We're Baaaaaack!

Whew! It's been quite few weeks since I've plied my fingers to the keyboard at this site. Forgive me for being unable to do too many things at once.

I've gone to work for the first time since my children were very young. I stopped working when my oldest son started school. I've been home schooling my children since then--17 years--raising livestock, processing fiber and I reentered the work force in the middle of September. I'm the temporary director at Triangle Cross Ranch and should know whether I'm permanent or not by the middle of February. In some ways, I hope the board of directors don't hire me. I could come back home and continue along with what I've nearly always done. In other ways, I hope they keep me on because I love the Ranch, its mission and its people. It's a great opportunity to make some important contributions--well, and the extra money is great, too.

So here at the WoolyWorks, things are quiet. The winter has moved into the "sunshine and bone chilling cold" stage and the "when is spring going to get here" stage. I've just this morning moved my angora does in with the bucks and all is well. We'll have kids in May and June this year, rather than March and April as in the past. We've lost some kids to spring snow storms in the past so I'm not sorry to have late kids.

I have a new buck this year as well. His name is Romeo and he's the nicest and sweetest boy ever. Hermes is still here and still raring to go. He's a lot more of a touch-me-not than Romeo, though. Hermes likes his nose and forehead scratched and that's really all. Romeo likes full body rub downs and hugs and doesn't mind you touching his horns at all. That makes for some smelly and yucky bonding time when he's in rut. Bleh!

The alpacas are thin this year. We had a really bad year last year with some deaths and unexplained illnesses so we're still recovering from that. We didn't breed any alpacas this year to give them some time to recover physically. We're also waiting to see how our young ones fare this year. We lost several to some kind of wasting disease that our vet could never identify.

So, other than chasing down a load of hay, draining hoses and watching the poop pile up and freeze, the animal work has decreased appreciably. It will be nice to see spring arrive again.

Enough for now. I'll check in again in a few days with some pictures and some updates on all things fiber.

The Faces of Friends

Every morning and evening, I'm greeted by the most beautiful and eager of faces. I have to say, I'm the highlight of their day. I bring the treats and provide most of the excitement that they experience in each 24 hour period. Their huge dark eyes fix on me while they wait, just out of reach, for their grain.

Alpacas are so stoic that you can't tell something is wrong until it's nearly too late, but just give them the hope of a treat or the promise of a good spraying down on their legs, and the poker faces disappear. They're all eagerness and self-forgetfulness when the good stuff comes out.

Baby face, you've got the cutest little baby face...






















Look Mommy! The alpaca is smiling!!

Three Babies in One Day!!

Yes, we had three, count 'em, three, babies in one two hour period today. I got home from town, looked out in the pen and yelled, "We have a baby out there! No,....wait, we have two babies!! Oh my gosh!.....we have three babies!!! All of them were still wet, two were up, one couldn't have been more than 15 minutes old and all the after births were accounted for on the ground.

So here they are! The black is a little male out of our Timothy and Zayne. The big brown one is a boy as well out of Zion and our Taliesin. The little rose gray with the white face is a female out of Miss Rose and Black Knight. The first two are out of completely home bred and home grown stock. Miss Rose and Black Knight have produced three gray females in a row now. This little one has an umbilical hernia so she's wearing a belly band.














And then there's our little Rowdy. Sadly, he lost his mama to a perforated bowel last week. She was such a sweet girl and gave us such a sweet little baby. He's our bottle baby now at the tender age of 2 months, and has just gotten over the shock of losing his mama. He's attached himself to a young maiden of ours, Zakaree, and they're quite the pair. He's an awfully good boy, very vocal and a little confused about all these babies. Today, he thinks Miss Rose is his mama, so he's been tossed into a separate pen for now. Rose's baby needs to get all the colostrum she can get and Rowdy will only deplete the supply. Rose would have taken him, too, if we hadn't interfered. She has some mental challenges and would have abandon her baby in favor of Rowdy.

We have one more female to deliver, our silver gray Eliana, and she's due any day now, if our timing is right. Oh, I just love babies!!

