Work In Progress

Sadly not new pictures of my only knitting WIP...which is a basically just a work with no progress :-/.

Just a pretty fleece and a bunch of drop spindles on the porch.  Yep, it's that time of year.  Time to be getting ready for the upcoming fall festivals.  I have two coming up - the Millersburg Chautauqua Days festival this weekend and the big Kentucky Wool Festival the first weekend of October...which isn't far away...but it sure feels like it.  96 degrees this afternoon.  'Nuff said.

Happy thoughts, happy thoughts...this is Hershey.  Remember when Hershey was...Hershey colored?  2013 :-o.  How did that happen?  

He's a beautiful silver now.

Sure looks pretty and cool and relaxing on the porch this afternoon...  Luckily now that "August" is finally here (after two months of July apparently) the evenings cools off pretty nicely.  The Wool House Crafters meeting tonight shouldn't be too awful.  Auntie Reg made chocolate cake so that will make it all better...until tomorrow when it's 96 again.  No break until at least next week.  'Nuff said.

The Week In Review...Because It's Been A Busy One

Don't get excited.  There wasn't any knitting.  I had great hopes for posting with the monthly Yarn Along on Wednesday and even took some pictures of my current (sadly idle) project.......  Maybe today.

So, let's see...

The 2018 Christmas card is finished and printed.  Not stuffed and mailed, but they are painted, printed and in hand.  Whew!!!  I'll post a puzzle version this weekend for anyone who'd like a sneak peak and I'll also have some at the Wool House tomorrow.  Not for sale until next year, but if you come out to the farm (open this Saturday from 1:00-4:30), I'll give you one :-).  

If you didn't follow along with the Wovember Instagram photo challenge by daughterofashepherd last month, I encourage you to go check it out. There were so many interesting prompts and excellent posts from all over the world.  What a fun way to really focus on sheep and wool.  One of my posts was selected for the top ten!  :-D

The sold out calendars are back in stock.  Tim brought home some more Lamb Camp calendars last night, so everything still here on hold will ship out today.  Thank you so much for your patience...and all the orders.  Your support, on all levels, really means so much.

There are still three 2018 Equinox Farm fleeces left (Baaxter, Liddy and B. Willard) and several Tring Farm fleeces (lovely Maybelline and a few other white, grays and blacks), in case anyone is looking for a fun winter project.  Rebecca Boone was so dirty and greasy I offered to wash her fleece before shipping, so that was my fun project for yesterday.  Look at that shine!  Some is from the grease, some just because it's fun, shiny Cotswold.

I divided her into two parts so there'd be plenty of room in the washer to loosen up all the dirt.  Before washing on the left.  Washed on the right.

Washing wool in the winter is like an all day spa treatment.  The room gets warmer and steamier as the day progresses and it smells like heaven, not "smelly animal fur".  If you aren't aware of the Duluth "issue", here is one article that addresses it.  Clara Parkes always says it best.  

All washed and set out to dry.

Isn't she pretty?

So back to the picture of the yarn and project at the top.  That's Rebecca Boone!  I spun that yarn several years ago and had never found the perfect project for it.  Isabell Kraemer's Indigo Frost capelet keeps showing up in my favorites and it (finally) dawned on me that the design shape looks just like Rebecca Boone's cool dreadlocks...and if I dyed some of the yarn, I could match her colors in the color patterning.  So I did!  

I overdyed her light gray to get a darker gray like her nose and legs and a reddish/brown to match her sunbleached locks.  I then spun some Woolliam for her white nose.  I wasn't thinking and didn't wash her yarn before I put it in the dye pot and the remaining fabric softener made the dye take up unevenly and I love the effect.  

I'm ready to start the colorwork section and I can't wait.  Maybe today!

Yarn Along - Meanwhile, Back At The Wool Mill

Somewhere between shearing and skirting (months ago) and heading to the mill came washing and deciding if snipping the sunbleached tips off Baaxter's lamb fleece was going to make enough difference to justify the effort.  Miss B and I pulled out two samples (also months ago :-o), snipped the tips off one and not the other and then combed and carded each and...

...yes, there was a significant difference.  Baaxter Black should be as black as possible so I snipped as many sunbleached tips as I could stand.  If I ever have another black lamb, I'm going to do that while the fleece is still on the sheep.  It was a Job.

So here's Baby B. all washed, snipped and ready to go to Ohio Valley (at least a month ago - what is going on around here?!?).

I'm sure I am speaking for everyone in saying how comforting it is to see Beth and Darlene still running these wonderful old machines.

The wool is dumped into the back of the machine, comes up over the top...

...down into the beginning of the rollers...

...and out as beautiful ready to spin (if you can just find the time!) roving.

