Getting ready for the show!

 

It's busy, busy , busy around here getting ready for The New England Fiber Festival! Above is a Halloween inspired yarn of black and purple! It is 100% pure mohair and is unbelievably soft! The black is darker than the picture picked it up. 

This yarn of eggplant and green is drying on the swift. Previously a dyeing mistake but it works! The combination of color is just stunning. These yarns will be available at the Fiber Festival along with a ton of other things. This past weekend we attended our first show in almost 2 years and did very well! I have been very busy during the Covid lockdown and will have lots of inventory to show for it!

It's a load of Fibery Goodness!

This morning we picked up 2 years worth of accumulated fiber just from the Alpacas! It filled the back of the truck. We had first, which is the prime fiber made into various items and the seconds made into sheets of felt. 

Just some of the felt sheets which has all our boys represented in there!

Stacks of felt in all the boys! I especially got sad when I saw Teddy's in there. I miss that sweet soul so much. 

Quite a few skeins of some worsted weight yarn. I need to get busy knitting I guess but what?

Hats off to Twist of Fate Spinnery for a job well done!

 

The Pain of the Molt

The pain of the molt this time of year is quite evident with naked chickens throughout the yard! Here our poor "Chester" is as naked as a jay bird! This tie of year, with the daylight reducing, birds loose their summer feathers and bring in their winter feathers as well as down to keep them warm. It can be a painful process with decreased eating and laying as they are using their energy to pop new feathers through their skin. Eating can decrease and they become down right cranky. Just today we only collected about a half a dozen eggs! We normally get about 2-3 a day with 60 chickens!

This girl was getting a sip out of the birdbath and shook as her feathers went everywhere.

Oh sweety, the pain!

Our blind chicken "Helen" is just a naked mess! "Helen" get some clothes on will ya!

Our oldest rooster, "Henry" is just a mess! Henry is an old man at 7 years of age. He still rules the roost though. The other roosters seem him coming and they run! Henry is getting some new growth on his chest. You have a bit of empathy as they all just look so horrible. 

 

A Dye Mistake or Not?

A couple of days ago I set out to dye some mohair that was gifted to me by a friend. On the left is some white and on the right is some black. My goal was to dye and white and over dye the black a deeper black, but there was just one thing...

The choice of dye! This result was from some black mohair that I was attempting to dye. My mistake was the dye I grabbed. Not looking completely at the label, I grabbed the black, the black reactive dye not the fast acid dye. There is a big difference! This fleece was meant to be a deep black but instead I got an eggplant color, a very dark eggplant color!

This fleece I got exactly what I was going for. This was a dye called Iris, a fast acid dye.

On the next attempt at black I used a black fast acid dye. My results were exactly what I was going for.

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Acid dyes work well and are stable in hot water while reactive dyes are unstable in hot water. So the moral of the story here is, look at your labels to make sure you have the right dye, purchase the correct dye, but even the worse mistake equals a fleece that you can use anytime! I think the eggplant fleece will look good but I need to look at some colorways to match it up with a complimentary color! So the question is: A Dye mistake or not? Never! You can always use what you create in some way or another!