Show And Tell

The prompt for today's Kentucky Wool Week photo challenge is Show and Tell, so I'm going to use this as an opportunity to show something I did over the summer and tell how I did it.  If I keep this up, I might eventually get the blog caught back up :-).

Instagram followers might remember taking a video tour of some fleeces getting ready to be shipped off to Stonehedge Fiber Mill and then seeing the following pictures a few weeks later.  The project in the works is a new Lamb Camp yarn that for now I'm calling The Bottle Lamb Edition.  It will be a blend of every single bottle lamb I've ever raised.

I should say the video tour showed at least a tiny bit of wool left from every lamb...except Punkin.  I really, really wanted to include Punkin, the lamb who started it all.  While I didn't have any wool left, I did have some leftover yarn from way back when I paid someone to spin for me before I learned that I liked doing things like that.  I wondered if it would be possible to un-spin some yarn.

In 25 words or less...yarn is really nothing more than fiber held together by twist.  You spin two singles and then you spin those two singles together to get a two ply yarn.  Without getting really complicated, that's all you really need to know to follow what I decided to try.

The first step was to un-twist the two plies.  I tried to do this as a whole skein, but it got way too messy and was headed for disaster, so I started cutting off a yard or so at a time.

I then tied it to the hook on a drop spindle and started twirling it to untwist the plies.

Then I pulled the two plies away from each other.

So far, so good.

Next I tied one of the singles to the drop spindle and twirled it to take out the spinning twist. 

After the twist was removed, I pulled the now unspun yarn apart into 4" pieces and lashed them all onto my hand cards and then brushed the pieces to make sure everything was loose and flowing.  The yarn had been sitting for 18 years so it was a bit compressed and felted.  This was a Huge Job.

Crossing that last and most special name off the board?  Worth every hour.

Tour de Fleece Check In

"You still spinning every day?"

I haven't missed a day of the Tour this year.  On a couple days I only spun for 10-15 minutes, but that's better than the zero minutes I was spinning before :-).  

I've got all the Tunis spun and am working on chain plying it.  Chain plying is taking your spun single and making a really long looped crochet stitch with it and then adding your ply twist and winding it on the bobbin.  Make a loop, add twist, wind on the bobbin.  Make a loop, add twist...  You start with one strand of yarn and end up with basically a three ply yarn.

I washed Kaala's fleece yesterday...and my washing machine died on the final rinse (thanks, 2020 :-/).  At least it was the final rinse.  I'm hoping it can be fixed because the newfangled washing machines are not useful for washing wool and the old ones are hard to find.  Kaala should be dry today and I'll start carding it.  I'm planning on spinning six ounces.

The Leicester Longwool curls are also sitting out ready for some attention.  I'm still trying to decide exactly what I want to do with them.  There are four ounces of curls.

There's still a decent risk of a photo finish for the end of the Tour, but I'm hopeful I can complete my challenge before the end.  

Keep spinning!

The Plan...There's Always A Plan

I am spinning three Shave 'Em to Save 'Em breed wools for my Tour de Fleece challenge this year.  

The Livestock Conservancy has a five breed incentive challenge that I am going to try to complete.  I've covered Jacob and Cotswold.  Kaala, as a Clun Forest, was an obvious next pick.  The Tunis roving came from Woolhalla Tunis and the Leicester Longwool locks came from Flock and Forge, fellow SESE farms I follow on Instagram.

I've started spinning the Tunis and it's lovely.  The Clun Forest needs to be washed and carded before spinning.  The Leicester locks...I'm going to comb some and maybe keep a few set aside to use as an edging or trim.  They are so pretty I'm enjoying just looking at them :-).   

Wool is beautiful.

Lamb Camp Legacy Yarn

After we got Baaxter back under control, I was able to get a couple really sweet pictures of the sheep with the new yarn.  

(new puzzle :-)

I always wonder how much they understand about...life.  I know they understand that getting sheared makes them feel a lot better, but do they know that what's in the basket is the wool from their backs?

Or their kids backs?  Rocky was very, very interested in the yarn.

Remember when I threw Rocky under the bus for being a spoiled sport about getting his picture taken?  Jared...  This is as close to the yarn as he'd get and it was just for a split (and blurry) second.

"Dudes, I don't know nothin'  about that yarn.  I'm just here for the ladies...and the cookies."

So this is the Lamb Camp....Legacy yarn.  It's a limited edition, small batch run, spun from some of the nicest lambs sired by Nistock Farm's Rocky and Jared when they were working over at Tring Farm, before they retired over here.

The yarn is a really versatile DK weight and I think it would be suitable for almost anything, except possibly socks...but I'm not a sock expert, so I could be wrong.  It's comfy and soft, but still has some texture and feels like actual wool.  I'll stop here before I say something disparaging about over processed merino... ;-).

