Four weeks have passed since she Brittany tried carrots for the first time. We tracked her down to see if she made any progress with her addiction.
We found Brittany begging for carrots from strangers. She’ll take a carrot from anyone, without a thought for where that carrot has been.
She even accidentally ate a pita chip. She was so eager for a carrot fix, she didn’t check to see what someone had offered her.
Washing. It sounds straightforward, right? Well it’s not. This step is one of the easiest to get wrong, and the penalty for messing up is turning all your fiber into a big felted knot, completely ruining it (it’s like putting your favorite wool sweater into the wash on high, it shrinks and deforms). It is, however, probably the only step that doesn’t leave you dusty. Like all of these fiber processing steps you need a few specialized tools to do the job properly. In this case, you might have everything you need under the sink. Continue reading
If you’ve ever wondered what alpacas look like when they’re playing in a sprinkler? No? Where is your curiosity?
Well it’s a fairly tame sort of “playing” but it’s adorable.
It only took us over a year, but we now have a sign for the ranch!
Awesome, right? Dad took the old sign, turned it over, and used a router to carve in our logo. I spent most of the day painting the letters (I was painting letters in my sleep Saturday night). Then we all took a field trip to the top of the driveway to hang our sign!
The sign gets a ride to the top of the driveway.
Fall is a particularly photogenic time to hang a sign, isn’t it? The scrub oak are turning, and it’s just lovely out there.
Have I mentioned that no task on the ranch does not involve the twactor?
So now when we give people directions, we can tell them to look for our sign, not the sign put up by the last people to own the place. I’d say that’s an improvement. In fact, we all felt pretty elated.
Dad has had a project recently, trying to teach the alpacas to eat their crumbles (a pellet treat) from his hands. Alpacas as a general rule don’t really approve of interactions with people, so it’s actually quite a difficult endeavor. But delicious crumbles and near-constant contact with Dad seem to have worked magic.
Mo dives in for goodies.
Tuscany was the first of the boys to really trust dad enough to give it a try. Morocco wanted to, but just wasn’t quite sure…until now. And Merlin, well, once Merlin can be bothered to try something, there’s little doubt he’s actually going to do it.
Pink nose boy!
Look at the wizened face on Merlin. He’s very much the funny old man of our herd.
If you quilt, or play baseball, you may have an idea of what a batt/bat is. In baseball, it is long piece of wood used to bean people who make you angry. In quilting, batting is the layer of filling between the top and bottom layers of the quilt. Wikipedia tells me that batting is also used in those little Christmas town displays as the snow. Random.
This is batting that you put in a layer in the middle of the quilt sandwich.
For spinners, a batt is the long rectangle of organized fiber that comes off a drum carder. Spinners generally divide a batt into long strips of fiber called roving because roving is much easier to handle as you spin (see my post here on how that’s done).
Each batt weighs about 2 ounces.
What fascinates me is the connection between the batts I use to spin and the batting that quilters use. Back before synthetic batting came along, they were actually the same thing. Quilters, the original “up-cyclers”, sewed together all their thin scraps of waste fabric to make beautiful designs, and then sandwiched a layer of the sub-par wool between two layers of fabric to give the quilt warmth. What would otherwise have been discarded, fabric in unusual or too-small sizes and wool that was not soft, is given new life as something beautiful and useful.
Note: I was out-of-town Mon-Wed, sorry, I should have given you a heads up.
I finished the spinning project I’ve been working on. Unfortunately, it was supposed to be black and brown yarn with BROWN beads. Now I have 250 yards of the wrong yarn, and no more Brittany or Tulip fiber to work with. I’m having one of those “can’t win” weeks.
Edit: I found a box of Brittany fiber in the closet, from last year, and Mom found some Tulip fiber that only needs to be carded. So I think we are going to be alright.
I can tell that the creative juices aren’t flowing when I’m already winding the two-ply yarn off the bobbin, and I still haven’t come up with any names. Usually I have half a dozen by this point, most of which are later vetoed by “marketing” (Mom). To date my favorites have been “Kiss of the Jade Monkey”, “Studded Snows”, and “Sisu Storm”. This poor yarn, on the other hand, I call “Black and Brown Yarn with Black Beads”. It has a certain lack of ring to it, right?
It’s a custom order, and I rather like how it’s coming out. Tulip’s fiber (the tan) is fluffier and lighter than Brittany’s (the black), which is strong and smooth. Together, they make a rather nice yarn. The beads are threaded onto a very thin black silk embroidery thread.
I ply beaded yarns very, very slowly. The three strands that I’m plying together have very different consistencies, which makes getting a balanced and even yarn difficult. I had to spin Brittany’s single twice to build up enough twist to ply it with Tulip’s single (a single is what you call the first unplied, single strand of yarn). While plying, I have to hold the embroidery thread very tightly so that it doesn’t just wrap around the other two.
Any name ideas?
Ever since I started spinning, I’ve wondered “How in the world did Sleeping Beauty prick her finger on a spindle?” Like most spinners, I learned the basics of turning fiber into yarn on a simple device called a drop spindle. In its most reduced form, spindles are little more than a straight stick with a hook on the end.
In this painting from 1170, Eve spins on a simple spindle, really just a hooked stick (right hand), while holding a distaff with her unspun fiber in her left hand.
Cliff House Alpacas 