirmation that the dyeing is completed, and I can give a more definite date for the yarn to get out of Mongolia.

Thank you,

Jon

Still waiting for some dyes!
over 1 year ago – Thu, Nov 24, 2022 at 02:47:09 AM

Hey Everybody,

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of great news at the moment, as we are still waiting for three dyes in order to make the cobalt blue cashmere, crimson cashmere, and burnt copper camel. I've been getting the 'next week' treatment for about a month from dye facility we use and the handful of other dyers I've spoken to. Apparently the large dye distributor had a license expire that needs to be renewed, and they can't get the dye through customs until that is completed. I'm now told that date is going to be December 5th.

I thought this year would be a bit easier, but the dye facilities running out of dye is a new one for me. I've tried everything I can, but haven't been able to find solution other than waiting for everything to get released. There's a chance things happen quicker, but we still need to spin and skein everything up. At this point, I'd be surprised if we have things delivered to the USA before the 2nd or 3rd week in December. If people were planning for their yarn to be holiday presents, I would consider a backup plan.

Other than the dye issues, everything is still going well. We ended up needing to spin a batch of the dark chocolate yak wool this year as more of the dark yak was ordered than I planned for. 

Originally, There were some issues with the raw fiber that was delivered, as it had too much guard hair and dandruff still in the fiber. This is from somewhat poor sorting, but especially not enough care and time in the dehairing process.

You can see from the picture there are a lot of white pieces, which is a mix of dandruff and other matter picked up from our furry, free-range yak friends as they roam the world. While some of this is normal, especially in dark yak wool, this wouldn't produce the yarn quality we have grown accustomed to over the years. After switching the fiber out twice and still not being satisfied, I went back to our supplier from two and three seasons ago that still had dark yak in stock that was processed properly. It was just delivered so I don't have pictures yet, but our partners at the spinning facility have confirmed for me that it's great quality.

It is a bit more expensive through them and sometimes availability can be limited (especially the gray yak wool) due to their smaller cooperative size (around 100 families), but at this point I think we will continue to work with them in the future. They were also started under the same umbrella program that developed the SCU, where we purchase our camel and cashmere, so it's nice to stick in that same family of cooperatives. These are pictures from their member herders from when I last visited before covid started.

So, a new season and new problems, but as always I gaurantee everybody will receive their yarn at the quality we've grown to expect over the years. I'll keep everybody posted as I receive more information, and I hope we finish the rest of our colors quickly!

For quick reference, here is once again the colors for this year:

The next steps (probably the first or second week of December) is I'll send out an email to confirm delivery addresses. That's the easiest time to change your delivery address if needed. If you'd like to get to your survey now to do it, please follow this link: Backerkit 

As always, please holler with any questions, comments, or concerns, and I appoligize for the delays. And Happy Thanksgiving to those celebrating!

Thank you,

Jon

Pictures of the new colors!
over 1 year ago – Mon, Nov 07, 2022 at 05:26:13 AM

Hey Everybody,

Thank you for all the comments and messages after the last update wishing a quick recovery! Maybe it all did some good because I am doing much better and starting to get around a bit easier. I was able to make it to the factory today to check on our yarn and for some photos. We're still waiting on a couple colors to finish, but we have official pictures of all the colors in skeins for this year, and new labels!

I know the hunter green is still a bit hard to make out, but easier to see it next to other skeins!

Everything is looking great so far. We're still not finished with the marled yarns, but those will get twisted up when the cobalt blue is finished being spun.

As for a shipping schedule, my ticket is confirmed and I’m flying back to the states on December 2nd. I expect the yarn to beat me home or be very close to it. We are still waiting for a couple of dyes, but I don’t expect that to be much longer of a wait. We are sending everything home by air, so that part of things should go quickly enough. With how my recovery is going, I am somewhat confident I’m going to be walking without crutches (although slowly and still in a boot) by then. I have already found a friend or two that I can hire for some help, so I don’t expect distribution to be much of an issue either. I was much more worried about this a couple weeks ago, but we'll make it work.

Once everything is completed and ready for shipping to the states in a couple of weeks, I’ll send out an email to lock shipping addresses. This will be the best time to change addresses if you need to before everything gets shipped out! After I update my website with the new items, we will do one more round of addons at Kickstarter prices through my website for those that want to pick up a few extra things.

That’s about it for now! You guys will hear from me again in two weeks one way or the other. Please feel free to email at [email protected] or send me a message on Kickstarter. If you’d like to check your survey to remind yourself what you ordered, you can follow this link here to get to Backerkit.

THANK YOU!

-Jon

Some new yarns and some production delays!
over 1 year ago – Wed, Oct 19, 2022 at 06:29:33 PM

Hey Everybody,

A little bit of a difficult update to make, but I've run into a couple issues over here. Nothing too serious but looking to push things back a couple of weeks and maybe beginning of December for delivery.

Firstly, we are still waiting on a couple of dyes to get restocked here in Mongolia, specifically for the burnt copper baby camel, crimson cashmere, and cobalt blue cashmere. As of last checking, they should be here by the end of the week, and then we can get all of our colors finished and into spinning.

Secondly, and maybe a bit more difficult to deal with, is Saturday I was playing basketball and in a freak accident I fully ruptured my achilles tendon, so I had to have surgery yesterday. Everything went fine and I'll be out of the hospital either tomorrow or Thursday. We'll need to see how things go, but I'll be in a hard cast for two weeks, then into a boot for another 3 or 4 weeks. Realistically, I'm looking at being able to get around pretty well for myself between the 4-6 week range. I'll still be on crutches for the most part but will be weight bearing, and hopefully be able to walk a bit in my boot. This is sometime between the middle of November and the beginning of December. Obviously this injury isn't ideal for doing the distribution, but with some extra help and being super organized, it should be just fine. We'll have to wait and see how the recovery goes over the next couple of weeks and when I'll be ready to take the trip home.

Before all this happened, it was my plan to get to the factory on Monday to drop off labels and get pictures of the yarn that's spun up. so I still had something to share I had the factory send me some pictures. Please keep in mind that these aren't going to be the most color accurate shots, but wanted to show off anyways!

Again, probably not the most color accurate with the phone being used and the lighting in the factory, but still wanted to share a bit. Hopefully I'll be able to get my hands on some skeins in a couple of weeks and get some better shots.

Thank you guys for your patience here and sorry for the delays. I'll keep you updated as the production and my recovery progresses. As always, feel free to send me a message on here, email [email protected], facebook, or our Ravelry group.

Thank you,

Jon