Rocky and Jared are Cotswold crosses and the mommas are crosses of North Country Cheviots and Polypays and maybe a little Dorset, so the blend is a lovely mix of crimpy down type wool with a lovely longwool drape and luster.  I love the natural colors and the soft sheepy feel.  It really is beautiful.

Each washed skein measures 250 yards and the two grays weigh around 3.5 ounces and the white weighs almost 4 ounces, so it's on the heavier end of DK weight.  I can also wind off skeins without washing, for weavers.  Unwashed skeins are measured at 262 yards to account for shrinkage.

I've knit the three color sample and dyed and knit the Forest for the Trees hat.  I've also woven a dollhouse rug  with it for a friend.  I enjoyed each project and am very happy with this fun and useful yarn.  I'm also getting ready to start a small cable project, too, you know...for marketing purposes ;-).

Speaking of marketing, each skein is $18.  And it often goes without saying, but buying this yarn supports not just our farm and sheep, but also Tring Farm, who raised these legacy lambs, and Stonehedge Fiber Mill, who spun the yarn, and our sheep shearers, our veterinarians, our local feed mill,  our hay and straw producers...

By the way (more marketing ;-D) there are still about a dozen Equinox Farm calendars and 4 Lamb Camp calendars left in case anyone is still needing a 2020 calendar!  We are no longer able to recycle paper here (do not get me started!) so I'd love to find them good homes.  Sale prices $10 (farm) and $8 (Lamb Camp).

Watching...

...for fall?  For rain?  For cooler temps?  For the upcoming Kentucky Wool Festival?  For a new puzzle :-).

This has been the hottest September I can ever remember.  We are still in the 90s and my "if I can just make it until Thursday..." has been changed this morning to "if I can just make it until Friday."  If this trend of pushing back the end of this brutal heat stretch continues, it's just going to become "I hope I make it..."

To make matters worse, other than a freak rain storm yesterday morning, we have had no rain.  Everything is brown and crispy and when the wind does blow, it's a hot wind that does nothing to help anyone.  Speaking of the freak rain, it rained 2" at the house, but only 3/8" at the Wool House, just yards away.  The rain was that spotty.  

Hank is doing pretty well.  His foot has healed up beautifully, but he's back obsessively licking both of his elbows now and right after I took this picture I had to stick the cone of shame back on him :-/.  They are actually blow up pillows now and if it wasn't so blasted hot, it probably wouldn't be that uncomfortable to wear, but still.

I'm in the final crunch week of getting ready for the wool festival.  My Ohio Valley Natural Fibers run scheduled for last week was cancelled, but they are hoping they can run my roving this Tuesday.  I have my fingers crossed, but am still stressing about a contingency plan if they can't get their machine back up and running.  

I've got a good amount of wool pumpkins made, lots of wool balls, quite a few mini wreaths and I'm finishing up some big wreaths.  I'll also have all the usual Punkin's Patch "swag" in tow and hopefully some felted sheep as well.  The calendars won't be ready until after the festival, but we have plenty of the "...and to all a good night" Christmas card packed up and also mixed sets of all 15 years.

Tring Farm has eight pretty raw fleeces to sell and for some reason Andy and Tavia's fleeces (two of my favorites) didn't sell back in the spring, so I'll have them there as well.  Everything else is washed and ready to process,  so it will all work out somehow.  

The booth will be full and fun and pretty and if the forecast holds, it should be a great weekend.  We might even be able to wear some wool in the evenings...which seems odd to say after so many weeks/months of not breaking out of the 70s at night.  

I'll believe it when I see it.  I'm watching!

The Start Of The 2019 Tour De Fleece

As I posted last week, our team captain this year is Maisie.  She's let it go to her head just a little, but so far, so good...unless something has happened late today and I haven't heard yet.  I happen to have a small sheep in my "inside flock" that reminds me of Maisie, so I've picked her to be my spinning mascot.

She's wearing a warm jacket because I have turned the air conditioner in the Wool House on high :-o.

I'm spinning something pretty neat this year.  17 years ago, when I was just getting started with our wool flock, we were gifted five Jacob sheep from a kind shepherdess in Indiana.  I really didn't know what to do with So Much Wool (hahahahaha), so I had some processed into roving and some into quilt batts.  

I think I must have divided up the black and white wools because I remember having some light gray batts and one dark one that I kept for myself in hopes I could find someone to make a real quilt from our barn quilt. Sigh...

You know...I thought this spring...rather than just sitting in the loft, that dark batt could be re-run as roving.  Roving from our very first five Jacob sheep.  Wouldn't that be neat?  Like an historical do-over now that I'm a better spinner...and those sheep are no longer with us.