Another Addition and a Perfect Sunset

Meet Little Blossom. She's another one of Alan Dart's amazing patterns. I think she's a very nice addition to our growing gang of toys. They're all looking forward to Christmas this year and finding a special little person to love them. See how anxious they look?



















The sun went down on a perfect evening last night, leaving a silhouette of the farm countryside. This is just another reason why I love my life here on the farm.

Sheared, shaved, shorn

Well, we've reached the other side of the shearing mountain. I now have a barn full of alpaca fiber in clear plastic trash bags, forming yet another mountain for me to scale.

We shear our animals using ropes and pulleys that stretch the animal out on the floor.



This is how the shearers from New Zealand do it and they're the absolute best. Because alpacas' instincts tell them that their heads, bellies and legs should never be touched lest they become a quick meal for a predator, this method of shearing incapacitates them so we can get the job done in 20 minutes or less. It's also much safer for the animal. Sheep shears can cut the skin wide open in a split second and a jumpy and nervous animal like an alpaca is especially at risk for this. I've heard of people shearing their animals standing up, but I can't imagine getting a safe, thorough and clean cut with the animal fussing and jumping around. It's also difficult to get all of the fiber off of the animal in the belly area, back end and the arm pits when the animal is standing. Not removing that fiber is an invitation for skin parasites and an opportunity to overlook areas that may harbor infection or wounds from the previous year.

Contrary to the concerns of those who believe that this method of shearing is cruel, I believe it is the most humane, the safest, the most efficient, and best option in terms of the long term health and comfort of the animal. The ropes allow me to put my hands and my eyes on every part of the animal, which gives me a chance to discover any previously unseen injuries or conditions that have developed. I think this is important for the overall health of the animal. 20-30 minutes stretched out on the ropes is much better than living 24/7 with the discomfort and long term effects of a chronic infection or infestation.

OK, enough of the preaching. This is our set up and here is an animal on the floor ready to shear. Most of the animals are not stretched tightly unless they struggle and fight. Pregnant females are not stretched fully and are not put on their bellies for any long than it takes to turn them over.

We take the blanket off first.


If we can get it in one piece, so much the better, but if an animal is having a hard time of it or if the female is within 30 days of delivery, we'll do one side at a time. The blanket is the main section of fleece, from the shoulder to the hip, possible including the neck if the fiber is of high quality. This is the prime fiber and the most valuable.



After the blanket, I shear the belly, the back leg and the neck and head--in that order. The animal is then raised upright and I shear the back end, the tail and the other side of the neck and head.



The animal is turned over to the opposite side and the last of the belly, the back leg, the front leg and the chest area are finished. The animal is completely sheared in an average of 20 minutes. We take the opportunity to trim toe nails, give vaccinations, vitamin injections and wormer paste. At the end of 30 minutes, the animal is back in the pen with the herd wondering what just happened.



I'd love to say I'm as good as the NZ guys, but that will never happen. With a full crew, those guys can shear an alpaca in 10 minutes and they can do 50-60 animals in one day. Sheesh! I'm not that fast, that tough, that young, or that focused. I do 10-12 on a good day, and I never have a full crew--just me and my two girls. I'm always afraid I'll get too tired and cut the animals by accident just because I wasn't on top of my game. Also, my shearing helpers are my two young girls who don't need to be wearing their backs out by trying to be heroic.

So that part of the year is over. We sheared our own animals and sheared for several other farms. I don't know how many we did altogether, but I'm glad it's done. We'll shear goats again in the fall and we'll be sorting, cleaning, and combing fiber for the rest of the summer. After that, the knitting starts again--hurrah!!

Jumping on the Bandwagon??

The latest craze in the knit/crochet world is amigurumi. In Japanese, it means small knitted or crocheted toys. I think it's a requirement for them to be cute and easy to make in order to be considered amigurumi.

I went looking on the internet to see what I could find, and do you know that there are thousands of sites that feature nothing but these cute little critters? I had no idea. There are even sites dedicated to "monster" amigurumi creations. Go figure...

