iowa sheep and wool festival

a few weeks ago B and i took another mother-daughter road trip. it was a wonderful weekend adventure at the iowa sheep and wool festival. (i would like to take a moment here and say what a blessing it is to have a daughter! we have the best time together, sharing so many interests, having heart to heart talks, and laughing a lot, too. i am so thankful for our special relationship!) okay, back to the regularly scheduled blog post... B took a beginning spinning class and was able to learn how to use the wheel she got for christmas. her wheel is a beautiful louet s15 that has been stained green and decorated with a fern motif.

hurray! success on the spinning wheel!

B spinning on a drop spindle


carding fuchsia wool

B and i in the bleachers watching the sheep dogs herd their little flocks through the course...

i also took a class and learned a few techniques to spin specialty yarns using mohair. it was rather difficult and i'm not sure if was very successful, but it helped me to break out of my "spinning comfort zone".

left to right: spinning directly from mohair locks, a loopy yarn, spinning onto a core thread

i wanted to try some new fibers so i bought this beautiful silk/merino blend.

this is a wool/angora blend.

i am spinning it now and looking for some kind of cowl/hood/mobius pattern to use with the yarn. do you have a favorite?

everyday gift: a weekend with my girl

spring lambs!

i have been meaning to post about our new lambs for about a month, but life around here has been a little crazy. finally, here are pictures of our little babies. it has been so much fun to get to know them. they each have their own little quirks and stories.

hope

hosanna finally had her baby. out of the 4 ewes who lambed this spring, hosanna was the only experienced mama. every time a lamb was born, hosanna stepped right up to take care of the new lamb, to the point were she was interfering with the real mama. we had to keep running her off and then we isolated the new mother and lamb so they could get to know one another without aunt hosanna budding in! so finally she had her own lamb about a week behind the others. it is a sweet little ewe lamb with a beautiful face, dark brown legs and belly, and a white fleece. hosanna has kept her very protected so we have not had much of a chance to handle her like the others. our little hope is the shy one of the bunch.

solomon

this ram lamb was the first to be born this spring. i love his beautiful face and the cinnamon brown tips on his fleece. underneath the color is fawn. he looks very much like his mother, jubilee. he had a little trouble nursing in the beginning. mama was so large and engorged with milk that he could just not latch on, despite his efforts. we tried to let nature take its course, but after almost 24 hours we still had not seen him successfully nurse. i finally gave him a bottle of milk replacer to give him some strength but i was not ready to take on the full time responsibility of bottle feeding this little guy. so mark and i began our efforts to assist the nursing process. mark had to hold jubilee and squirt milk from the nipple into the lamb's mouth while i physically attached baby to mama. we did this every hour one day and resumed the efforts the next morning until he would finally nurse on his own.

ezekiel

sweet little ram lamb. this is shalom's second born of the twins. shalom, hosanna's baby from 2008, is a shetland/cheviot cross. now, crossed back to shetland, her lambs have a very luxurious fleece. zeke is coal black with a small white spot on his head.

joy!

we could not have chosen a more appropriate name for shalom's ewe lamb. she is the friendliest, bounciest, silliest lamb that we have. she loves to climb all over you, if you let her, and she leads the other lambs all over the pasture in crazy leaps and bounds. she has unusual markings on her face of black, brown, and white. her long soft wool is growing in very grey underneath the white tips, very much like her mother.

malachi

this is malachi. second twin of bathsheba. he had a rough start when his mama was too busy with her first lamb to give him the attention that he needed. i watched on and waited for her to start licking him dry and nudging him to his feet, but she wasn't interested. when he started to shiver, i had to step in and dry him off with a towel and help him stand. i kept introducing him to mama and putting him in position to nurse. finally he latched on and bathsheba began to lick him and accept him. what a relief! he seemed to do well after that, although, he was never as frisky as the others. we didn't realize until it was too late that he had become sick. we lost him after 3 weeks. maybe he wasn't nursing as well as we thought. we will miss his sweet face with the funny white markings!

comfort

she is truly a prize among our lambs. bathsheba's first lamb is a spotless dark brown. in this picture she looks black, but compared to the true black lambs, she is definitely brown. we ended up with a perfect variety of colors: white, grey, fawn, dark brown, and black. i couldn't be happier about that! i believe comfort misses her brother, malachi. after he died, i left him with him mama for a little while. if i hadn't, she might have continued to look for him frantically and bah for him. this way she can somewhat process the fact that he has died. during this time, comfort lay down beside him and wouldn't leave him, even when the others had gone to pasture. it was very sad. maybe that is why she has become such buddies with hope.

