ch-ch-ch changes

We're all packed up and moved out of our Bar Harbor storefront.  But don't be too sad!

A fabulous new store will be moving into the space, Spruce & Gussy, filled with local jewelry and handmade goodness - very exciting.  Even more exciting - I will be moving to the Rockland area!  I'm very excited to be one step closer to a permanent location, both for the shop & myself.  There are wonderful fantasies where I have a space up and running early this Fall... keep your fingers crossed!

In the meantime, I'll have all the Starcroft fibers at the Maine Fiber Frolic, June 5 & 6th in Windsor.  I'll also have more of our NEW L'stell Bags featuring Nash Island Felt, which were such a hit at the SPA Spin & Knit fair in February.

There will also be Starcroft & L'stell goods (along with many local, handmade products & organic veggies) at Hattie's Shed, the farm stand at Darthia Farm in Gouldsboro - if you're headed Downeast this summer.

We'll keep you posted on the move.  See you soon!

closed for the season

It was so much fun seeing you all this Summer, I can't wait to do it again!

starcroft's nash island yarn

I tell this story every day, and never get tired of it...



Once upon a time (about 90 years ago), on an island in Downeast, Maine, a lighthouse keeper's daughter started a flock of sheep. When she passed away a few years ago, she put the flock and the island in the care of good friends of hers who lived nearby, knowing that they would be tended with the same love and care.


A few years after starting her spinning mill, my mom had met the lighthouse keeper's daughter and her sheep, and feel in love with the island and the 'fog-washed' fleeces the sheep produced. Every year since, she's joined the Wakemans (the care-taking friends) on trips out to the island to help with lambing, shearing and tending to the flock. This is the best part of our job - working with our close friends, the Wakemas, to keep a traditional farming practice alive. Each time we're out on the island, tromping through the hillucks after sheep, we're reminded why this is a special place, and a special way of life.

When shearing happens in early Summer, my mom sorts out each of the hundred or so fleeces into different grades, right as they come off the sheep. Sorting allows us to use all of the fiber to its best end. The Nash Island Sweater Yarn is made from some of the softest ewe fleeces, while our Nash Island Scarf Yarn is made from the lamb fleeces, with a little home-grown angora added in. The other fleeces are used for felt, rugs, or woven blankets.

To make the yarn, the fleeces are washed, opened, carded, drafted, and spun on our Mini-Mills machines at our home in Monroe, Maine. Each machine requires either my mom or my dad (who often helps out) to be standing by, feeding the fiber in and checking the quality, picking out errant bits of seaweed and such. Each year's "clip" (all the fleeces shorn that year) requires a few tweeks to the spinning & drafting process, to make sure that the skeins stay an even thickness & weight from year to year - no easy feat.

All the yarn, (as well as the roving and felt) is hand-dyed in small "kettle" batches, using big lobster pots and a special technique. Valuing simplicity and beauty, we created a method of dyeing our fibers to give them subtle variations in hue. That way, each skein, batch of roving, or felt piece ends up being different and unique. Each knits, spins, or felts up together into a careful blending of light and dark shades, in colorways which play off of the scenic and natural beauty we find on the island. It really is a most inspiring place. As you knit with Nash Island Yarn, we hope that you're inspired too.

the delight of blocking

I love blocking, and I love when little color moments happen. Laying out the knit samples of our Nash Island Roving the other day, I noticed I had pinned the first square with all matching pink pins. So naturally, the rest had to be pinned with color-matching pins as well. There is something really satisfying about following through on these tiny little details, must be the Martha Stewart in me. Blocking in itself is such a satisfying little activity - you get your knits all wet & pin them into place, patting & kneading them out like little yarn biscuits, then magically the next morning they're all puffed out & beautiful and looking just gorgeous. It's like have a day at the yarn spa.

virtual tour

I know all of you far away (Pennsylvania, Florida, San Francisco, BARCELONA, you know who you are) would like to see how the shop looks, so I'll attempt to give a little virtual tour.

This is the second room of the shop, also called the "studio" room, since behind that gray folding screen on the left is my desk/office/general craft mess. I had my sewing machine there, so I could stitch up dresses while tending shop, but I had to quickly fess up to what an unrealistic idea that was! There are several places to sit, so that boyfriends/husbands/grandpas can rest while their ladies look at yarn. I know from personal experience that a boyfriend couch is essential to having even close to a reasonable amount of time to look at yarn. In the future, I'm planning on having knitting & spinning gaterings in this space as well.