It seemed silly to pass up the opportunity to make some toys while they're in vogue, so here are my first attempts at making these adorable little guys. I'm not very adept at crochet, so they weren't quite as easy at first as the websites say they are, but I got the hang of it pretty fast. My biggest problem is making the faces. Embroidery and cross stitch baffle me to no end, so while the actual toy only took a few hours to complete, it took me 2 days to get the face on so it didn't look horrifying--another learning experience and another huge learning curve.

I started with the free patterns on the Lion Brand website, but there are hundreds of free patterns out there. The first one I made is a lion--just in case you can't tell what it's supposed to be. He actually looks more like a pop tart than an animal, but the fuzzy head helps his looks tremendously. I had trouble keeping track of my rounds and counting, so he's got one leg shorter than the other and one arm that's too fat. Oh well, forge onwards and upwards.


The second one is a bunny and I really hope that it's self-evident. I did a better job of counting and keeping the stitches in order. I like this one much more and I'm encouraged to continue on, even though it looks a little like it's showing signs of male pattern baldness with the placement of the ears. My daughter Abby is making a ducky that's going to be great and I'm working on a blue androgynous and nonspecific animal guy. We'll see what happens...



So here we are jumping on the bandwagon, but hey, everybody's doin' it!

Fibers and fleeces

The question has been asked, "What is the difference between fiber and yarn?" It's actually been asked more than once and I, in my wisdom, have neglected to actually give a meaningful answer. I forget that not everyone lives in my world, so here is my best effort at explaining fiber, at least in the terms that I'm familiar with.

Fiber is a raw material. It comes from plant sources (cotton, hemp, corn silk, flax, soy silk, bamboo, etc,) and from animal sources (wool, alpaca, mohair, silk, cashmere, angora, dog hair, llama, camel down, camel hair, etc.) All animals and all plants produce fiber in some form, but some are more usable than others and some fibers take some real creativity to find uses for them. I know absolutely nothing about plant fiber, so that's the last mention I'll make of that.




In my world, fiber is the bag of alpaca fleece you sink your hands into and breath in the earthy (and sometimes down right stinky) animal smell right after it comes off the animal, enjoying the total sensory experience--including the static electricity. It's still warm from the animal's body and the newly shorn ends look like a silk carpet.





It makes you groan slightly with the richness of color and luxurious softness. In my world, fiber is the mohair that smells and feels greasy until you wash and dry it so that it shines like silk and curls into perfect ringlets like doll hair. By the way, "fleece" is just another word for an animal's coat of hair that is harvested for use, usually some kind of wool. The blanket of an animal is the fiber that is shorn off of the sides, back, hips and shoulders. It the best fiber on the animal. The neck, leg, belly and...well... less desirable areas are normally either thrown away or used for things like garden mulch, lining chicken nests or animal bedding.

The first step in transforming raw fiber into something usable is skirting. This is where the entire fleece is spread out on a large mesh screen and sorted in order to remove impurities, unusable bits, and soiled fibers. During this phase, the wool is also sorted and graded according to fineness, color, and use. Some fiber will be coarse and straight (leg and belly hair) and most will be crimpy and soft (back, shoulder, neck, hip). Crimp is the wave in the fiber that gives it loft. Not all types of animal fleece will have crimp, but if crimp is a consideration, consistency in frequency and amplitude throughout the entire blanket area is important.



This first step is very important, as a poor job of skirting can ruin the fiber for it's intended use and create problems at every stage of processing. Imagine a gorgeous alpaca sweater in lilac and sage with tiny bits of hay stems scratching you every time you wear it!

After skirting, the fiber is washed and laid back out on the mesh screen to air dry. This is washed and dried alpaca ready for the either carding or combing. This animal has two colors in her blanket and the processed fiber should produce a tweedy marled looking yarn or felt.