Here's a short video:

We took up seven fleeces that day - Billy Belly, Allie, Henri, Ford, Baaxter, Woody and one for Miss B from shearing at Kathy's (also months ago and still not on the blog even though there are some great pictures to share...I think...if I remember back that far.)  Am I ever going to get caught up???

Maisie's headed to the mill tomorrow along with Auntie Lila, Daniel's stunning first shear from last year that I finally talked myself into washing and processing and the dark green Renny.  I'm excited!

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I listened to A Cold Day For Murder by Dana Stabenow (first in a series based in Alaska) this past week in hopes it would remind me of cooler/cold weather...but it didn't.  It's just plain hot.  To make matters worse, I somehow (and this is actually a pretty funny story, so don't let me forget to share it) ended up jumping into several really miserable (because of the heat) projects outside...in the midday sun...when I could have been inside spinning or knitting!

Joining in with Ginny...

Yarn Along - From Sheep To Sweater

I've had some questions about fleece skirting and what comes after that. The one fleece I know I'm going to keep for myself this year is Baaxter's. I always keep the first shear from my bottle lambs because that's the fleece I held on my lap.  The fleece I know by heart :-).  I think it will be fun to chronicle it from start to finish.  

So we watched Baaxter grow up (well, he's actually still growing for probably another year) and get his first big boy hair cut.  His fleece was then wrapped up in a sheet, tagged and added to the pile (:-o).  Sheets make great storage "bags" because they are easy to use (just tie up the four corners) and breathable.  Plastic bags can be problematic sometimes.

I love untying fleece bags and taking that first peek.

Everything's so smooth and orderly (you hope) and ready to unroll/unfold/untwist whatever it takes to get it laid out like it just came off the sheep.  The easiest way I've found to do that is to locate the back legs (the wool is usually longer and coarser so easy to spot) and work forward to the neck.

I think the boys are very handsome with their crew cuts, but I sure miss their cute fuzzy snuggly warm wool. They on the other hand are not missing it one bit.  We've had several really hot days already :-(.

After I have it laid out I start working my way around the outside, pulling off anything I don't want in my yarn.  Obviously anything super dirty and gross gets tossed.  VM (vegetable matter - hay, straw, sticks...) get picked out.  Belly wool or short wool or hair from around the face and legs gets pulled off, second cuts, coarse britch wool...toss it.

Side note:  If you find any prickly burrs, don't try to pull them out.  Not only will you hurt yourself but they can also break apart and then you'd have lots of tiny burrs instead of one big fat one.  When you wash your fleece, the burrs slide right out.  Don't worry about them until then.  That being said, I wouldn't want to buy a fleece full of burrs but a few wouldn't bother me.

Hard to see in this picture, but this is short wool from around the front legs and also full of VM. Tossed.

The only white hairs I'm aware of on Baby B. are on his face, so this must have been a pass up along his cheek.  That wool is too short but most important, any time you see loose hairs, quickly pick them out before they contaminate the rest of the fleece.  Hair is prickly even if it's from B's cute X.

Belly wool and a second cut off to the side.

Coarse britch wool on the left.  I set a couple locks from the rest of his body on the right for comparison.  Britch wool is found where their britches would be...if sheep wore pants.  Sheep don't wear pants ;-).  

Sometimes the britch wool is very different - like Baaxter's - and I separate it out.  Sometimes it's not really that different and wouldn't really detract from the rest of the fleece and I leave it in.  Baaxter's fleece is short(ish), soft(ish) and nearly black.  I don't want to add in some long, silver. heavy/thick "hair".

Second cuts - a big controversy among handspinners.  Second cuts happen when the shearer makes a pass along, say, Baaxter's fat tummy, notices that he or she left a strip of wool a little longer than the rest and they go back and make a second pass over it.  

I don't worry about second cuts as long as they are just super short like these.  I wouldn't want a shearer to leave an inch of wool in spots and then go back over it.  That 1" second cut would still shake out like the short ones, but your beautiful fleece is going to short that inch.  

The other reason I personally don't worry much about second cuts is that I want my sheep to look pretty ;-).  If you don't make that second pass over the sheep, there are no second cuts.  However, if don't make that second pass...your sheep look a bit funny, all lumpy and bumpy.  Baaxter needs to look good for his pictures :-).

And here he is, ready to head to the wash room.  Next week!  Any questions?

Joining in with Ginny.  I don't have a book to share this week :-/.

Winter Wool Workshop - Part Two

Warning - very picture heavy. I would have broken this down into three posts, but tomorrow is Yarn Along day and I'm hoping to get my Iknitarod sweater swatch done in time to post for that.  At this point I don't even have the skeins wound off, so it looks like some late "training" tonight...which is good practice for the actual race :-).

We'll start the picture marathon with Miss Mira because I fully realize that most of you are only here to see her ;-D.  Yes, she really is as cute as she looks and tiny, tiny, tiny.  She and Maisie weren't far off on birth weight, but she does seem smaller than Maisie...maybe because she was born larger than life ;-).

