Fibre Work

AC was asking for photos of my recent fibre work experiments, so here they are!


We start with raw fleece: unwashed wool, straight off the sheep. This is carded, meaning several bits of fleece are stuck to a board that has multiple metal teeth sticking out of it (much like a wire dog brush) and transferred to another card of the same type with a swatting/pulling kind of motion. The fleece is shifted back and forth from one card to another until the fibres in the fleece have been unkinked and most of the vegetable matter has dropped out. The finished fleece is then rolled into a rolag which is used for spinning.

Historical note: my Gram apparently hand carded all the wool for some blankets that are now on The Boy's bed.

As I have not yet acquired a spinning wheel, all my spinning is done using the ancient technology of a drop spindle. Similar devices have been used for ages and ages, even back before Biblical times. Spinning on one of these gives you an incredible respect for the women who spun thread on drop spindles, then wove it into fabric and sewed garments for their families (and tents, and saddle blankets, and everything else they needed).

The spun wool is usually plied, but this time I chose to just make loosely spun singles. This means that the wool was spun into a single strand of yarn then used as it is, without plying. In this picture you see the scarf I've started (well, I assume it is going to be a scarf, but I reserve the right to change my mind).


This is how the wool looks when it is washed. The spun singles on the spindle are wrapped into a skein that is tied in four places to keep the loops from unwrapping. The wool is immersed in hot soapy water, then rinsed clean and hung to dry. Before knitting with this yarn, I will wind it into a ball, as that's less likely to get tangled while I'm working with it.
Usually, two or three of these skeins of singles would be plied together into a single strand of yarn, but this experiment was to see what would happen if I knit with unplied singles. So far the finished product is looking a bit fuzzy and a bit uneven - the yarn is not spun to an even thickness. I've decided this is a feature: you pay extra for slubby yarn at the craft store, but hey, I can make that stuff all by myself!

A day for experiments

We tried a bunch of things today.

Union Guy helped me shear a sheep (okay, he helped me make the table for the sheep to stand on, and held her while I trimmed fleece off with my new hand shears). The sheep, Cookie, looks ... well ... much smaller than she did before, but nobody is going to suspect that a professional shearer made a visit to my house. Still, it was good to get all that matted fleece off of her, she looks completely different now! The rams were checking out the 'new girl on the pasture'. :)

After that, I tried doing something with her fleece: total failure. Her wool is useless to me. Regardless, that was good to learn.

I tried spinning the wool of a different sheep (Banana Split): wow, what lovely wool! It spins beautifully. Of course, all the wool I have from her is contaminated with hay and burrs and other yukky bits of vegetation, but I carded and spun what I had, and got very nice wool out of the effort. I am now seriously contemplating sheep coats for my wool sheep!

For my next adventure, I tried knitting with spun singles. Allow me to translate for the non-spinning crowd: usually wool is spun (into one strand, a 'single'), and then two or three singles are plied together to make the final yarn that you knit with. I had heard, though, that you can knit with loosely spun singles and wanted to see if it worked. I have a couple of balls of singles spun from Split's wool, unwashed, unprocessed, un-anythinged, so I took one of those and started knitting. It looks really neat! I spun a few balls of wool from her fleece today, and washed a couple of skeins of it, so we'll see how that works out.

Today was a day for experiments and learning and messes: I have fleece and hay bits all over the floor! Still, it was entertaining, a good thing to do on a holiday Monday.

Oh, and you should see the lambs running around the pasture chasing each other. I had no idea they were this cute!

Yep, just two!

Well, it would seem that despite appearances, Natalie was in fact carrying no more than twins!

They are lovely twins, though, and quite big. My less-than-perfectly-accurate weigh in this morning suggests they are between 6 and 8 pounds each! (Yes, a proper lamb scale is on my wish list.)



Here's Coke: if you look closely you can see her one black ear. It's quite funny to see this solid bit of black on an otherwise lightly coloured sheep!


And this, of course, would be Clarence.

Aren't they adorable?

The last of the lambs

We are finally seeing the last of the lambs!

Both Natalie and Brownie (the two Icelandic ewes) went into labour today. They were the last two ewes left to give birth, so we're in the home stretch of this lambing season!

The Boy came home from school to find most of the sheep escaped from the pen (we did some temporary fixes to the fence, but it's really quite temporary and not all that solid ... clearly). Anyway, he was working on getting them back where they belonged when he heard a distinctly unhappy sound from Brownie: there she was, in the sheep shelter, with a lamb partialy born. He could tell she and the lamb were both in trouble and he very wisely called for help: our 4H Leader and her son were here within half an hour. By the time I arrived, they'd still not been able to budge the lamb and had called for further help. The lady they called in used to be a full time shepherd, and was able, after a good deal of effort, to get the dead lamb out. There was a twin as well, backwards and stubbornly refusing to come out. It was finally worked loose about half an hour later, but sadly, it had also died (and it was a lovely black lamb, too). Poor Brownie was exhausted and sore from all that work ... and no lambs to show for it. We will give her some pennicillin and extra molasses for the next few days to help her recover.