This year for the Tour I'm spinning Elizabeth, Esther, Jester, Joshua and Jacob :-).  There are 2.5 pounds of dark gray roving.  I'd like to spin all of that, but I'm off to a slow start, so I may not be able to reach that goal...but I'm going to try.

So what is Mini Maisie looking at in the picture above?

View this post on Instagram

Posting this here so I can post it to the blog. It will all make more sense in a bit 😉. #tdf2019 #jacobsheep

A post shared by Sara Dunham (@thecrazysheeplady) on Jul 7, 2019 at 7:03pm PDT

The legacy of those five Jacobs :-).

And we're off!

So Here's Where We're At

Sweet basket of spun singles.

The singles paired up for plying.  If you notice, there are numbers on each.  That was the order I spun them.  The first five ended up too thin I thought so for the second five I tried to spin them just a hair thicker.  I'm still not sure I did the right thing, but we are not going to dwell on that.

View this post on Instagram

Well...it’s plied...and steamed. I’m not sure I’m happy with it 😐. I sample and sample and think I’ve got it set...and then I spin the big amount...and it doesn’t match the sample. The samples were all wet finished and this is just steamed. Maybe that’s the issue. Maybe it’s late and I’m just tired and cranky. I’m going to go to bed and look at it with fresh eyes in the morning. #handspinning #woes

A post shared by Sara Dunham (@thecrazysheeplady) on Feb 19, 2019 at 8:47pm PST

I'm sure they're fine.  I will re-swatch to make sure I'm still getting the gauge I thought I was getting and all will be fine.  All will be fine...all will be fine...all will be fine...

...until I hit the next problem.  The pattern I've picked (so far...all will be fine, all will be fine...) has a beautiful patterned yoke.  The designer's version was a black sweater with two grays transitioning into white.  It was like a custom Muffin and Pepperpot sweater!

I knew I was going to be tight on the gray/white portion of the project, so I did some sampling with PPPP rather than chance wasting any of Mrs. P.  I had an idea of how little black I'd need to add in to get my two grays, but when I started actually blending I was shocked.

From left to right the ratios are 1 part white to 1 part black, 2-1, 3-1, 4-1, 5-1 and 10-1.  Yeah...  My hopes that where I was tight on having enough Mrs. Pepperpot, Muffin would make up the difference were dashed.  There will be very little Muffin in the grays.

I ended up choosing the 4-1 and 10-1 for my two grays.  The trick now was how to pull that off with the small amount of white I have.  Sit down...think...what are my options...  

I did the thing I always do in these situations...and called kbdoolin ;-D.  I'm surprised she still answers the phone when she sees my number.  We discussed the design, the amounts of dark gray versus the light gray and white and how much I'd actually need of each...and in the end decided not to chance running short.  

The seven ounces of Mrs. P. might be enough, but the mathematical odds were really not in my favor.  Yarn Chicken is fun in certain situations, but once Mrs. P. is gone, it's gone, and in the middle of the Iknitarod you don't want to have to rip it all out and pick a different design using less yardage.

The solution was actually quite simple...and sweet.  

Biscuit to the rescue!

I'd been feeling bad about not including him anyway and I'd bet Mrs. Pepperpot would have wanted him in there as well.  Biscuit and Muffin blended side by side into yarn?  We've sure seen that before :-).

January 2018

The bundle of white on the right will be my white and it will be straight Mrs. Pepperpot.  I'm going to spin that first and check my yardage.  If I'm not sure I have enough then I'll pull some more from the middle pile.  If I think I'm good than I'll blend some Biscuit in with the middle bundle and add little bits of Muffin to start working on my two grays.

So...that's where we're at.

The 2018 Iknitarod Race Prep

After seeing the iPhone compilation of pictures and videos from knitting on the Baaxter Carbeth, 20 knew he'd lost his new sweater and that we were going to re-knit it.

I hadn't done a cast off or woven in any of the loose ends, so it was physically easy to pull the needles out and start frogging (rip it rip it).  Mentally...well, a. it wasn't right and I wasn't happy with it and b. Stella (the queen of rip it back and make it right) came down to help and support.  It wasn't so bad ;-).

We used my handy Nistock skein winder to...wind it into skeins.

One sleeve.

The body.  I'd spit splices all the original skeins together so we decided to let it wind off as one biiiig skein :-o.

We used steam to relax all the knitted curls...without setting Stella's hand on fire, but Be Careful with steam!

Back to normal.  Wool yarn is fun :-).

Just for curiosity I decided to hold out one sleeve to wet block just in case I needed to know something important about how the knitting would behave.  I don't usually wet block my swatches...and should.  

