Finished Yarns

This is a quick follow up to my previous post.  Here you can see all the yarns I've been working on the past couple of months.  These will all be listed on the sale page, both here and on our Facebook page.  PLEASE find and like us at Stay Fluffed Farm on Facebook

Some of these yarns are going to pair GREAT together if somebody wants to get companion skeins!

Catching up

Playing catch up after way to long of ignoring my blog.  Upside, I've been busy here.  I'll explain below.

This is a lovely gathering basket that was just handed down to me by my stepfather.  It used to belong to his great-aunt.  It's great for holding my yarns and I'm going to use it for display purposes when I go to shows.

This is some alpaca that I kind of forgot I had dyed up at least a couple years ago.  I do remember that I dyed it at the Blue Party at Hillcreek Fiber Studio in Columbia, MO.  it was put into a cochineal red for a short time and then into a black walnut yellow to get this orangy color. 

This is where I started in on my Cotswold X, dyed at the 2016 Blue party.  I dyed it with saxon blue and then put it into a blk walnut yellow exhaust. An exhaust bath is one where MOST of the color has already been taken out into a previous batch of fiber.  This worked great for what I wanted, which was a touch of added color.

These 2 pictures are another bit of alpaca that I had forgotten about.  it was dipped, probably at the same forgotten blue party, into a quick saxon blue.  so it's got a much lighter color than normal. 

Here's some regular saxon blue dyed Cotswold X, done in 2016.  I have a total of 3 skeins worth of this.  1 for myself and 2 for sale.

This is a hat that I made with some icing dyed red Shetland.  The wool is from our current ram, Niles.  This bit of yarn was leftover from a custom made hat and scarf project.  It ended up being a Christmas gift for my daughter's teacher.

Spun up!

the left skein doesn't show the colors quite right but it is a lovely purple with tints from blue to dark pink.  It was dyed with saxon blue then dipped into cochineal for an overdye. Then loosely carded & spun into a funky chunky thick-thin set of singles.  This coordinates nicely with the combed cochineal to the right that was traditionally spun into a 2 ply.  These are for sale!

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.