If the fiber is agitated during the washing, it will mat itself into a shrunken, shaggy mess, beyond rescue and never to be used again. (How, exactly, would I know this? Experience, my dear, experience!) It will be a total loss, so the washing must be done by careful soaking with a mild soap and meticulous rinsing. I use my clothes washer only on the final spin cycle to spin out the rinse water. There's no matting and felting together as long as the whole mass moves in the same direction.

These fibers are mohair and they've been through a picker. You can see the huge sharp spikes in the picker and the resulting fluff. There are spikes on both top and bottom of this wicked thing and they pull the locks apart so they can be rearranged. Because mohair curls and twists, it benefits more than most fibers from being put through the picker unless you're using it for doll hair or spinning a curly novelty yarn. The young man running the picker is one of our Ranchers at Triangle Cross Ranch. He's decided that this is his niche and he loves running this machine--with heavy gloves and close supervision for safety.






After picking and fluffing, fiber is carded or combed in order to arrange the individual fibers so that they're all going basically the same direction. I like to dye raw fibers, right after washing because it adds interest to the carding and combing and it's ever so much fun to blend colors at this stage. Experimenting with different color combinations and imagining the finished products makes the work go quickly. (I've learned more about color theory on my drum carder than any class or instructor could have taught me.) Fiber off of a carding machine is called a batt or roving. If you're a quilter, you know what batting is and this is nearly the same, but made from natural animal fiber rather than polyfiber. You can use hand cards--two curved paddles with carding cloth (teeth) on each, but with the amount of fiber we produce a year, hand cards are kind of like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. The white batts are mohair and the brown/gray is alpaca.








From a comb, the fiber is called top or sometimes a roving. This is a thin, continuous "river" of fiber that is ready for spinning. Again, the tools of the trade offer long sharp spikes and look like weapons of mass destruction.





So far, the fiber has progressed from fresh raw fleece, to washed and dried fiber, to combed top or carded batts and rovings. From here, it can be spun into yarn, made into wet felt, needle felted, locker hooked or anything you can dream up. Up to this point, it's been pretty much all work and no play. Dyeing the raw fleece helps, but it's still a lot of production work and not always pleasant. It can be dirty and smelly work, although quite satisfying for me. I just love to see a huge pile of carded batts sitting on the table after a good day's work. More than that, I love to see fewer and fewer bags of raw fleece sitting in my barn.

Enough for now. More later on two preparations that I consider the bridges between fiber and finished goods and the beginnings of the creative process--the magical, incredible, wonderful process of felt and the meditative, reflective, sometimes tedious process of spinning. Just think, we'll be knitting in no time! Whoopee!

Contract Knitting and Winter Fun

My daughter and I have been knitting sherpa hats this week for a fellow alpaca breeder. They sent us a box full of yarn with loose directions to knit hats with ear flaps and tassels. This is what we've come up with so far. I'm not sure I would have chosen purple and yellow to go together exclusively, but apparently, those are the school colors where they live. Overall, I think the results are good, and we can proceed with the rest of the lot as soon as they look at the first shipment and give us the go ahead.

I'm so proud of my nearly 14 year old daughter. She can turn out a knitted sherpa in a single evening. She's not always motivated, but this time she's doesn't have to wait for the items to sell to get her money, so she's quite keen to get paid. It's a good lesson for her to learn--time is money--and she does good work in a short amount of time. She's got her procedure mapped out pretty well and I'll post it here for any interested knitters.

Materials: 250 yds. alpaca yarn DK or sport weight.
Size 7 circular needle (12-16 inch)
Size 7 double points
Scissors
Tapestry needle

Holding 2 strands together during all knitting, cast on 98 stitches and join without twisting. Knit in stocking stitch for 35 rounds. Add any color patterns, cables, lace or knit/purl patterns you like. Decrease as follows: K12, K2tog around, knit 1 round plain. K11, K2tog around, knit 1 round plain. K10, K2tog around, knit 1 round plain. Continue in this fashion, changing over to double points when necessary. When you reach K5, K2tog, eliminate the plain round and decrease every round. Fasten off. This type of crown decrease will produce a swirl. If you prefer a straight decrease line, alternate K2tog with SSK every other decrease round.

