Spinning and puppies

Excited to have brought home 2 lbs of Alpaca fiber from local farm's shop. Barter system worked out nicely. Eden Valley alpaca's was looking for someone to demo spinning in their holiday shop on Main St in Hamburg willing to trade Alpaca products. 2 spinning sessions in Nov...now I have a nice amount of a medium brown alpaca fiber to card up with my kid Mohair from Hazel's september cut.

In other fiber news:

Spun up some more tumeric yellow and pokeberry Icelandic lamb's wool. Not as fond of the breed as I first expected. Glad I spun first, before buying the critter.

Just posted some of Molly's raw mohair, and other icelandic lamb fiber on etsy shop.

Critter news:

Blur's pup's were born earlier this month, follow them on my website, picasa and youtube.

First due dates forNigerian Dwarf kids mid-Jan.

Natural Dyes: Pokeberry

Collected some pokeberries in a canning jar with vinegar water mix (1:3), let it sit a few days and strained. Very nice shade of purple! Put 1 oz Merino wool in overnight and dried. Tried some bamboo, but either the mordant was wrong or bamboo does not take well to natural dyes. Never bothered to research it, just had it handy and went with it. Finally got a pair of hand cards so did a 60/40 blend of the merino to (white)bamboo and currently hanging to dry is a 2 ply 48yd skein. Strange that the NiddyNoddy pic is more true to life, background and flash will do that to ya.

Angoras get naked (aka shorn)

Saturday 10/10/09 the Angoras gave up their fiber. Molly's unskirted yearling fleece (this was her 3rd sheering) weighed 5lb 3oz, and Hazel's first kid fleece (she's two days shy of exactly 6mo old on this date) weighed 1lb 8oz. I plan to send out samples for micron testing, but this week is shaping up to be a busy one... so not much will probably happen with the fleeces.

Natural Dyes

A couple weeks back with everything in bloom I found myself eager to play around with natural dyes. The downfall to this being that the Angoras are not shorn yet, and am out of other types of roving. I decided to play around with the some of the first skeins I spun. In the spring I made 3 skeins of 100% Mohair despite pure Mohair is not supposed to be garment suitable due to it's inability to have memory. My goal was educational (to spin/feel each type of fiber I got my hands on in its purest form). I entered one of the skeins in Hemlock's Fiber Fest skein competition and it ended up with 5th place, so this skein seemed suitable for experimentation, and the loss wouldn't be that substancial should any oops' happen.

First some morning glories were harvested from the front porch. Torn between using vinegar, salt or Alum as a mordant, the vinegar batch went to red tones and the Alum batch seemed to be brilliant purple. In the end the skein was a muted gray. Not awful, but if I want gray...I'll spin a gray wool. Tumeric was next on the agenda, (no mordant required) tested a couple of Molly's locks and got a very bright yellow, so in went dingy skein #1. Strained excess tumeric granules out and threw the other 2 mohair skeins in a canning jar overnight. Purposely leaving them as skeins it made for a nice natural varigate of yellow to natural where the dye didn't completely saturate the yarn. End result, the overdyed skein was a different shade, Jim liked it, so it will probably get turned into something for him. I took one of the other skeins and went novelty route with yellow glass beads. Concerned of the slippery nature of Mohair and the threads ability to adhere, I am mid process of turning that skein into a headband. I haven't decided what will come of the last skein in regards to beads. That one definitely shows more varigate and am not confident it is appealing enough for someone to purchase via etsy as a skein. Picture above doesn't do justice for the true color, but shows variance of the overdyed skein.

Currently making a batch of pokeberry dye. I am thinking some Merino, Bamboo and Mohair for this project.

I joined the world of Blogs

As if I don't already have enough places to keep track of on the computer! Not much of a journalist either. BUT, here are my ambitions....I just think this may be a good place to organize farm happenings without loosing them when my website updates. So I may mention critter updates, but for the most part I am going to make the main focus FIBER related. I am taking way too many pictures of my fiber ventures, but they really don't hold much meaning when it comes to the family albums.