I have Susan Merrill's woven & felted Zati masks hanging on the back wall to the right (there are also two more in the first room), which get lots of attention since they are unlike anything most people have seen. There's odd balls of yarn for sale - a mix of colors and natural fibers, which are a big hit since most people can't pass up a little random bit of color for their knitting. There are also antique mirrors, framed cathedral rubbings, and vintage textiles for sale in this area.

nearly no more!

We're down to only a few Nash Island Lace Scarf Kits! Since the lace-weight yarn used in the kits is made from only that year's lamb fleeces, there's a limited supply until next year's clip is processed. A few kits of Clear Skies Blue, Sea Lettuce Green, and Anemone Pink are left. Sea Star Magenta and Oyster White have been so popular, they're all gone! All you need is a pair of size 7 needles to complete the simple to knit lace pattern. It's so easy in fact, I've heard it reported that one can squeeze in a few rows between holes at Pirate's Cove...

so terribly clever (almost)

 Big accomplishment for today - Labels printed with the urchin logo!

Spent hours thinking about how to stamp all the receipts with our address & info, since our alphabet stamp wasn't legible, plus I wanted to put the shop name on all the shopping bags.  How to get the urchin (which is a hand-carved stamp) into the computer to include in such labels??  Well.

Turns out if you stamp address labels and then send them through the printer - voila! Labels all printed with the logo and done in your fancy font and company colors. Only took all afternoon, but feel so very professional now.

When I got home and was relaying the hours of computer tinkering leading up to my genius discovery, Mom interrupted with, "Why don't you just stamp the labels and then print them?", which of course she had figured out in about 4 minutes.

the earth loom

Anyone that drops in to Idyillium is welcome to add to our community weaving project on the Earth Loom. We've been encouraging people to be inspired by Acadia and the natural beauty of Mount Desert Island and to add their favorite vistas, paths, hikes, or reflections to pieces of paper incorporated into the weaving. We also have a large basket full of fabrics and natural fibers for people to weave with, all in colors that remind us of coastal Maine.

The finished weavings are being donated to Acadia to adorn National Park Service buildings. For more on the Earth Loom project, visit www.earthloom.org. You can also purchase the EarthLoom DVD, which includes instructions on how to build your own, in the shop.

"business plan"

As a new shop, I thought I'd muse a little on what it is we're all about here at Idyillium.

We like old things, and we LOVE handmade things.

All of our goods are hand-crafted by Mainers. They're friends of the family, friends of friends, future family, family friends' friends... that kind of thing. We know that's very trendy of us to be all "hand-crafted" and "local" and what not, but really it's about the fact that we know a lot of people who make stuff in their kitchens, barns, living rooms, and various ad-hoc "studios". We really like to encourage those people to keep enjoying their crafting, so we try to give a home to all the beautiful things they make. We also like to tell them that makes them artists, but they don't really think of themselves as such usually.


We like to use old antiques to finish off our displays, since we think the best thing to go with handmade stuff is OLD handmade stuff. We have a bit of a Laura Ingalls Wilder complex; thinking that days are best spent in old-fashioned aprons doing domestic activities with simple satisfaction and aesthetic abandon. Carefully selecting yarn to knit the new baby in the family a sweater, baking up blueberry scones from scratch in the morning, going out in the garden to gather whatever's ripe for dinner, feeding the chickens - that's what it's all about.

We have lots of ideas for our current (and future) shop endevors. Evening knitting gatherings, Wednesday spinner afternoons, custom sundress bar, holiday craft fairs, Halloween fashion shows... oh, if only there was more time in the day to plan it all. This summer is just the beginning of what we have in store!

getting set up

It's taken us about seven or eight truckloads to bring all the antiques and craft goods to the shop this week. Everyday is another unloading and re-arranging. It gets more exciting each day! The "cash bench" fits in perfectly along the back wall, and my studio is starting to come together in the back of the second room. Still have a lot of pictures to hang and yarn to display. But not bad for having two weeks to set up. See you opening weekend!

idyillium - coming soon!

Tomorrow I'm heading to MDI to set up the window displays for my summer pop-up shop, Idyillium.  Here's where I'll be:


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See you July 4th for Opening Day!