Still holding two strands together, pick up 24 stitches along the bottom edge of the hat using one double point needle. Purl back. You will be knitting back and forth now. Begin decreasing on the stocking stitch side as follows: K1, K2tog, K to 3 stitches before end of row, K2tog, K1. Purl back. Continue these decreases until you have 12 stitches left on the needle and decrease on both the knit side and the purl side, one stitch in from the edge. When you have 4 stitches left, decrease the center two stitches and bind off all in the same row.

Pick up 24 stitches on the opposite side of the hat. Be sure that you pick up the stitches at least a third of the way back from the front so that the flaps will cover the ears and be far enough back from the eyes. (Flaps should NOT be centered, but towards the back of the hat.) Repeat above for second flap.

Finish the entire edge of the hat with a double or treble crochet edge. Wider is better, since stocking stitch rolls back on itself. Weave in all ends. Make cords and tassels using contrasting scrap yarn or the remaining yarn in the ball for the end of each ear flap and for the top. For the most durable finish, thread the cord through the flaps and the top, rather than sewing them on after the fact. We do knitted cord, twisted cord or braids and then leave a tasseled fringe on the bottom or attach a puff ball or other type of tassel. Traditional Peruvian sherpas have short cords and tassels, but Americans seem to prefer longer cords and heavier tassels. Your choice and your taste.

My youngest daughter and her friend spent nearly an entire weekend dressing up the cats in teddy bear clothes. Just another activity in their very busy winter social schedule. It's a good thing the cats are patient animals and tolerant of being dressed in drag.

Back to Work

It's been a long Christmas and New Year's season. We turned out reams of gloves, socks and hats in a short amount of time and I've taken a couple of weeks to let my eye sight return to normal. In that short break, my thoughts have turned to weaving.

My mother left a four-harness loom when she passed on. It actually belongs to my sister in Peru, but it's much too bulky to pack off to South America, so here it remains. I'm not a good weaver in any sense, as I think that looms are too complicated, not portable enough and just too time intensive. So why would I think about weaving now? I'm not sure, but it's consuming my thoughts, even in my sleep. I have a rigid heddle loom that I work on sometimes, and I like that for making purses, ponchos and wraps, but invariably, I end up with an odd project that ends up sitting unfinished on the loom for what seems like ages (while I pursue knitting and felting ventures) and I don't really have the heart to cut it off and start something else after all the time it took to warp the silly thing to begin with. It's not just a matter of unraveling and salvaging the yarn for another project, as with knitting. I will lose loads of yarn if I don't finish, so there it sits and what to do?

I'm in the process of making weaving cards. Card weaving is used to weave bands and belts, mostly. That will fit in fine with the knitting and felting that we already do, used as hat bands, purse straps, edgings, embellishments and belts. It's portable, cheap, and suited to small projects if I read the information correctly. I'm making my cards out of an old deck of playing cards that has lost some of its members. I have 44 cards in all and I think that should be enough for my purposes and for the rest of my life. I can make bands on my rigid heddle as well, so I'm hoping my youngest daughter will be interested in the card weaving. She can make friendship bracelets with them and she's very "into" that right now. She received one as a Christmas gift that had flower beads sewn on after the weaving and it's just gorgeous--and possibly inspiring?

The knitting goes on at an even pace. I'm in the process of finding out more about online outlets for our woolens. Places like Etsy, Fiber Finds, and eBay are on the list. I'm not sure why eBay scares me, but it does. I avoid going to that site rather than doing the proper research and getting my pictures and descriptions ready. I'm still looking for more options, and even though eBay seems like a "no brainer" I just don't want to go there. Perhaps it's laziness or just fear of the unknown. I don't know.

In the meantime, I have a rose gray hooded jacket in the works and I'm charting out the designs for an Aran sweater. Along with that, I'm spinning a white lot of alpaca/mohair blend. There's really a lot of it and it looks like it's going to be a long project. I'm spinning the singles at approximately 28-30 wraps per inch with no particular project in mind.

