Finally another lamb!

These ewes all look like they could pop any minute. So I wasn't surprised when there was a new lamb in one of the shelters. I was very surprised that it was Hosta who had her! Just one single lamb. Last year was Hosta's first year and she had twins. And they only weighed about 3 pounds each! This year's lamb weighs more than the two of them combined! 8 pounds 7 ounces.

A beautiful black spotted ewe lamb, Dixie.

Rams in full fleece after March snow storm

Our winter was pretty mild until February and March. And now they are calling for snow this Thursday!

Skor

                        Budster

Athos

                    Herriot

DiNozzo

Lambing has begun!

I know I have been MIA for a while and I will try to get you all caught up, but I kept telling myself that once lambing started I would post more to the blog!

The first lambs were born this evening about 6:00 to Evra, a black badgarface Icelandic ewe.

 This was taken just seconds after Evra gave birth to the second lamb.

Evra still cleaning the two ram lambs off. A black and a black badgarface like his mom (my favorite color!)












There are still 14 ewes and 5 does to lamb and kid! Going to be busy around here!!

 Hettie

Peppermint

 Hosta

 Hazel

Sage

Back at it

During the week I have so little time to get fiber things done other than feed critters.

So, I am back at getting the yarn made up for my '100 likes' on my face book farm page.

The Icelandic and Mohair dried beautifully! I could just sit and play with washed mohair all day long!! It is just so soft!!

The following are several different charts. When I wash a fleece I always try and get the raw weight and the washed weight and see how much was lost.

Fiber                      Raw weight        Washed weight        
White Mohair           21.3 oz               19.0 oz
Light Shetland             6.3 oz                 4.8 oz
Black Shetland          15.0 oz               11.1 oz
Black Icelandic          21.3 oz               17.1 oz


I wanted my yarn to have equal parts of all three fibers, but as you can see they did not wash up that way. I also wanted a balance between the white and black. So to figure this out I did some calculations. I don't know if every one does this or if I am just being kinda of picky.

So I broke it down in to just Mohair, Shetland and Icelandic to begin with and figured out the percentages of each.

Fiber                         Washed weight               Percentage of total
Mohair                          19.0 oz                           36.5 %
Shetland                        15.9 oz                           30.6 %
Icelandic                        17.1 oz                           32.9 %

With the Shetland, the light made up 30 % of total Shetland and the black 70 % of total Shetland.

I want to start out with 4 ounces of fiber to spin so I took the percentage of the fiber and multiplied it by 4 and got the amount of fiber for each.

Fiber                          Weight    
Mohair                         1.5 oz
Light Shetland                 .4 oz
Black Shetland                .8 oz
Icelandic                       1.3 oz

Have I lost you yet!!

Here is a picture of the 4 ounces of fiber waiting to be drum carded!!

But before I can start spinning I need to get my wheel free!! I am plying gray alpaca with a beautiful pink/purple merino.

Probably won't get to spin until this evening, though. It is a beautiful January day and there are lots of things calling my name outside!!

Washing, drying, and picking

We are just a few 'likes' away from reaching 100 on my facebook farm page! At last check it was 96!

So I have been super busy washing fleece and picking what is dry.

There are so many ways that people was their fleece and I think it is mostly personal preference. Here is how I wash my fleece and it works for me. 

I use 2 1/2 gallon buckets and fill it with about half way with hot tap water and the other half with water that has been boiling on the stove. This makes the water in the buckets about 155 degrees. I currently am using 3 buckets at a time because that is the amount of water I can boil at one time.

I then add 1/4 cup of Dawn dishsoap to the bucket and swish it around.

I then add 5 to 7 ounces of fiber to one bucket.

 And then it soaks for about 20 minutes.

After is soaks I take it out of the bucket with a spaghetti spoon and put it in to drain. I did not use to do this step but it seems to require less rinses when I do it this way. 

While it is draining I change the water in the bucket, look at all the dirt!! This is actually after 2 rinses, guess I did not get one after the first wash.

The clean water is half hot tap water and half boiling water. It does not contain any soap. I have found that after the soap, the fleece must be pushed down some to help it in the rinsing process. I don't stir it at all, just gently push it down a couple of times.

When I remove the fleece and the water looks fairly clear then it is clean and rinsed enough. Some times it can take 2 rinses and sometimes it can take 4 rinses. It just depends on how dirty the fleece is.

After it is clean I put it in mesh bags and put it in the washer on the spin cycle and let the access water get spun out so it will dry faster. Then it goes to the drying racks.

After it is dry then I pick it to separate the locks and get more of the little bits of vegetable matter out. Since I  used all 'seconds' (my word for my fleece that is not good enough to sell to hand spinners, but still nice fleece. It usually has lots of vegetable matter in it.) It takes some time to pick it. I just use my fingers to pull the locks apart. 

Here are some locks before I picked them.

Here are the same locks picked.

Here is all the light Shetland washed and picked.

Here is the black Shetland washed and picked.

I washed the Shetland fleeces last night so they were dry enough to pick while I was washing the mohair and Icelandic fleeces this morning.

Here are the Icelandic and mohair drying after being washed.

So now we wait for the Icelandic and mohair to dry......