everyday gift: colors of the shetland rainbow

a few february projects

at the beginning of the year i decided that i would dedicate myself to learning some new skills in 2010. making yogurt was a start. it was much easier that i had expected. i don't have a yogurt maker so i simply heated the milk on the stove top with a makeshift double boiler. then i kept the cultured milk warm on top of a heating pad and covered it with a dish towel. i chilled the yogurt in quart canning jars. it is wonderful! i have been experimenting with new recipes using my newest favorite ingredient making carrot ginger soup, spinach yogurt dip, and simply sweetening it with homemade raspberry jam. i am currently reading the stonyfield farm yogurt cookbook. yes, i know, i do tend to take things to the extreme. :o)


now, you may be wondering why i am including my wool and spinning pictures in the same p0st as my yogurt. i realize that my yogurt and spinning really have nothing in common, except, maybe the fact that both of them have kept me away from everydaygifts this month...

this is some dark brown roving that came from our shearer. i don't know the breed of the sheep, but based on the color and softness of the wool i would say it was shetland. i have spun a few skeins of it and i am looking forward to knitting with it.

here it is on the wheel

meet hosanna.
i mentioned her when i posted about my mitten project, but could not find a picture of her. well, here she is, my very sweet shetland ewe. her wool is a lovely grey.

hosanna's roving and yarn on the bobbin

a hand spun skein

success! i completed a matching pair and learned so much in the process. the first one i thought looked pretty good. the second however did not match the first. the third, i thought, would match one of them to become a pair. but i discovered an error in my knitting while making the third and with the correction, it really turned out to be the best one yet. so i had to knit a fourth, finally making a pair! now i am ready to take on SOCKS!

are you keeping your mind and hands active with learning and productive projects? i think i would go crazy with all of my required activities (you know, the cleaning, lunch packing, laundry, cleaning, taxi driving, did i mention cleaning?) if i did not have these enjoyable diversions!

everyday gifts: warm woolen mittens and yogurt!

hosanna's mittens

hosanna's wool is wonderful to spin. it is so soft and springy. i am spoiled now to spin anything else. i have been searching my photos for a good one of hosanna, i wanted to post it here and introduce you all to my sweet shetland ewe. but she is apparently camera shy. i will have to rectify that problem. shetland sheep produce a wide range of wool colors and hosanna is officially "grey". it sounds rather dull, but actually it is quite interesting. it has a pearly cast to it and the variations of dark and light give the yarn a lovely depth of color.

grey shetland roving on the bobbin

i am following the pattern of ann budd in
the knitter's handy book of patterns.

because of my large stash of roving and growing stash of handspun yarn, i figured i had better get busy and increase my knitting skills so i am able to do something worthy with it.

so here is the progress i have made:

i had to consult youtube to figure out how to use
these double pointed needles!

everyday gift: gentle lambs, warm wool, homegrown mittens!

ready to spin

well, i finally came to the realization that the 18 raw fleeces stored in the garage were just too much for me to handle. the slow process of washing and carding such a large amount of wool was overwhelming. and then we had to move it somewhere when we sold the house. so i took a little trip to High Prairie Fibers and enlisted abi to process my wool. i cannot tell you what a relief it was to have that job taken care of. last week i went back to pick up the processed wool, it is now in clean fluffy strips of roving, ready to spin, and there is A LOT of it! almost 40 pounds worth of roving! several of the fleeces i took in ended up being of inferior quality, not worth keeping. sadly, bathsheba's black fleece was among these. but the rest came out beautifully. i will be spinning all winter long!

B and i love to visit abi's little farm/mill. in addition to their sheep and wool processing, they take in and care for abandoned, homeless, or sick exotic birds. they have an entire building devoted to these birds. B came away with a large flight feather from a blue and gold macaw, it is a prized possession!

a rainbow of wool

dark brown wool from a jacob sheep (?), gray jacob, shalom's gray (cheviot/shetland cross), hosanna's silvery gray (shetland), jubilee's oatmeal (shetland), snowflake's yellowish white (cheviot), roxie's bright white (cheviot).

sweet hosanna's wool on the spinning wheel

everyday gift: wool in a rainbow of natural colors, waiting to be spun

recipe for a sweater ~ part 3

step three: scour the wool

gather your supplies.



today i am scouring jericho's fleece. he is a shetland with beautiful charcoal colored wool.

shetland wool has a very soft fiber, ideal for sweaters.

after sorting out the unusable portions of the fleece, i place the wool in laundry bags. this makes it easier to manage as it is moved from wash tub to wash tub.

the wool is submerged in piping hot water with dissolved soap, either orvus livestock soap, or original dawn dish washing detergent (other brands do not effectively cut through the wool's lanolin). the temperature of the water should allow you to put your hands in it, but hot enough that you won't leave them there for long. the wool should be submerged gently, without any agitation, and soaked for 10 minutes or so. it is then moved into a fresh tub of soapy water for another soaking. next it goes through several tubs of rinse, soaking about 10 minutes with each step. the water in each tub should be the same temperature. agitation and a quick change in temperature can cause felting.

