Ona Wöldten Designs Knitwear Using Junction Fiber Mill Yarn

Among the many sweaters sported at the Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival in October, one in particular had a fashion moment: the eye-catching Lindal sweater, which fiber lovers had furiously knit after its pattern was released in August.

It was designed by the Rochester artist known as Ona Wöldten. She has designed knitwear for more than two decades, but the Lindal sweater was her first attempt at creating a hand-knit sweater pattern, and she used yarn manufactured in Vermont to make it.

Wöldten teamed up with the owners of Junction Fiber Mill in White River Junction to launch the distinct leafy pattern three months before the New York State Sheep & Wool Festival, a major fiber fest held in Rhinebeck. Every year attendees make popular sweater patterns and call them “Rhinebeck sweaters.” Like at the Vermont event, fiber fans loved Wöldten’s design, and many wore handmade versions of her sweater.

The air smelled of lanolin as hunks of sheep wool were sprayed and carded.

Sheep farmers Peggy Allen and Amanda Kievet opened Junction Fiber Mill in 2021. They use high-quality wool to make yarn and have fostered a growing fiber community. The two post a weekly video called “Millcast” to their followers around the world and offer monthly open house tours. Wöldten has partnered with the mill to create a number of knitting patterns, and Allen and Kievet provide fiber bundles and host knit-alongs to help Wöldten’s designs come to life.

In the latest episode of “Stuck in Vermont,” Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger traveled to Junction Fiber Mill to meet everyone and watch sheep’s wool transform into colorful yarns.

Sollberger spoke with Seven Days about filming the episode.

Why did you pick this story?

I met Wöldten back in 2015 when I made a video about Danforth Pewter turning 40. She was a jewelry designer there at the time. Wöldten emailed me last spring about the upcoming launch of her Lindal sweater. It seemed a bit funny to me to feature a sweater during the summer, but she launched it in August so that people attending the New York State Sheep & Wool Festival in October had time to knit it. I saw many posts on social media about her “Rhinebeck sweater” and all the different variations knitters created. It seemed like a good story for my first video of this chilly New Year.

Had you been to Junction Fiber Mill before?

This was my first time visiting, and it was a treat. I love mills and enjoyed watching all the machines and people hard at work. The air smelled of lanolin as hunks of sheep wool were sprayed and carded. It was a smorgasbord of color and sounds. And, of course, I wore some vintage knitwear to fit in. My pink vest was knit by my mother in the 1970s, and I knit my scarf and ridiculously oversize orange hat. Needless to say, I went home with one colorful hank of yarn. It’s a mix of deep blues and turquoises called Making Tracks: The Deep End, and I’ll knit it into a hat for a friend. The mill has a ton of fun yarns — think Pink Pony Club, Brat, and colors inspired by Elphaba and Glinda in Wicked.

What did you learn about the fibershed?

Talking to Amanda Kievet, the co-owner of the mill, made me think about fiber and where it comes from. Like many Vermonters, I pride myself on eating and shopping locally. But it never occurred to me to buy my yarn and fabrics locally. As Kievet pointed out, synthetic fibers such as polyester are not biodegradable and can sit in a landfill for hundreds of years, whereas wool or cotton fiber can be composted. It made me think twice about buying one of those silky-soft polyester blankets at a box store.

Will you be knitting the Lindal sweater?

I am a novice knitter and probably too green to tackle this sweater. Wöldten’s pattern is incredibly complex and took her a year to create. She brought a huge stack of papers and a collection of knitted swatches to show me how she pieced together her design. Wöldten worked closely with a group of test knitters who helped her sort out the kinks and see what the sweater looked like in different sizes and colors. One of them was Hannah Miller, whom I featured in a 2024 video about the Haskell Free Library & Opera House on the Canadian border. Seeing all the variations of the sweater in photos from the festival was fascinating — people really made it their own.

On the Map

In December, Sollberger launched an interactive “Stuck in Vermont” map that marks where each episode — 732 and counting — was filmed. We asked her to tell us more.

What a cool map! How’d this come about?

Mapping out all the “Stuck” videos is a project I have been thinking about since 2012, so it was exciting to finally see it come to fruition. I hope people will use the map to explore the state and maybe plan future trips to visit artists, farmers and destinations. It’s also fun to see what videos were filmed in your town! You can click on a map marker and learn more about the video that was shot there — and then watch it. It’s a work in progress, and we are figuring out how to make it even more user-friendly.

What was it like to see the map after all this time?

I am a visual person, so I loved seeing the past 18 years of my life mapped out in a cohesive manner. You can zoom in and out and see all the miles I’ve covered. I didn’t realize how many videos I shot at Burlington’s Flynn (15), the Champlain Valley Exposition in Essex Junction (17) and Shelburne Farms (12). Each red marker on the map brings back vivid memories, like adopting my cat Lex at the 2009 Great Vermont Corn Maze in Danville or tromping through 1.5 miles of deep snow with my mom in Plymouth for the 2011 Farm & Wilderness ice harvest. For me, the map is like a scrapbook of my life. It makes me glad I’ve been stuck here for all these years.

The original print version of this article was headlined “Sweater Weather | Ona Wöldten designs knitwear using yarn from Junction Fiber Mill”