I do have a son who would like to marry his girlfriend and I would just love to make a white handspun lace shawl in the Shetland tradition for her when they finally decide to marry and this yarn would do quite nicely for that. I've read about shawls that were made for the bride and given to her at or just before the wedding. The couple would sleep under it their first night together, the wife would wrap it around her shoulders during pregnancy, she would wrap her babies in it and use it as a cover while nursing them, it would lie as a coverlet on their bed in the warm months, she would wear it on her shoulders in the cold months, and she would be buried in it at her passing. How I would love to provide something so dear, so intimate and so lasting to my children and their spouses. Goodness, I have four children. I have a lot of work ahead of me!

Craftsman, artisan, or hobbyist?

Hooray! The last knitting for money ended today! I feel a little like I'm selling my soul or something when I say it that way, but I'll have a couple of weeks now for my own knitting. I got a last minute order for another pair of mohair slippers and had to spin up two bobbins of mohair to make it work. I read accounts of people who spin as an art form and for the relaxation of it, but that's a pipe dream for me. It seems to me that I spin mostly out of necessity--in short, I need the yarn!

How wonderful to sit and enjoy the colors playing against each other and feel the texture of the fiber as it slips between my fingers. NOT! Lately, when I spin, it's because I have an order for yarn or a project that needs a certain fiber. When the yarn is for felting, I don't even bother to ply or finish the yarn. I just knit it straight off the bobbin and slog on. I'd like to be creative and all that, but business is business, even when it frustrates the creative spirit. My mother once told me that if necessity is the mother of invention, frustration must be the father of progress! Amen to that, sister!

It's wicked cold here. I slept in until 8:00 this morning and it was -3 degrees Fahrenheit when I got up. It only got up to a whopping high of 12 degrees at around 2:00 this afternoon. Wasn't it in the 70's only a few weeks ago when we were trying to sell sweaters and mittens at the show?

I was called crafty at the library a few days ago. I've been called that before and it sets my teeth just slightly on edge. Visions of lunch buckets made out of bleach bottles with crocheted drawstring tops and rugs made out of plastic grocery sacks float before my eyes and I feel a little nauseous. The lady at the library said that she was certainly NOT crafty, but described herself as intellectually creative. I smiled benignly and moved on.

I think I know what she was trying to say, but it made me think about what the term "crafty" really means. To me the word "crafty" conjures images of school children making log cabins out of pop sickle sticks and glue. I think back to making reindeer out of empty thread spools at Christmas time and turkeys out of pine cones and colored paper. Perhaps I need to think differently.

So I looked up the word "craft". My old dictionary from the 70's says that a craft is a "skill or ability in something, especially in handwork or the arts; proficiency; expertise. " I like that. A craftsman is "an artist as considered with regard to technique." I like that, too, but I like the word artisan better for some reason, although the definition is quite the same as all the others. It seems to speak of creating beauty and purpose at the same time, rather than favoring one over the other. It also seems to suggest something greater than a hobbyist mindset.

The biggest problem I have with the word "crafty" is that there's an awful lot of hard work that I have to do before I actually get to be creative. I don't think people realize that when they use a word like "crafty". Daily chores, cleaning pens, hauling hay, shearing, skirting and sorting fiber, running it all through the picker, carding, combing and a host of other tasks take up a lot of time and really make the word craft seem silly and meaningless. If you ask me, it's really more a lifestyle than a craft. It never ends. It's not a hobby and I don't just pop down to the local Hobby Lobby and pick up something to knit with.

OK, so I don't see myself as an artist and I sometimes think that people who elevate their activities to the level of art are a little stuffy and fussy. I don't want to be like that. I guess I just want others to realize that what we do is not just a flash in the pan or a pastime. We're serious about what we do. Maybe too serious. Maybe that's the problem I have with the word "crafty". I probably need to take my own advice, so liberally handed out to my children---"Get over yourself!"