Lots to catch up with!

I can't believe it's been almost 2 weeks since my last post! It's been busy around the farm.  I'll try to catch you up. 

First off, our breeding program has hit a bit of a snag. Upon closer inspection, more of the yearlings & weanlings than the 1 I thought have bad tails.  For a shetland this is very important! I've tried to include a couple pictures to show what I'm talking about.  In the picture below are some of the weanlings. The white ram lamb on the right is the 1 I knew had a bad tail.  First off, you can actually see it.  LOL. It's long and bushy or wooly! Notice how on the black & morrit (brown) lambs you can't really see their tails. This is good! 

 This picture is a close up of the morrit lamb.  Notice how his tail is pretty short, shaped like a club, and doesn't have wool on the end like the rest of his body.  This is how it should look.  I'm not saying this is a perfect tail, but correct.

Not all is lost! The bad tails will still make good fiber animals or the ewes will make fit a crossbred program. We're going to get through 4h shows over the next 2 months and then make solid decisions for their future! I've thought about starting a crossbred fiber flock. 

If you followed us on Instagram, you'll have seen our baby bunnies. Which the doe ate the next day.  :(  Now, she could have easily stayed on as a fiber animal.  However we have 2 other angoras the same color.  I had a friend who recently had a litter of French angora babies. She wanted one of my color & i wanted one of hers.  So we traded.  Win-win situation! Below is Josephine, which is a mouthful for such a little bunny.  Her nickname is Jo-Jo. Her name comes from the Empress Josephine & the character in Little Women. She's only 9 weeks old! 

We went to a natural dying party last Saturday at a local favorite! It was a girls day & an annual event for 2 friends & myself. It's called the Blue Party, featuring indigo, woad, & Saxon blue. They also have cochineal red & yellow made from the inner bark of the black walnut.

 Here's a bag of my fleece drying a bit, done in saxon blue. 

 Here are the shorts that i dyed using indigo for Fluffy Girl! They used to be white & that just wasn't going to work! LOL. 

All of the natural dying processes could fill numerous posts, but I'm not good enough with it to tell you.  LOL. If you are local and  interested, please check out Hillcreek Fiber Studeo! She is amazing! 

On to the fiber results! 

Saxon blue 

Cochineal red, which came out salmon pink! This is a great example of how different fibers take color differently. 

This is saxon blue followed by a yellow soak! This picture doesn't do this justice! It has such a variety of color in it from the deep saxon blue to almost a seagreen at the tips and the mix in between! It looks like a Caribbean explosion!

This is cochineal red followed by a dip into saxon blue.  It's a nice mix of mauve to purple to blue & i think it'll spin up nicely! 

Below is a picture of them drying. These will all be for sale as spun yarns.