Swatch is not a dirty word

This is a picture of some of the dyed roving, "Philon" that I mentioned yesterday. The color is off because there is no green in the sample. Before I wind the yarn onto my winder to become a skein, I sometimes have a chance to knit a little swatch to see how it works up. This yarn felt downright sensuous in my hands. The merino and mohair adds just the right amount of bounce and luster. Even though I would rather spin than knit, I think that it's important to sample what I'm trying to promote and sell.
When I first started working with the alpaca, I was a dieheart natural color person. I thought it shameful that anyone would contaminate the precious alpaca by dyeing it or adding silk or mohair, or heaven forbid, sheep. After a few years of actually working (knitting) with what I'm producing, I'm loving my blends and yarns. My choices for blends and colors have become intuitive and much more fun that trying to plan everything.

Dyed Alpaca Roving

This is Indy - Don Independiente - a very handsome, light fawn, herd sire who lives in Jackson with Kathy and Lew Kukla. He is the father of our goofy Celeste (due to deliver her cria any day now).

The hand dyed roving that I'm showing here is from him - and merino from genopalette and mohair from SpinningMoonFarm. Genopalette has nothing listed right now in their store and I'll bet that it's because Desiree's baby (human, hers) is due the beginning of June. I need to email her to see how she is doing.

I used three different colors of Jacquard dyes and simmered the roving in my crock pot for 30 minutes.

NIKE - "victory"

HELIOS - "Greek sun god"



I named this roving Philon "to love" It's very soft greys, blues, and pinks, rather unlike my normal color choices. I'm spinning 2 ounces of this right now and will probably ply it with a white single.
Actually I had a picture of the spun single here, but it seems to have disappeared. I'm still having trouble with pictures.....

Mystery Mail from 4thGenFiberArt

This arrived in the mail from Debbie Evans who has the Etsy shop, 4thGenFiberArt. I had no clue why....I knew it wasn't a swap, I couldn't remember ordering or asking for samples. A really big mystery. My memory's not too great, never has been. I know to write stuff down. As it happened I had saved a conversation from Debbie who was trying to mend an alpaca glove for her daughter (I think these details are right). I sent a little bit of alpaca roving, different colors of brown, I think, for her to spin up and match the glove.
And, lo and behold, look at the lovely package she sent. Some beautifully spun yarn (it's going to be a little purse/pouch with an alpaca needlefelted on), a delightful card, some dyed mohair locks, a sweet sample of soy silk roving. and a delicious bar of soap that made the whole package smell yummy.
Because of the joy I received getting this, I now have to think of something nice to do for someone to pass the love along.

Alpaca Fleece to Zeilinger's Mill in Frankenmuth, MI

Yesterday we delivered 42 pounds of fleece to Zeilingers in Frankenmuth, MI, to be made into four batches of roving. If you haven't been to their mill, you are missing a super treat. When I go back to pick up my lovelies, I will try to remember my camera so that I can give you a tour. Gary has always been there to greet me at the door, help reweigh the fleeces, offer advice, and answer any questions that I have. I had 4 batches to be blended which I'm going to describe to you.
Blend # 1 - 11.3 pounds - 50% Merino, 49% Alpaca from Ana, pictured above, and 1 % Mohair.

I purchased the white Merino from Genopalette, McMurrys, this winter with this blend in mind. This picture is of their Merino lambs that they were kind enough to send to me. Notice the lambs tails haven't even been docked yet so they must be quite young.

The beautiful white mohair is from Edie, here in Michigan and her store SpinningMoonFarm. This is a picture of her little Ted born this spring.

Blend # 2 - 8.84 pounds - 35% Our BabyDoll Sheep fleece and 65% alpaca from Lady Belita and Celeste.

Blend # 3 - 9.28 pounds - 25% colored Merino from Genopalette and 75% brown alpaca from Sonata (pictured above) and Orion (you've met him here many times because of his school and 4-H adventures).

Blend # 4 - 13.3 pounds - 100% alpaca from the seconds (neck and hip fiber) of Ana & Pollux (WHITE), Luke, Orion, Polaris (BROWNS), and naughty Gunny (BLACK & GRAY). These colors will be added around each other in the roving. It's called a 3 way swirl.