after you drain and gently squeeze as much as water out of the wool as you can, put the wool, still in the laundry bag into the washing machine and turn it on the spin cycle. you really should do two at a time so you can balance it. then the final drying time on the rack is very short, especially if you have a warm dry day. i bought this nice big drying rack at a yard sale. mark bought the screens i am using at another yard sale after he caught me taking our screens out of our windows to use on my drying rack. he loves to help me out like that! :o)

recipe for a sweater ~ part 2

step two: shear the sheep

roxie is looking a little nervous...she knows something is up.

once we catch roxie, the shearer buts her on her rump and she is completely resigned. but, oh the humiliation of it all!

and if she were honest with herself, she would admit that she is very thankful to lose that woolly coat for the summer.

our shearer does such a nice a job of taking the fleece in one complete piece with no second cuts. this makes my job of sorting out the best wool easier because i can determine which area of the sheep the wool comes from. the best wool comes from the shoulders and sides. underneath can become quite soiled and damaged.

stay tuned for part 3...

recipe for a sweater ~ part 1

step one: get a sheep...or a llama...or both. :o)

meeting amazon and roxie for the first time. "hey, whatcha got in that bucket?"

jericho, shetland wether

in 2005, we decided to add livestock to our little farm. so we bought several llamas and sheep. we searched the internet, library, and country friends for information about raising our new charges. and what a joy they turned out to be. they added an element of adventure to our family. we discovered that llamas have such a peculiar personality that always keeps us entertained! they do a good job of guarding our sheep from coyotes. we found our sheep to be so sweet, gentle and woolly! we also found that if you have sweet feed, a sheep will follow you anywhere.

our flock increased the very next month since both amazon, our cinnamon colored llama and roxie, our cheviot ewe were expecting. amazon gave us andes, an all white crea and roxie had a ram lamb that we named snowflake. with our growing flock i began to wonder what i would do with all that wool.

to be continued...

new kid on the team

this is what we found on our front lawn when we got home tonight from soccer practice and a visit with my mom: our silly lamb caught in the soccer goal!

never a dull moment around here!

lambkins at play

now how can i get my laundry done with this going on right outside my window?

a sad morning

we lost jubilee's lambs. one light and one dark. i found her at 6 am in the middle of the birth of the second lamb. it appears that the lamb did not present properly. i pulled gently at the already dead lamb and it was then born. poor jubilee. she began the process of cleaning her unresponsive lamb. her first lamb was nearby, born sometime in the night. it also did not survive.

jubilee is mourning her lambs. she is baaing a sad call to them as she wanders out to the pasture, then to the shed, then back to the birthing place looking for them.

lessons on the farm are not always easy. but even while we are feeling the sadness of the loss, we can't help but smile at the 3 lambs we have, frolicking, leaping, and chasing each other around the pasture. and now i am keeping a watchful eye on bathsheeba, the last ewe to lamb, praying she doesn't have any difficulty.

baby pictures

clover and basil

roxie and one of her lambs

shalom

(i need a better picture of her, she is too cute!)

i couldn't resist posting a few more pictures of our lambs. we are still waiting for the other two ewes. jubilee is hanging out in the shed this morning while the others are out in the pasture grazing...maybe today?

hosanna with her new lamb

another miracle occurred on sunday and this time we got to watch. it was an amazing moment, one i am sure the kids will never forget. this is hosanna's first lamb and she is doing an incredible job. it is so amazing how she knows exactly what to do! we have named the lamb shalom because she was born the day after passover. and by now we have figured out that the papa is jericho, our black shetland ram, that scoundrel!

everyday gift: the miracle of new life

surprise!

i watched from the window as raindrops began to fall. the animals were making a beeline from the pasture to the shed. i am so glad we spent yesterday morning in the garden sketching tulips and crocus into our nature journals because today promises to be colder and stormy. i checked the weather again about a half an hour later, and couldn't believe my eyes! there was a newborn lamb in the shed! i hollered to the kids, grabbed the camera and cell phone, pulled on my boots and headed to the shed. S ran ahead and announced not one, but two lambs! we watched in awe as the still wet and wobbly lambs bleated for their mama and searched for her warmth and milk. what a precious sight to behold. roxie is such a sweet mama, nudging, cleaning, bleating softly to them. what an unexpected blessing! you see, our rams are wethers (castrated)! so miracles do happen!

i think this lamb is a ram. it is all white with a few black spots.

roxie with her babies. the one on the left has a prominent black spot on its leg, it is a ewe lamb, her brother is on the right, with a spot on its neck.

B with one of the new lambs. she threw a sweatshirt over her p.j.'s to greet the new arrivals!

everyday gift: newborn lambs