We took measurements, let it soak for 20 minutes, set it out on a towel, let it dry completely, remeasured, learned that Baaxter's wool yarn was going to respond the way wool does almost every time, steamed out the last of the curls and wound everything from skeins into balls.

It doesn't look like a sweater's worth of yarn there, but it is.  1700 yards total, but held double to knit a second attempt, smaller Carbeth sweater.

20 was okay with getting his Ford sweater back, but asked if he could participate more this year so he will be going along as my Iknitarider :-).  The Carbear will be the knitting bag mascot :-).

The Baaxter logo from a couple years ago has been updated to include 20 and reflect Baaxter's more, um, mature color ;-).

The Iditarod's Ceremonial Start is underway, so the Iknitarod "mushers" are eligible to cast on, so I'm going to go get busy!  Hope you enjoy following along :-).

Yarn Along - Preparing For The Iknitarod

This year's Iknitarod has already been a long strange trip...and the race hasn't even started.  I'm going to try to hit the highlights (so far) here and I'll re-read it all in the morning and if something doesn't make sense I'll try to fix it and fill in any missing details...

It started innocently enough - yarn for a Liddy shawl.  After so many months of terrible knitting, I needed something sweet and soothing, like Liddy herself.  A shawl fit not only because she and I had knit two shawls together when she was a baby, but also, if I messed up the gauge, it wouldn't really matter for a one size can fit anyone shawl.

Little did I know that not only had my knitting and weaving mojo jumped ship, but my spinning mojo was gone as well.  I sampled and sampled and sampled and never produced a yarn I was happy with. I seriously contemplated giving up the whole fiber deal.  It's been a long year, pretty much since last years Iknitarod "fail" with Baaxter.  

I finally got one yarn I thought I could live with and spun my first skein.  It was nice...but realistically wasn't a shawl yarn and I knew it. Liddy is smooshy and fuzzy and stretchy and perfect for hats, mittens, a warm snuggly sweater.  Shawls should have some drape and flow.  

One rule I try to always follow is don't set yourself or your dog or your horse or your sheep/child up to fail.  If Liddy doesn't want to be a shawl, don't force her to be a shawl.  No one wins.

Is there something I could do to help my sheep/child succeed?  Well, let's see...  If I have a "down type" (sort of your traditional picture book fuzzy sheep wool) fleece and need it to be less smooshy and stretchy and clingy (these are some words I'll come back and fix in the morning I'm guessing ;-) why not mix in a little "long wool" like, say, some Cotswold?

Two samples in and bingo!  The skein upper right is the original 100% Liddy.  The bottom bundle is about 1/4 Cotswold and the upper left is around 1/3 Cotswold.  Notice the samples have some shine to them? A little more open and drapey?  Much more shawl-like.

While I probably would like the upper left the best, factoring in that this is a Liddy shawl, I felt like the yarn should still truly reflect Liddy.  Liddy with just a little help from Buddy :-).  We finally had a workable plan...I was pretty sure.  Ideally I would have knit a swatch to make 100% sure.  

I'm going to fly through the rest of this.  It's almost 11 and it's been a Long Day.  If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!!!

Buddy on the left and Liddy on the right.  I did the best I could to weigh each amount, but my scale doesn't weight micro amounts well.  

Liddy on the left and Buddy on the right.  Hopefully you can click to biggify and see that even though they are both sheep, they are very different sheep.  Different breeds produce different types of wool.  Liddy is fuzzy and Buddy is curly.

I loaded about half the Liddy onto the coarse cloth carder.  There is a handle that cranks to turn the drums as the wool feeds on.

Then I added the Buddy.

And then I added the rest of Liddy.

Then you pull off a big batt of fluffy wool - this needs some added explanation.

See Buddy sandwiched between two layers of Liddy?

I then divided the batt into sections (insert mad scientist notes on how many times and combinations) and then pulled it all back into thin "ropes" (again, this is going to make no sense, sorry) and ran it all back through the coarse cloth carder a second time.

Repeat the division, pulling out into thin strips and this time feed onto the fine cloth carder.  Coarse and fine refer to the number of wire poky things (I really need to go to bed) per inch.  Maybe you can see how much smoother this last pass looks.  

Again, hopefully you can click to biggify and see the small fuzzy curls of Liddy contrasted with the big loopy curls of Buddy.

Two more blended batts, ready to spin.

My book this week has been The Story of Dr. Doolittle, which somehow I never read as a kid.  How could I have missed that?  

Joining in with Ginny...  And I'll be back with a fresh(er) brain in the morning to make sense of all this and tell you a little more about the fun I have planned for the next two weeks.