{"id":95559,"date":"2025-08-26T07:42:54","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T14:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=95559"},"modified":"2025-09-03T10:20:49","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T17:20:49","slug":"linda-bergstrom-dreaming-in-wool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/linda-bergstrom-dreaming-in-wool\/","title":{"rendered":"Linda Bergstrom: Dreaming in Wool"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A

Artist and teacher Linda Bergstrom shares her love of fiber traditions with students and visitors to her Bluffdale farm.<\/p><\/div>\n

It all started with a dream she had in her mid-20s. She was seeing herself, middle-aged, spinning wool on an old-school spinning wheel in front of a field of sheep.<\/h4>\n

\u201cAt that time I knew nothing about [spinning wool], so I had to figure out what this was all about,\u201d Linda Bergstrom says of her dream. \u201cI started thinking, maybe this is my destiny, maybe this is what I should be doing.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Thirty years later, her dream has manifested in Bluffdale, Utah, on an acre of land, where she has her very own field of sheep\u2014 plus alpacas\u2014from which she harvests wool for yarn.<\/h4>\n
\"A

Daily farm work includes caring for her alpacas, whose fleece provides a prized fiber for spinning and weaving.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI always loved the fiber arts, and so I learned to spin, I learned to weave, so I could have my farm one day,\u201d Bergstrom says. \u201cMy art practice took a huge 180 when I got the farm. I was painting for a while and now I hardly paint anymore. Now it is mainly just fiber art.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Bergstrom was an art teacher for about 20 years before she pivoted her practice from painting to an entirely fiber-arts focus\u2014weaving and spinning, along with some dyeing and felting. She’s also had to learn how to care for her three alpacas and five Icelandic sheep, eight chickens and hives of bees on the grounds of Bergstrom Farms.<\/h4>\n

\u201cThe artist side of me knew what I wanted to do\u2014take an animal\u2019s fiber and turn it into a finished product like clothing or yarn. It was an interesting process because I knew how to do all the artist parts, but the animal part was a little harder,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was such a big learning curve.\u201d<\/h4>\n

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Since Utah is such a hot, dry climate the alpacas can easily suffer heat stroke and must be shorn for their health. Bergstrom has her alpacas sheared once a year by a compassionate shearer, managing the task gently and with loving care for something that could easily get aggressive towards the animals. The sheep get shorn twice a year. Linda has made what she calls “living rugs” from the sheep shears that come off in one piece. “The back, it looks like a pelt, like we skinned the sheep and it was dead, but I like the sheep alive.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Utah is unique in how many local mills we have to process raw fiber like Bergstrom\u2019s home-grown wool varieties. \u201cStrangely enough, in Utah we have three fiber mills, which is very rare for a state [of this size].\u201d Usually, Bergstrom takes her wool to the mill to be processed into yarn. In the case of the wool from a very beloved alpaca, named Patchy, who recently passed, Bergstrom will process all that fleece by hand. Her emotional connection with the animal is so strong that she wants to get her hands in it as much as possible. \u201cProcessing it by hand is a more ancient way of doing it, and it\u2019s very time-consuming, but you get a satisfaction from having raised the animal,\u201d she says.<\/h4>\n

When working with sheep wool, you have to go through a process called scouring to wash the fleece of its lanolin. Lanolin is the greasy material sheep produce as a natural protectant from extreme environments and acts as waterproofing. It is a secretion from their skin\u2014basically sweat, Bergstrom says\u2014that helps keep them moisturized and protected, which is especially important since their native origins are typically harsh climes.<\/h4>\n

By contrast, alpacas don\u2019t have grease or lanolin and produce a very high-end fiber. The wool is hypoallergenic and so soft it doesn’t feel like the typical scratchy wool on skin. \u201cIt\u2019s soft and luxurious,\u201d Bergstrom says. \u201cIt still has those same properties of warmth, but it\u2019s just so soft.\u201d Alpaca feces can also be applied directly to the garden as a manure, which is particularly beneficial since alpacas have three stomachs that process the manure enough to be directly planted into.<\/h4>\n

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Alpacas are llamas’ gentler cousins, says Bergstrom. But they’re still active spitters, to guard their food. You cannot put boy and girl alpacas in the same pen for their similarity to rabbits in their breeding habits. \u201cThey don\u2019t have heat, so they can get pregnant at any time and want to make babies all the time.\u201d Bergstrom\u2019s friend down the way from the farm has all the females to match her males. One is pregnant, due in October after an 11-month gestation period. The babies, known as cria, start growing harvestable fleece right away. \u201cLet\u2019s say the babies are born in October, and we\u2019re doing a shearing in May, we could get that fleece in that first shearing,\u201d Linda says.<\/h4>\n

