Baby pictures!!

Saturday morning I finally let out the three lambs that had already been born since the weather was finally going to be decent.
Here they are! Enjoying the beautiful day!!

Then Saturday afternoon more babies arrived!!

A Not-Quite-White Angora buckling. Out of Abby.

A black gray badgarface Icelandic/Shetland cross ewe lamb out of Clarissa. Her name is Destiny.








THEN!!! This morning I got up late and there was a single and a set of twins born!

A moorit gray Icelandic ewe lamb out of Garnet. Her name is Dawn.

A solid moorit Icelandic ewe lamb out of Peppermint. Her name is Darla.

A gray (not sure if she is moorit or black yet) Icelandic ewe lamb out of Peppermint. Her name is Dusty.





Ten ewes left to lamb and 4 does left to kid!!

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!!