Adventures with YarnInformation about everything to do with yarn, knitting, fiber arts, sheep…

Anyone who owns a dog or cat can attest to the above picture – the results of a simple combing session add up quickly. This is Lee’s undercoat. It’s very much warm and soft, in fact it’s quite like Angora fiber. I’d say it’s certainly skin soft (as in you could wear this next to your skin without irritation). Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a way to use this?

Guess what! There is a way! The spinner in me noticed it very quickly. I could not resist pulling out my wheel and giving this a spin – no processing or cleaning or combing, just raw off the brush. The result – a medium strength woolen yarn, only about 5 meters or so but I estimate Lee has more undercoat left on him, possibly enough to get up to 10 meters. From an animal who is not a fiber animal primarily, what a nice surprise!

Here’s Lee posing with his wool-wound yarn. Yes that is the color of my living room. I love it!

I will be using this yarn to make Lee a little hat. I wanted it to have a certain amount of color in the yarn though to differentiate it from Lee himself, so I dyed it with some Queen Anne’s Lace dyestock. We have tons of wild dye plants growing on the farm so I applied my knowledge learned last year and dyed Lee’s yarn. Now it is a weird sickly browny gold thing (Queen Anne’s Lace makes a greeny yellow color) but I kinda like it. It will certainly look different from Lee!

It’s been about 3 months since Riker, my angora buck, came to live with me. This is what he looked like back then. And this is what he looked like a few days ago:

It was time for a haircut!

The tools I used included snacks to distract the bunny, my sheep shears, a pair of smaller hand scissors, and paper towels for putting the clipped fiber onto. I find with shearing all animals it is easy to start around the back of the neck and work one’s way down a side, so that is what I did. Giving him a treat every few minutes made him stay in one spot. Once I was done shearing one side, Riker spent his time grooming and nibbling that side, which made shearing the other side super easy.

Here is a great shot showing the exact length of Riker’s fiber. He looks huge, but it’s all show! You can also see my various tools used for the shearing. I found that the small scissors were too blunt to cut through large bundles of the fiber, but my shears were certainly up for the job. Next time I will try using an electric clipper, as Angora fiber doesn’t have any grease or dirt to gum up the blade. However I fear the fiber is too fine for the clippers to do a good job on…

Here is just over half of the fiber we collected – at the end there was another layer and I have yet to shear his bum or undersides so there’s even more! I will weigh it and measure its length once I’m all done shearing. I believe I will combine this with Lady Baba fiber and spin it into a fine lace. I was very surprised by the amount of fiber he produced in 3 months time. One could easily raise a troupe of Angora rabbits and produce a substantial amount of fiber yearly. Purchase a few fine sheep fleeces to blend with the Angora and you have yourself a luxury wool that will make a most treasured heirloom.

I’ve only had my Happy Panda Rainbow Farm for a month and already I have a wonderful yarn adventure to share with you!

We’ve been having unusually warm weather here in Ontario, so I decided to take advantage of it and shear my Shetland ram, Franklin:

I think he’s such a sweetheart… but only when I’m not in the pen with him. If I’m in there, he tends to want to show me who he thinks is boss. Luckily there’s been no people ramming yet. Once I learn more about his behaviour I’ll be posting an entry about rams in detail.

But for now, the shearing!

I used a set of metal blades, also known as the old fashioned method. With only four sheep I figured it wouldn’t be so bad, plus they’re at least one tenth the price of electric shears. Tom was there to help distract Franklin with grain and hay, and then hold onto him when Franklin showed no more interest in food.

I don’t know how long we took to do it, but it was probably closer to an hour and a half. Considering it was my first time shearing, plus we had to stop every fifteen minutes to stretch, I wouldn’t say it went so bad. Since his fleece is easily the worst quality of them all, it was good to practice on him before I do the ladies. Also, we sheared him while he was standing up, I was not going to manipulate a ram like you see the New Zealand shearers do ewes, not with those bad horns of his!

Enough words, here’s a picture of my marvelous first time shearing result.

Oh poor Franklin, yeah you don’t look so suave, but it’ll grow out in a few weeks! Everyone gets a bad haircut sometimes… On the plus side there were no injuries had by sheep or human. I’m sure he appreciates that over looking fancy and pretty. But it sure is different from this before shot:

Now when I enter the barn and Franklin comes running up, I can’t help but laugh. He looks so silly and naked! Frankie, we see your shame!

Here he is with his girls. You can see I stopped at his butt, he was getting really tired of the shearing so we decided to finish up a later day. Same with his lower trimming.

As for the result, here are the very dirty raw fleece bits. I was aiming for the full one piece fleece, but since he dragged it around when we took breaks I chose to break it off. I’ll try to weigh it after I’ve sheared his butt and removed the tags. I’m very glad to be making progress on my goal of raising sheep and using their fiber, even if technically this fiber was “created” by the previous shepherd. Once I get it washed, combing it down by the wood fire will make for a great end of day activity.

Everyone, meet Riker! Riker is my first official fiber animal joining the farm (hence his name, as he’s Number One, and so is William T. Riker). He’s an English angora buck who’s been described as a lilac cream tort. His fibers will pair wonderfully with my Shetland sheep fleece to produce a wonderful Angora-Shetland blend of yarn… but not for at least 3 months as he was just sheared.