After removing vegetative matter from shorn fleece, the next step is carding\u2014or brushing\u2014it. Carding the wool, whether on a drum carder\u2014a spinning drum with protruding nails\u2014or hand cards\u2014two nail-plated brushes that are pulled against each other\u2014aligns the fibers all in one direction. Those fibers can then be pulled off the carders into a roving<\/em>\u2014a long, narrow bundle of fibers, which is what you’ll get from a mill\u2014or into a rolag<\/em>\u2014which is exactly what it sounds like, a rolled log of the directional fibers, wrapped around a dowel and\u00a0 ready to be spun on a spinning wheel.<\/h4>\n

Since rolags can only be hand-made, \u201cit is more raw and fluffier, whereas the roving is so aligned that you\u2019re not going to get those poofy bumps or awkward pieces in what people call art yarn\u2013very primitive and imperfect-looking yarn,\u201d Bergstrom says. With her beloved Patchy\u2019s fleece, Bergstrom wanted “to get my hands in it as much as I can, so I am hand-carding it.\u201d It will take her about a year.<\/h4>\n
\n
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Linda Bergstrom’s “Field and Flax” at the Springville Museum of Art’s Spring Salon.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWhen you see the Navajo elders making blankets, they are hand carding, as [are others] in different parts of the world, certainly the Peruvians, where alpacas are their main source of everything, their fiber, their meat, et cetera,\u201d Bergstrom says.<\/h4>\n

In addition to learning to work the animal fibers, Linda has experimented with planting indigo to dye with and flax linen to harvest for weaving. For the flax linen, \u201ceach tiny, skinny stem has about five pieces of fiber in it. To process it, you have to go through an archaic 20-step process that is very labor-intensive.\u201d The end product was used in her piece in the Spring Salon at the Springville Museum, which sold on opening night. \u201cI incorporated things like grapevine, dried eucalyptus and flax linen\u2026I am going to do more organic, nature inspired weaving after this.\u201d<\/h4>\n

In a frenzied world of digital media, Bergstrom has dedicated herself to ancient traditions of times past, before fast fashion and mass production of fibers. Her knowledge began online, but she found that wasn’t sufficient. “I couldn\u2019t just keep learning from videos, I needed to have someone who has done this before…I have a belief that if you have a farm like this, and you dedicate your life to this, you have to have a mentor for everything,” she says. \u201cI have an alpaca mentor\u2014required upon purchase of any alpaca\u2014I have a sheep mentor, a goat mentor, bee mentors, chicken mentors. It\u2019s [about] tapping your community to learn and bring that knowledge to other people.”<\/h4>\n
\"Close-up

Adding natural elements like lavender, Bergstrom incorporates organic textures into her woven pieces.<\/p><\/div>\n

And now, 30 years after her initial dream and eight years since beginning her farming journey, Bergstrom has become a mentor herself. “I have a passion for this, I can\u2019t keep this to myself, I need to show people this.\u201d At Bergstrom Farms, she hosts classes behind her house, on her deck and on the grass of her backyard, under tents. Family reunions, book clubs, couples out on date night have all come to the farm to take a class and walk away with a handmade craft and new skill. And maybe one of Bergstrom’s pieces\u2014an old camper is outfitted with her creations: embroidery hoops framing felted wool pieces, tea towels dyed with home-grown indigo, skeins of wool from her animals, etc.<\/h4>\n

As a teacher, Bergstrom has long guided students in their artistic journeys. At Bergstrom Farms, she’s sharing her years’ worth of skills with anyone wanting to learn the ancient processes she has grown to love dearly. Almost as much as she loves her animals.<\/h4>\n
\"Close-up

Two of Bergstrom\u2019s alpacas, whose fleece is sheared annually for soft, luxurious yarn.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

You can shop for products or sign up for a textile class at bergstromfarms.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All images by Steve Coray.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It all started with a dream she had in her mid-20s. She was seeing herself, middle-aged, spinning wool on an old-school spinning wheel in front of a field of sheep. \u201cAt that time I knew nothing about [spinning wool], so I had to figure out what this was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1733,"featured_media":95754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[2674],"class_list":["post-95559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-linda-bergstrom"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/690A7670-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 23:18:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1733"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95559"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95792,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95559\/revisions\/95792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}