After the holidays, with the shop finally done, I finally had time to devote to fiber. I set up a washing station in the garage, where we had plumbed hot and cold running water that connects with hoses to my two portable sinks. The best part of the setup is an on-demand water heater that I can set to 167 degrees. No more boiling water on the stove, waiting for the water heater to warm up, or trying to muddle through with not quite warm enough water. It has really streamlined the whole process and is so convenient! Once the fleece is washed, I take it upstairs where I have my mordanting kettles on the stove. I put it in, heat it up, and leave it all night. By the next morning it is ready to go on the drying rack. I can get through one large fleece or two small fleeces easily in a day.
 mordanting and dyeing kettles |  fleece washing station - with a view! |
dyed fleece drying The next step is the dyeing. I prepare the dyestuff ahead of time, and once I have several washed, mordanted fleeces ready to go, I move into dyeing mode. That's the fun part! I just experiment with different colors, sometimes combining them, sometimes doing one color, then over-dyeing with a different color. Then I take a small sample from each one and soak it in modifying baths that are different pH, and also iron. If I like what I see, I might do the whole fleece. No two batches ever come out quite the same.
Romney x Cormo cross fleece. In 2016 all the lambs were from our Cormo ram, Manny, which meant that all the yearling fleeces that were sheared in 2017 were the Romney x Cormo cross. I had them all micron tested, and found that they all fell in to the 19-24 micron range which is quite nice. I got through all of them so there will be a lot of really nice yarn and roving as a result. I have been spinning a little of it myself, and it's dreamy....
Rooster bone broth Other than working with fleece, it's been a pretty routine winter and early Spring. We had our usual bout of early warm weather, then it got cold again. The past few weeks the snow really started to melt off. The garlic is starting to show it's little sprouts in the garden, and the chickens finally have some open ground to scratch around in. We had a bunch of roosters that hatched last year and grew up to be extremely noisy and ornery fellows. In March Bill dispatched 5 of them and I stripped the meat off the bones for future use in sausage, and used the bones to make 30 quarts of delicious bone broth. It's so nice to have the extra space in the fiber studio, where there is a ventilation fan. I can simmer stock all night long on an electric burner and use the pressure canner on the gas stove, all without messing up the kitchen in the house.
First batch of fiber In early March I sent off over 50 lbs of fiber to Spinderella's to get made into yarn and roving and they did their usual excellent job and quick turnaround. It was less than a month door to door, and my next job is to get labels on it all and put it on the website store and see if anyone wants to buy it! Our local yarn shop in Twisp closed last year, so I am going to try more on-line sales and see how that goes. I will still sell yarn at the Mazama store and at Wooley Mama's yarn shop in Omak, but spinners mostly buy their roving on-line or at fiber festivals. Stay tuned for updates on that.
The new culvert, keeping the creek in line! Remember the culvert I mentioned in the last blog post? Well, the latest warm weather followed by two days of rain has given it a real test, and we are happy to report that it is working splendidly! Our little rock waterfall is holding up, and the rocks we put around the edges are staying firm. The big culvert looks almost empty, even though this much flow last year would have overwhelmed the old one. We are feeling very happy about the whole thing.
The sheep are sheared, and we expect the first lambs of 2018 to arrive in a little over a week. Stay tuned!
The sheep are sheared, and we expect the first lambs of 2018 to arrive in a little over a week. Stay tuned!
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