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.

Dying to crochet!

This yarn that is!  This is about 550 yards of Niles' fleece that has taken way longer than I thought it would.  Mainly due to life interruptions, but isn't that how it always goes?  That's one of my best reasons to spin, it relaxes me and I can enjoy spinning while I'm watching a good movie or show.  For those of you who don't know me as well, I LOVE movies!  But I digress.

I finally finished this up and am now ready to dye it.  The plan for this is to end up a red hat & scarf set as a special order for somebody.

 Here's a dry photo of the yarn pile.

 Getting into a soak helps the dye to take up evenly while I get the dye pot to simmering level,

  Here we are with some color.  as you can see from the water there is dye left.  When all the dye has been taken up by the yarn, the water will be left clear.  At this point, it was still tooooo pink for me, so more red went into the water.

 Here's a shot of the yarn as it's draining & cooling in the sink.  I wasn't quite sure at this point that I was going to be happy with the coloring.  But I decided to let it dry and see where we were.

  So after drying overnight the color wasn't bad, but there were some discolored spots.  So, back into the dye pot she went!  I let it soak a bit and then decided to add a bit of burgundy dye to even out & deepen the color a bit.  Here's hoping it works, as it's dripping in my sink at the moment.  Then back in front of the wood stove blower for the night.

As an aside, I love to dye & wash in the winter when the stove is going.  The nice hot blower gets yarn or fiber good & dry just overnight.  Plus keeps us nice & cozy!  Stay tuned as I get it dried & then worked up.

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!

Come see us at . . .

Stay Fluffed Farm will be doing spinning demonstrations at the Macon County Flywheel on Saturday,  July 30!  We won't have any of the sheep but I'll be spinning & have several things available to look at from sheep to shawl.  There'll be many other great things to look at old & new, other demonstrations going on & plenty of vendors with good food!

We hope you'll say hi & be sure to let me know if you're reading my blog!

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.

Dryer Balls

I spent some time on Sunday making dryer balls. I used wool that I skirted off of fleeces for sale in the raw. This is wool that is really dirty or kempy so is not as desirable for spinning, but dryer balls are a perfect use!

 The first step is washing your wool.  I prefer lingerie bags & a tote basket. I have my water heater set up from normal both for wool & myself. Wool for dryer balls does need cleaned & free of lanolin. You don't want that gunking up your washer.  I use warm water for soaks inside to get most of the dirt out. Change your water until it is clear.  Then I move into a hot water wash with dawn to remove the lanolin. Follow with hot water rinses. may need more than one hot water wash to get lanolin out. 

You don't really need this wool to dry unless you prefer a different method of creation. I like to let mine dry enough to get the dripping water out, I'll even squeeze mine out. 

Then I like to stretch it out & fluff it a bit.  I roll it up a bit & squash it down tight.  Continue rolling until the ball is the desired size.  I try to get mine about baseball sized. Then I secure them into a bit of panty hose tied off. 

The balls above are ready for the washer.  A few good hot water washes felts them enough to hold together.  I find this is a perfect time to wash any blankets or towel loads.  Then pop them into the dryer with whatever load you ended with & dry as normal.  When you remove them from the dryer, untie & remove the balls from the panty hose.  

Dryer balls are used in place of fabric softener.  They are a natural & chemical free way to actually soften your clothes.  They do not effect the absorbacy of towels or cloth diapers. They fluff your clothes & redistribute moisture, letting your clothes dry faster & more efficiently. They can even be scented with your favorite essential oils.

The cost of 1 set of dryer balls pays for itself in a year or less compared to buying commercial fabric softeners and you can feel better about chemicals in your families clothes. 

I sell sets of 4 for $20 or 6 for $30. 4 is the minimum you want to use.  The more you use, the quicker they will dry.  I have both natural colors & dyed balls. The dyed balls are remnants from my spinning projects & are only food safe icing dyes. 

Feel free to email me to purchase your set or additions to a set you may have! 

Another New And A New Harecut

 Meet Cocoa. She was found in town running loose. So we took her in.  My hopes are that she's a young rabbit & will get full size to use in a meat rabbit program. Our best guess is that she was an Easter present. 

 Here's Miss Elizabeth with a mostly done haircut. Feeling better already! 

 Woo Hoo! My stock racks are done! Camo Dad had these made for me in trade for an old stock trailer that needed repairs.  We decided that racks would suit our needs better than a trailer.

 I didn't get pictures of the whole process, but mama cat, Ruby brought up a frog today.  She waited until the kittens were interested then let him go.  After he got away from the littles, she caught him & brought him back to them.  This occured a couple times until he stayed caught. Pictured is the girl that's a copy of Ruby. This may sound mean, but this is how kittens learn to hunt.  Ruby is a great hunter & I will be keeping the other girl for an additional farm cat.  I have/had another cat but I'm pretty sure she has another family on the side.  LOL! She comes & goes & we really need another hunter on the farm. 

Productive Weekend

It was such a beautiful day on Saturday. There were the usual plentiful household chores that needed done so I decided to work outside.  LOL. I did actually get some laundry done.  Including the comforters & hung them on the line to fresh dry! My favorite! I also finished up some yarn that was spun & let it dry outside as well.  The left is the polwarth that i bought as a dyed roving. The right is some very special shetland for a personal project. The fleece is the only shearing I was able to get from a ewe named Beauty. I bought her as a bred ewe & she didn't stick.  Before i could breed her back last summer she fell sick from a bad infection. I nursed her for 3 days before she passed. She was my friendliest ewe with a great personality.  So with no lambs & only 1 fleece.  There's a part of it.

Then i did a little scissor shearing on Lynn who decided to act like a terror who had never been touched.  LOL. 

 Before, well barely started anyway. 

 after with a Dolly photo bomb. 

All three of these girls also needed a hoof trim.

 these are my trimmers. Thanks Mom for the great present!

 Here's Dolly sitting for her pedicure.

 Here's a good picture of Dolly's foot with 1 side trimmed & the other not. Sheep & goats need their feet trimmed on s regular basis similar to horses & people. Done properly this doesn't hurt them at all.  Generally speaking trimmings are done around 4 months. However many people keep a rock pile for their sheep or goats to walk on keeping their hooves worn down naturally.  As I don't have the fencing finished, I trim. 

 This is my thanks from Loretta for keeping her feet healthy.  She kicked just as I went to cut. I stabbed my own thumb. It bled way more than I thought it should & I ended up having to pause my trimming to clean & bandage it. 

Sunday brought another beautiful day.  I helped a friend with dog trimming they needed done. I came home and worked on Dolly's fleece shearing. 

 Here's a partial done picture. 

 I also worked on as cotswold cross fleece that was sheared in 2014. I've done a bit with this fleece & it gives a nice spin with some of the signature shine that cotswold has.  I've got it all skirted & seperated into locks. Now I will work on getting it all washed. I plan on offering some dyed & spun for sale. But I'm going to do 1 skein for myself to take to the Blue Party at Hillcreek Fiber Studeo in June & dye with a natural Saxon blue.