Just in case anyone is interested in the finances involved here. The cost was $308.72 but Zeilingers offers a 10% discount if paid there by check, so it was actually $277.85.

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Now the anxiety of waiting 2 months for it to be finished. An incredible amount of time and energy goes into this final act of delivering fiber to the mills. I wake up at night thinking about what I want to do and spend hours on my deck going through each fleece, discarding vegetation, second cuts, and coarse fiber. Today is a little anticlimatic. It's sort of like getting the kid off to college the first time - the years of prep and worry and then just dropping him/her off. This analogy is an exageration, of course, but you get the idea.

Lambs are 13 days old

Frankie, now a wether (thanks, Cary and Bill) is definitely more curious, athletic, and braver of the two. He runs and pronks like a deer. When he is inside, he likes to climb the straw bale in his pen and look over his kingdom. He accidently got himself outside the fence on the pasture today, and was quite frantic until he charged through a very low hot wire when Smitty went out to save him. We don't leave them out there without supervision for this very reason.

Little black Meri is more timid and quite business like. She's cautious like her mum, Jennie.

Alpacas to School and Worms

Orion (Slammie) and Pollux (Luxie) are at school today in Breckenridge, MI. The FFA (Future Farmers of America) are having their Open House. All the elementary children get bused up to the high school to see the exhibits. The girls pictured above have studied up on alpacas and will care for "the boys" and answer questions.
Even though I know they will be fine, I will worry all day about them. We left our number on Jessica's cell in case they need us.

Yesterday all the boys received an injection of Dectomax, a wormer. I give the shots SQ, which means just sliding the needle under the skin and injecting. It can't hurt too much 'cause they hardly flinch or squirm. The only hard thing about giving it is that their skin is tight and tough.

Dectomax works on a variety of parasites, but the main one that we are concerned about is the meningeal worm, or more commonly known as the brainworm. The primary host for the meningeal worm is the white tailed deer and the intermediate hosts are snails and slugs. If an alpaca is infected, the larva causes a severe reaction in the spinal cord; it's very serious and frequently results in death. In the summer we treat every month and a half. The really good thing is that I have never seen deer in our pastures, or even close, so hopefully those snails and slugs can't travel too far.

Life after shearing

This is my buddy, Beth, whom I mention frequently, and the little ram lamb (don't know if that is the right term in sheep language, I'm still learning). Smitty hasn't officially named them yet, but the grand girls were here for Mom's Day and I think Meredith wants to call them Frank and Meri.
Cary's husband Bill is a retired vet and they graciously came over last week to dock the tails and remove the boy parts. I couldn't look...... Actually, the little darlings hardly whimpered.
Life since shearing last week has been incredibly busy. I'm trying to go through all the fleeces to evaluate them and decide what they will become. They are very clean so I'm removing hardly any VM (vegetable matter).
For some reason I have had lots of sales in the last couple days - fleece and roving. I'm surprised because lots of folks seem to back off from knitting and crocheting when the weather warms up. I guess the spinners just keep on spinning - I know, I do.
Last Saturday above mentioned Cary and I did a dye workshop. Great fun to teach others from our experiences. I dyed some alpaca roving as a demonstration, and spun it up at home. It's below ▼ I spun a single, then plied it with Wooly Nylon.

I used Jacquard dyes, (Periwinkle Blue, Burnt Orange, and Fuschia) and Indy's blend of alpaca, merino, and mohair in roving form.
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Tara, my blondechicken friend, asked what I will be doing with my fiber. Well, Tara, as I'm going through the bags, it comes to me and I jot it down. Right now I have chosen some to be blended with some purchased Merino and some to be blended with our BabyDoll sheep at Zeilingers' mill in Frankenmuth. A couple I'm sending to Suzanne's because she will do small batches and I want to keep them separate. I'm saving a few just like they are. I already have 10 pounds up at Stonehedge being made into yarn. One black I'm just saving until this winter when I can take the time to pluck all the white guard hairs out. Have I mentioned that I HATE guard hair ?!?
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Michelle akkasha, I can't leave a message on your blog?????