Betty Ewe and Fleecity

Today, Seth and I got to go and pick out two new ewe lambs.  They are both natural colored "black" sheep.  They are called black because the color of the wool next to the skin is black.  We named the lambs Betty Ewe (the darker one on the left) and Fleecity.  They both have rather dense wool that looks like crinkle cut french fries when I opened the fleece up and looked down to the skin.  When I looked at Fleecity's wool, I looked at the wool on her back thigh, too.  It's not as crinkly, and it has some locks of white.  It was very interesting looking.

I took a picture of Abraham's mom, too, when Seth and I picked up the lambs.  She is beautiful.  She looks a lot like Joy, beautiful, clean face with a lot of wool.  She has a great smile, too.  What do you think?

Kool-Aid Dyed Yarn

I finished the yarn.  First I spun singles, then plied two of them.  Although the picture shows only two skeins, I got three skeins of 60, 70, and 80 yards.  I really enjoyed this project.  Now, I just need to knit it into something.

Carding the Colors

Once I got all the wool dyed, I carded it on the drum carder.  The first go through took the better part of an evening and the next morning.  The colors are now much more muted than they were, but they're still pretty bright.  I ended up with 11 batts.


The second time around, I took a piece of each batt
and carded a single batt from them all.  I went through this process until I finished the small pieces from all the batts.  Going through this process, all the batts should look similar.  I ended up with six new batts.  These pictures show what I got the second time around.  The batts are more muted still, in color, but they don't all look as much alike as I thought they would.  Some are more orange and red while others are more blue.  That's okay, though, I like them.



They are all still very pretty, I think.  I wonder what they will look like when I spin them.  I will post pictures once I have spun the singles and after I have plied them.  I'm sure the singles will look different from the plied yarn.  Stay tuned...

No Green Kool-Aid

Well, I went to three different stores looking for lime kool-aid so I could dye some of my wool green.  Not one had it.  Rueben says maybe they took it off the market for some reason, like red dye number 3 (or whichever number it was).  I was almost stumped.  Then I remembered the old "yellow and blue make green."  I had planned on adding some orange to the green to get more of an olive green, so I thought I would try to mix blue (ice blue raspberry lemonade) with mango peach.  It turned out pretty nice.  After it dried, I was going to take a picture of it with the other colors.  Wouldn't you know it, the camera battery was dead.  As soon as it charges, I will take a picture and post it.  The green looks great with the other colors.  What do you think?  Kind of looks like a clown wig.

Busy Day

Today was a very busy day.  When I got up this morning, I fed the sheep (and the dog and cats) and then came into the house and started dyeing some Joy wool.  Last weekend I dyed some of her wool orange.  Between last night and today, I dyed some light blue, black cherry, and purple.  I dyed them all using Kool-aid.  It was very easy and the wool looks so yummy!  It smells yummy, too!  It was amazing to watch the water become clear as the kool-aid was soaked up by the wool.  Usually the orange would have been my favorite as it is one of my colors, but I think the purple turned out really cool.  I need to find the green kool-aid, though.  That will make it complete.  Then, I can blend the colors with a little firestar to give it some sparkle and then spin.

We also needed to clean out the sheep shed, so I took the opportunity to get some pictures of the ewes and lambs.

Joy - Telling me all her troubles.  It was her wool I dyed. 

Joy (in the back) and her Mom, Corina.  Notice the rainbow
on Joy's chest.  I didn't notice it until I saw the picture
on the computer.  It looks a bit like the dye job I did using
her wool.

This is four of our ewe lambs.  There is Bella (far left), Raina,
(brown in the back), Ewegenia (white), and Ewelanda
(light brown on the right).  Although they are all Romneys,
Raina is the only ewe lamb that is registered.   They wanted
to know what I was doing inside their shed since I wasn't feeding them.

Ewelanda is keeping cool in the shade.  She is one of our more skittish lambs.

Ewenice is keeping Bella company (or maybe the other way around
since Ewenice is another skittish lamb).  Ewenice is one of the twins that
Corina birthed this year.  Ewegenia (in the background) is also keeping
cool in the shade.

The lambs are getting so big.  They've grown so much since we got them in May and June.  We will not breed them this year.  They are all too young.  The oldest is only six months now.  So, we'll wait until next fall to breed them.  Just think, with Joy and Corina, we'll have seven ewes to breed.  That will be one (or two) happy rams!

We're Back!

It's been soooo long since I've posted anything here (more than a year) but now we have news to post. We have so many lambs this year. Corina had twins, Riblet (he's in the back paddock with the rams) and Ewenice (she's the smaller white lamb) (you can probably guess Riblet's ultimate purpose). Then, we purchased three Romney ewe lambs, Bella (the piglet eating from Rueben's bucket), Ewegenia (the larger white lamb), and Ewelanda (she's the light brown lamb further back). After that, we purchased another ewe lamb and a ram lamb. These are called Raina (furthest to the left) and Abraham (the small lamb you can barely see behind Bella) and are our registered lambs.

Rueben and I have been very busy since the lambs arrived.  We worked all one Saturday on building a feeder for the lamb's shed.  Then, we let them come in and eat.

Ewenice, Ewelanda, Bella, Ewegenia, Abraham, and Raina

I'll try to post more faithfully from now on.  I have a feeling we'll soon have lots more to share.

I spent this weekend with members of my spinning guild doing a dye study. We spent hours (days!) painting, steaming, and rinsing wool rovings. They turned out beautifully. The colors are awesome. Some, I didn't think I'd like too much (they weren't what I think of as my colors), but after rinsing and hanging, I don't think there's one I don't like. You can see most of them in the picture here. However, some are hiding behind others. I really enjoyed the study. Once the rovings are dry, I get to work on getting them spun up! Rueben helped rinse the rovings. He is so sweet and always so helpful. I don't know if I could have rinsed them all myself. It was a lot of hard work! Rueben said he thought they looked very "hippie" or much like what one would see at a Grateful Dead concert! I love them!