He is currently living in a “Rabbit starter cage” bought from Petsmart, he seems to be happy and relaxed and has a healthy appetite and poop production. I’m looking into the best diet for him and our future farm lifestyle. I’ve seen two different approaches so far, one which advocates mostly pellets with a bit of hay and veggies, the other which advocates mostly hay with a quarter the amount of pellets and much more fresh food. Right now I’m feeding him the same diet he had in his older home, pellets with a bit of hay and veggies. Once we get into growing season I might play around with the veggie/hay/pellet ratios, gradually of course!

I bought a wire comb meant for little dogs to comb his fiber with, and it worked wonderfully. He just sat right down with us on the couch while we combed him and pet him. No poop or pee mishaps with us so far. He’s such a champion! We are very happy to have him on the farm, and I’m now thinking much more seriously about raising Angoras sooner rather than later.

In anticipation of moving into my farm & house at the end of this month, I made contact with a local farmer who was selling her Shetland sheep bunch, two pregnant ewes, a 2 year old ewe, and their ram Franklin. Here’s a picture of the ladies:

I’ve done a good amount of reading and learning about sheep in general, but I was interested in learning more about Shetlands in specific. Interestingly, the fleece which I’ve spun with this past year has been Shetland fleece, so I’m very excited that I’ll be able to keep using it in the future. Apparently their fiber can come so fine that Shetland shawls can pass through the opening of a ring, anywhere from 20-30 microns. Their fleece can be either one of 11 colors or combinations of colors in 30 distinct marking patterns (such as the third one pictured above).

As for the sheep themselves, they are considered an unimproved or heritage breed. They were brought over some time ago from the Shetland Isles – the same place where Shetland sheepdogs and Shetland ponies developed over time. They are natural mothers, they become fertile as the day shorten in October, and give birth to one or two to three lambs in the Spring or Summer. They are on the small side, adults weigh between 75 lbs (little ewes) to 125 lbs (big rams). In addition to producing a gorgeous fleece, their meat is yummy and lean, and since they’re smaller their carcasses are a bit easier to manipulate and store.

From what I’ve been reading, Shetlands are ideal sheep for farm newbies like myself for a few reasons. One, lambing is relatively effortless and requires little if any human intervention. Two, they have naturally short tails so docking (removing part of the tail to help fight against flystrike, which is a quick and deadly infection) is not necessary. Three, being a heritage breed, they are very hardy and can stand up to some seriously rough weather on their own.

I’m very confident that I’ve made the right selection for my first farm animals, and I’m looking forward to being their caretaker in March!

Oh my gosh, aren’t they just so cute!!

Over the weekend of September 26th I was able to visit Ballintotas Alpacas, a small family run alpaca farm outside of Arnprior, Ontario. The Rouleau family has been tending  a herd of alpacas for 9 years now, focusing on raising champions and high quality 4H animals as well as high quality fleeces, awards of both are proudly (and rightfully, I may add) displayed. They sell a wide variety of alpaca products, such as gloves, hats, and shawls (including a loose sock for diabetes patients), as well as machine spun yarn and duvets.

The family were great hosts, greeting us when we came in, taking us to the alpacas, sharing a great overview of alpaca knowledge as well as answering any questions we had. The alpacas themselves were gentle and absolute angels (that’s what you get when most of your boys are gelded), many of them loved having rubs and being petted. The one filly who was harnessed up and taken out for us to more closely pet showed absolutely no wildness, even when her foot was brought up. I felt very welcome here, in fact out of all of the Rural Ramble sites I visited, I would say this one was the best!

They had a few bags of alpaca roving for sale, so I picked one up, 100 grams of a light sandy color for $13. I am so looking forward to spinning it up! I think I will make a shawl with it. It is so soft and warm, I almost want to keep it as roving forever… but Mom didn’t like that idea too much

One thing I love about the simple packaging is that it prominently features the alpacas who contributed to the product. Each label features a picture of the alpaca, as well as their name and any awards they’ve won. I immediately felt much closer to the product, especially after petting and snuggling with the alpacas only a few minutes prior. It was very much a similar experience as the one I had at Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm/Hudson Valley Fiber Farm.

And get this, what do you think this artwork is made of? I thought chalk or pastel. Nope, it’s alpaca fiber! The “canvas” is a large wet-felted piece of alpaca felt, and the rest of it is dyed  as needed and needle felted on. What a great idea this is!

All in all, my visit to Ballintotas Alpacas was a wonderful experience. I will keep my eyes on their website for other times when I can go and visit the alpacas!

If you are interested in seeing more alpaca photos, you can see my entire photoset on Flickr.

Website: http://www.youtube.com/user/wolfcrik

Blog (ended): http://grannymillerblog.blogspot.com/

wolfcrik, a Youtube user, has a variety of videos uploaded regarding life on a farm. Some of the more valuable ones include one about tail docking and ear tagging sheep and a narrated video of a normal lamb delivery.

She also has videos about how to do canning, as well as much other self reliance tips on her blog. Sadly it seems she has chosen to stop blogging but hopefully she will continue to post videos on Youtube.

Website: http://www.shetlandsheepinfo.com/

This website is a comprehensive guide about Shetland sheep. It has a great section about fleece as well as links to other information sources.