While all this was going on, Natalie had started into labour in earnest. With all the comings and goings in the pasture, she was a bit distracted, so everyone headed their separate ways and we went in for dinner. Natalie had her first lamb shortly after that - a white ewe lamb with one black ear and curly fleece, christened Coca Cola (that one was Union Guy's choice). I left mama and baby to themselves and set up the pyre for the lost lambs. By the time I got back to check on Natalie again, she was working on delivering a second lamb. I helped pull that one as she had been working on it for quite some time: Clarence the ram lamb was born about an hour after Coca Cola. Clarence is another of Auntie Ausra's name suggestions - he's named after the angel in It's a Wonderful Life. Here's Jack and Natalie with Coca Cola: Jack was quite curious about the new arrival.
I've checked on Natalie and she still seems to be working on some contractions, so I'm not positive if there are more lambs to come ... but given how huge she was it wouldn't surprise me. I'll be out to check on her a few times tonight, I suspect.

Ouch, that hurts

We had a turn in the weather on Sunday - Saturday was lovely and sunny (although I worked outside in my coveralls and a toque), but Sunday the snow started and it was cold and wet and icy by Monday morning.

The drive to town wasn't too bad, although the city intersections were pretty slick. I skidded to a stop in the left turn lane on the second last corner before reaching my office and ... bump ... someone hit me from behind. Apparently she found the intersection slipperier than I did!

We got around the corner and pulled into the parking lot. I was stunned to see the damage to her car: she'd gone under my back bumper, and creased her hood about a foot down from the windshield, and there was a huge shattered spot in the center of the front window, from the pressure I presume. She was pretty rattled, but neither of us had any injuries and there were no passengers.

I went to the police station, filed my report, and dropped the truck at the tire shop. One of the rear springs was broken in the collision, so driving was a bit of a challenge - the steering wheel had to be held at an angle in order to go straight!

We have a chiropractor in the same building as my office, so I booked an appointment as soon as I got back to work. I'm quite sore and very, very tired, and will be getting adjustments and massage therapy for a couple of weeks at least by the sounds of things.

Thank goodness for The Boy, who is doing chores for me, and for Union Guy, who came and got me from work since I had no vehicle, and for Gram and Grandpa, who stayed at Apple Jack Creek with the Boy while I was stuck in town for the night.

And for Advil, without which I am sure I would get no sleep at all.

Time for another gel cap and off to bed ...

Look how well the lambs are doing!

The lambs are doing very well!

This is Crumb, one of Cookie's twins, the first lambs born here: her adorable smiling face clearly shows who her daddy is - Jack, the Southdown ram.

We weighed everyone today (well, everyone small enough to lift): the twin lambs are up to 10 pounds each; Corolla, the newest addition (Split's lamb) is 11 pounds already! Cherub is sitting at 36 pounds, which is quite respectable, especially for a bottle lamb.

On Saturday, I was outside working on some fence repairs (our fences were little more than suggestions, really) and took a moment to look around: Jack, Natalie, Brownie and Cherub were all sitting on the hill, peacefully chewing their cud. Tired from pulling fence wire and digging through a frozen mass of hay and snow, I sat down next to the sheep. Bob came to sit beside me, then Duggan came and sat on the other side. I was outdoors, surrounded by animals, in the total quiet of the countryside.

I moved to the country for moments like this.

4-H continues

Yes, 4-H continues.

The Boy will be doing three projects in Sheep this year: a prospect ewe (this is a lamb born this year, to be bred and shown for the upcoming 3 years - Cherub), a yearling ewe (a lamb born last spring, to be bred and shown with her lambs for the next 2 years - Banana Split), and ... yes ... a market lamb. Cupid was to have been his market lamb this year, and any market lamb has to be owned by the 4-H member before weigh in day, which was today.


When our 4H leader heard about the loss of Cupid, she offered to let The Boy to come and choose another market lamb from her flock. This is a very generous offer: she downsized her flock recently, keeping only a few of her best show animals. As a result, every one of her animals is a stunningly beautiful sheep. Her flock had produced a lovely white wether lamb, born the same day as Cupid, of the same mixed breed as Cherub (a Columbia/Hampshire cross). The Boy picked him out on Saturday evening, and christened him Curry (thanks to Auntie Ausra for the name!). The new lamb weighed in today at 38.5 pounds, a very respectable starting weight. Curry will continue to live with his mama for a few more weeks to get all the benefit of mother's milk, so The Boy will make the run to Leader's farm after school a few times, and help out with chores and sheep care, and then Curry will move here to live with the rest of our sheep and feast on creep feed, grain, and ammonium chloride supplement (the mineral you feed sheep to help avoid the problems Cupid suffered from).