More Handspun (it never ends)

Top photo is natural grey merino and cashmere. I spun one single of each fibre and plyed them together. It is very soft and laceweight. Beside that is a beautifully soft and fine 2 ply brown alpaca. I like to blend various browns together to get a rich colour.

Bottom photo is again some corriedale. Wow this stuff puffs up like crazy. It would make a nice sweater me thinks. Unfortunately I am spoiled with soft alpaca and the corrie is not soft enough for me to love it.

Not all alpaca fleeces are soft . There were quite a few at the shearings that were only good for felting. Then there are the average soft alpaca fleeces. I only took the super fine and soft fibre. Most of my fleeces are from alpacas that are one and two years old but I have spun beautiful fleeces from my Missouri breeder's alpacas that are older too.

Big Bowl of Handspun

Handdyed and handspun corriedale and BFL/silk blend. I have a few more colours to spin up and then they will be heading to my LYS for sale.

Happy Canada Day to fellow Canadians!

More Alpaca Fleeces!

From 9am to 8pm yesterday, I skirted and sorted about 40 alpaca fleeces practically by myself as they came off the animals. By the time I got home I was achey and dusty/dirty! My hat goes off to all you fibre producers...it is really hard work for not alot of money.

Sorry I didn't take alot of pics...I was too busy.

I got to choose a couple more fleeces and I took pics of those. There are also pics of some staples from my new fleeces and some odds and ends I took while skirting. That is the fun of skirting. If you see something that makes you drool (there was plenty of that) then you can take a few or more handfuls for yourself.

Alpaca Shearing

Just a few pics from yesterday's alpaca shearing. There were 25 alpacas sheared, so that's how many fleeces I helped skirt and sort. We started at 8:30am and finished 5:30pm. I was pretty tired after I went home to feed my poor starving kitties. They were waiting in the window for me to come home. I scored about a pound of assorted browns from the skirtings and then a whole fleece from Alpaca Ontario 2008 Champion and Reserve brown alpaca female Brandy. That's her fleece in the plastic bag..there's about 3 lbs of all usable fleece there. Tomorrow I am going to another alpaca farm to help skirt fleeces and there are even more alpaca's ...around 40. I am hoping to score a nice fawn fleece. I really want to try blending some with my bamboo fibre. If anybody is looking to purchase beautiful brown ( alot of different browns from cinnamon to coffee coloured) fleece that is soft and has a 4 + staple then please contact me and I can get you some.

Gefeliciteerd!

I married mijn echtgenoot in Gouda Netherlands, June 7 2001. So last night we went out to dinner to celebrate...a week late. We went to a chinese restaurant Cody Inn in Buckhorn. It was built on a huge rock (this entire area north of us is precambrian shield rock )near the lake. We ate outside and the bugs pretty much left us alone. I know I made the right decision 8 years ago when I moved to Netherlands with my 12 year old son and siamese cat. Bedankt Arnold van Dooijewaard, for loving me and introducing me to Dutch culture. Ik hou van je.

Coloured Corriedale

Corriedale dyed in the fleece. A big DK weight skein that is soft and puffy. It's only 92 grams but looks bigger. I am already working on spinning up the next colour. I will make some plain white ones too.

Handspun Finn

A shiney, squishy and soft skein of finn fleece. YUM. The next skein will be 50/50 finn and kid mohair.

Fleece Processing

Although the finn fleece was soft and fine, it was also fully loaded half-way down the staples with VM! I shook out the fleece to get rid of loose debris and then carefully opened up the ends of the staples to let some of the crap out. Then I put some in lingerie bags and washed in very hot water and Dawn. It took 3 washings and 2 rinses for the finn fleece. The corriedale only took 2 washings. It was pretty clean. In the dye pot above is corriedale fleece. So far I have dyed it the four colours. I love it , it's turning out great. I have lots more so I will dye some yellow and different blues. In the bottom left pic we have my trusty dog comb with the blue handle. I am using it to flick open the finn staple ends before I put them on my mini-combs. This gets more VM out. Then when I comb them, even more stuff falls out. So yes, Charlene, it does get alot of the crap out. Of course the really badly contaminated parts I threw out. In the last pic we have some sweet and soft little puffballs of combed finn. This fleece is so fine it gets a little neppy, so care must be taken with the combing. It's rainy here now and my fleece isn't drying very fast. Friday and the weekend are supposed to be scorching hot...over 30 celcius. Good fleece drying weather but too bloody hot for me!!

New Fleeces

Finn fleece on the floor and corriedale in bags. 'Helper' in box. Washed and drying finn Dried finn in basket Some clean staples Ready for the mini-combs!