Marilyn Rand

Promoting and sharing the love of natural fibre and supporting the development of handcrafted Art in all forms has been Marilyn Rand’s lifelong passion.

 This love of natural fibre led Marilyn into a career as Distributor for Brother Knitting Machines.  Working through Government sponsored programs, Marilyn did a number of “on the job training programs” both in Nova Scotia for cottage industry, and in Northern Quebec with the First Nations Cree Women.  There she worked for a three year period training the women in use of the Industrial Computerized Machines.  Marilyn retired from Brother in 1993 when the knitting division was closed.

 With a grown family and seven grandchildren, Marilyn is now able to devote most of her time to her flock of mixed wool breed sheep, llamas, angora goats and other fibre animals.  With the exception of lambing time, she spends most of her time creating handspun knitted and hand felted wool products and teaching fibre arts.

 Marilyn says:

 “Starting our farm was like a step backward in time for me.  I had gone from the top of technology in knitting, back to the grass roots. I was now spinning wool from my own sheep the same as my Grandmother and Great Grandmother had done two generations ago.  For me, the beauty in the yarns has always been the textures and colours.  You cannot get anywhere near the beauty from a commercial yarn.  I have always enjoyed the rustic, more authentic look and feel of the real thing.”

 Marilyn now concentrates on her hand spun, hand knit garments from her own patterns, and hand felted hats.  These are created with lose wool which is wet felted and shaped, then dyed to become a one of a kind creation.   Many of the hats are needle felted following this process as well.  In addition to hats, Marilyn does a number of other felted projects.