Changes

These past few months have been surreal. I keep telling people that, but "surreal" is really the most fitting description. Ryan's blog has the basic rundown - no need for me to rehash it here.

He's gone now, and I'm back in Florida at Dragon's Lair. Ryan knew that ponies, lab puppies, and calico cats are good for the soul, so I have yet another thing to thank him for.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts, prayers, and love.

Scattered

I've always found time management to be difficult. Seems there are always far more things that I want to get done than I have time to do them in. This is especially true right now, as fall is arriving. My new barn job is fantastic, but leaves me with little time for my husband, let alone my hobbies. And any knitter knows that as the leaves start falling, the needles start twitching.

I suppose I should make a list of things that I absolutely "have" to get knit. Like the gray (handspun) cabled sweater and silvery (handspun) shawl that have been looming in the back of my brain for the past few seasons. I'm actually well on my way to having most of the yarn spun up for the former project, which makes me happy. And I have the fiber carded (from Sequin) for the shawl. But then I also want to knit a riding vest (designed by myself *last* fall), a few hats, and oh.. a couple of surprises. All of this has to wait until I finish the other 2 shawls on the needles....

Not to mention, I have many pounds of fleece in the basement that desperately need to be washed. And all sorts of lovely fiber that I'm dying to spin up. And photos to be edited, food to be cooked, friends and family to catch up with. Oh yes.. there's life to be lived.

Sigh.

I guess I'll get to all of it someday.

Or not.

So it goes!

Cat, I'm a Kitty Cat....

We love our "feral" kitties....

Not so much a catch up post.....

Wow, so.. it's been awhile! Since the last post: Maryland Sheep & Wool, my brother's graduation, a trip out to CO/UT/AZ, a new job... and certainly lots of other stuff that I don't remember at the moment.

There would be far too much to write on and on about to catch up.. and nobody wants to read all of that anyway. So let's just do a couple pictures:

on to grad school!

Timpanogas Cave, UT (notice the Rav shirt!)

Bryce Canyon

camping at Zion Nat'l Park

Grand Canyon

And finally......

Addy!

..whose face I now get to see every day in my new job as barn manager! She doesn't normally look quite that worried. But she's always that adorable. :)

Three Fleeces

Spring means shearing season.. shearing day at Feederbrook Farm (so much fun!!) and all the posts on Ravelry got me a little excited. I seem to have acquired a few more fleeces.




The first is a Black Welsh Mountain fleece, 3 lbs 1 oz of Mabli, from Desert Weyr. This breed wasn't even on my radar until I saw some black black yarn on Rav. Most "black" sheep fleece is really dark brown, with or without sunburnt tips. But these sheep have rich black fleece, and the particular one I received had been covered to prevent sunbleaching and dirt/veg.

I was a bit wary about working with Welsh Mountain fleece, as it can be a bit coarse and has kemp - short bits of hair in among the wool. However, it's proving to be enjoyable and rewarding to process. The staples of the fleece that I have are fairly short, about 2-3". It's clean, low grease, and washes up easily. After washing, I can sit on the deck and comb the kemp fibers out with a dog comb.. then later I can sit inside and comb the fleece up with my Valkyrie combs. And the sample I've washed, flicked, and combed so far is plenty soft enough for me. (But then, I like wooly wools. And I haven't gotten to the coarsest part of the fleece yet.) I'm loving it.

Kemp hairs on left, flicked wool lock on right.

The second fleece is a touch over 1 lb from a Gulf Coast Native sheep named Chana. She's owned by Margrett of Running Moon Farm. The GCN is a fascinating rare breed that has adapted to living in the hot, muggy south United States. They have a very soft fleece with the most tiny crimp. One of the really cool things about the breed is that they have developed resistance to some gut parasites. Oh, and that they can live and produce spinnable fleece in Florida!




The staple length of Chana's fleece is 3-4", and is low grease. This is the first I've bought that hasn't been covered. That, combined with the fact that the fleece is quite fine, had me a bit scared about processing it. However, I happened to purchase a copy of Margaret Stove's Spinning for Lace at about the same time as I received this fleece, and now have the confidence to work with this fleece. I've washed up 2 test batches - the first, a cold soak overnight and then my normal washing (hot wash in Dawn, 2-3 rinses in water). This method left me with still dirty, jumbled tips, but the remaining dirt flicked out with combing. However! I then watched the above-mentioned video, and tried washing a batch using Margaret's method of lock by lock. This method was super-easy, resulted in lovely clean, open locks, and was actually much quicker.

Cold-soaked, normally washed fleece on left. Lock-by-lock washed fleece on right.

A small staple of the GCN fleece next to my dog comb. It's still hard to see, but look at that teeny tiny crimp!

The third fleece is actually only part of a fleece. I'm participating in a Pound Along (PAL) with some Ravelers on the Gleason's Fine Woolies forum. We're each using a pound of fleece from one of Joanna's lovely Bond sheep to process, spin, and knit into a shawl. The fun will be seeing all of the different results from the same fleece.




The Bond sheep is a much younger breed than the Black Welsh Mountain or the Gulf Coast Native. Unlike the former 2 breeds, which are used for both meat and fiber, the Bond sheep has been bred primarily for its fiber. The staple lengths on this one are 4-5", nice chunky staples, lovely uniform crimp, and soft luster. Drool-inducing. I washed up a few locks using the abovementioned lock-by-lock method, and they turned out beautiful. However, I think I will be washing them in batches (in tulle) when I do the rest. We'll see.




Part of the fun of getting these 3 very different fleeces has been the challenge of figuring out how best to scour and process each one. I'm still learning, and am hoping that I won't seriously mess up any of them. Thankfully, there is a ton of information freely available on the internet, and fleece happens to be more forgiving than not. I think we'll be okay.

Left to right, scoured locks of: Black Welsh Mountain, Gulf Coast Native, and Bond.

Spinnin' spinnin' spinnin'

Lots and lots of spinning going on around here...

Fat Cat Knits BFL in "Buster," 2 ply:




Fat Cat Knits Falkland in "Electra," navajo plied:



Cosy Makes Falkland in "Memory" (club fiber), singles:



Fat Cat Knits (noticing a trend here?) Falkland in "Wizard Island," navajo plied:



Mystery (Ashland Bay?) merino in greens:


And, a very proud moment... my first 6 oz. of Sequin (my first fleece)! This skein is 2 ply, spun from the carded waste left over from combing my first paper bag full of fleece.




I know that the combing waste is normally tossed in the trash, but the waste was every bit as long and pretty as the fiber that survived the combing. So rather than trash it, I carded it up and savored each minute of spinning it. It's really lovely stuff, if I may say so.

The yarn surprised me - it has shine, halo, and is going to drape well. It's also not as soft as I'd envisioned, which is perfectly fine with me. Gonna make some lovely shawls, I think!

Spring?

Well, despite the fact that it's now spring-time, the temperature today is in the 30s, and we're supposed to get snow tomorrow. Ugh. But! Ryan and I were in Florida a few weeks ago (very short weekend trip) soaking up the sun... and spring was in full swing there.







I think it will tide us over for a bit.

Here is our spring so far: Buds!!




While in Florida visiting wonderful family, we also got to visit with our other family out at Dragon's Lair. Everyone is looking well, but Dafydd (Addy's sire) was the only one to pose for the camera.





He makes my heart pitter patter.

Spring? C'mon!!