So, we started with six freshly washed fleece samples and experimented with combing, hand carding, drum carding and flick carding.  I didn't get pictures of everything, but here are some bits and pieces.

Preparing to comb.

Getting ready to pull off the combs.

Yes, we used my fancy beer cheese plastic container diz.  I am nothing if not classy ;-).

Now this is classy.  Nistock Taffy.  Just a gorgeous fleece and a dream to work with, as was Freckles who I somehow managed to not photograph either day (?).  Both were combed and drum carded.  We didn't attempt to hand card them because the staple length was so long.  Hand cards work best between three to four inches.

The gray fleece was another group favorite.  Note the difference in length from Taffy.  Wool comes in many different lengths, textures, colors, crimps (curls/waves)...  This fleece was hand carded, combed and drum carded.  

Combing catches all the too short parts of the locks and any debris that might be in the fleece.  See the short bits left on the combs?  The top (long skinny stuff coming through the diz) that pulls off is perfect.

The two white fleeces were a good challenge for the hand cards.  I'd have thought the the finer fleeces would have preferred the finer cloth (spikes closer together) cards, but we actually seemed to have better luck with a coarser set.

But the finer cloth drum carder handled them best.  Always something to learn.

Some fluffed up Luna headed for the coarser cloth drum carder.  This was another stunning fleece.

Using the "stabber" to pull it off the drum.

After one pass through, ready for a second pass, already dreamy.

Like a cloud.

I'd forgotten I had a teasing board.  I found it when I was pulling out tools and I'm so glad I did.  The board anchors to the table and you can easily flick the tips of your locks open and also catch any second cuts you may have missed when you skirted.  See how it quickly pulled off the sun bleached tips?  I am going to use this for Baaxter's fleece this spring!

A line up of beautiful, fresh from the farm fiber.  What a treat!

Nothing goes to waste.  All the leftover bits and pieces and mistakes and combing waste...got set out on the forsythia bush for the birds, because even though it sure doesn't seem like it, it's time to start putting out your collected yarn scraps and wool bits.  The babies might really appreciate some wool lined nest this spring!

Winter Wool Workshop - Part One

We had a great workshop! Everyone had fun, no one froze to death (although little Mira wasn't so sure about that!) and we all learned a lot :-).  This was my first farm workshop and I had the best of all possible students.  Super fun, well prepared, relaxed, patient, interested, interesting...  We also had fabulous wool!

Janbaby came down to help (thank you, thank you :-D) and luckily she thought to grab a couple  of short videos.  Here is a dorky (as always) one of me opening The Big Box from Nistock Farms.

I think this is Nistock Taffy (above) unrolled, but I didn't do a super job documenting everything so it may have been the other black fleece from Robin.  I should have added that to Janbaby's job description ;-).  Next time!

How's that for a pretty lock?

On the other side of the spectrum, here is a shorter Ile de France cross fleece.  Another shepherd offered to send three additional fleeces in exchange for some feedback and we were sure glad she did. In total we had six different fleeces from short and fine to medium long and this super lovely gray fleece in between.

This is the daughter of the white fleece above.  The father was a Bluefaced Leicester and she sent the mother/daughter combo to show how well he'd upgraded the ewe.  And he really did.  

Ooh

Ahh

Nistock Luna was another favorite!

We ended up moving the skirting table outside in the sun after lunch.  It really was quite pleasant and I thought it was so neat seeing the wool out in the snow.  Something crazy that only I would like....except now I have some new crazy friends who'll be right out there with me ;-).

Not sure if you noticed the hay in the earlier picture.  We called this sheep The Boudreaux Cousin...and she actually probably is.  A beautiful long, soft black fleece that was just ripe for collecting everything.  In just a short while, with minimal effort, she was picked clean and ready to wash.  Now, if I can just get them to come back after Boudreaux's sheared ;-).

We pulled off chunks of each of the six fleeces, washed them and set them out to dry over night. Tomorrow I'll post some pictures of how we processed them.  And probably another picture of Miss Mira ;-D.

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Mug Update

Um, you guys, they are sold out!  I don't even know what to say.  Well, the first thing to say is Thank You!  I kept a few for gifts for our vets, sheep shearer, one for me... but there are nearly 100 mugs headed all over the country and one to Scotland!  Our funny little family waking up with our funny big family everywhere just makes me...I mean, how sweet is that!!!

Single mug orders are going out today and multi mug orders will go out tomorrow.  I'm sending quick emails as I copy down your address, so if you haven't received an email by the end of the day tomorrow, let me know.  We have enough mugs to fill everyone's order as of last night.  I placed a second mug order this morning and they should be here on the 13th.

Coffee and cookies for all!