Merino Lambs and Gaithersburg Show

I have been waiting for Sweet Pea to deliver. She was terrific. She popped out Snow Pea, a white ram, and very quickly thereafter popped out Cow Pea, a black and white ewe. Both babies are dry and drinking off mom. I have a black ewe that should deliver within the next few weeks. She will probably have a single. It is exciting to have babies for the Woodbine Fiber Festival next Saturday. I did not realize that Merinos bred out of season till Terry Mendenhall told me that this spring.

The Gaithersburg show was really slow on Friday and Saturday and the beginning of Sunday. Towards the end of the show I taught someone how to drop spindle and sold a lot of yarn. It was exciting and I hope to see some familiar faces when I go back next November. I am actually knitting up a few scarves and headbands.

My daughter Kristie is visiting with her husband. When they leave tomorrow afternoon, I will have to get serious about spinning and tieing up my loom. The festival is next Saturday and I need to work in the barn in case it rains. There will be a place to hang out and spin, if anyone is interested. The shearer has told me that she needs to finish about 2 p.m. since she is giving a presentation for the Maryland Sheep Breeders Group and needs to go home and change. So, if you want to see shearing, aim for earlier rather than later. Marc and I will be going to the presentation.

Carroll County Maryland Fall Home Show

Another show has come and gone. The attendance at the Carroll County Home Show was pitiful, so I had a chance to meet with the other vendors - a really nice group. I had time to knit several inches on my latest project. I am writing a pattern for a tunic and knitting it with a Rambouillet and llama blend.

Marc and I did the Famancha eyelid check again on Friday. We got through it in 45 minutes and only found 6 angora goats that needed to be retreated. Progress!

All of my earnings from the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival went into an invisible fence to keep Left and Right in. They have not escaped yet, so I guess they have it figured out.

I am back to watching for lambs to pop. One of my Merino moorits is due any day. A black one is due within the month. I still have to name them!  It  is nice to have babies at different times of the year. I might have lambs to pet at my Woodbine Fiber Festival.

The angora goats have been separated for breeding and all of the males that I am saving are together on the hill next to the house. They are all getting along well right now.

On Thursday I will be setting up the the Montgomery Fairgrounds for the Gaithersburg Sugarloaf Show. It is an art show, so a much better venue for me. Hope some of you can make it out to visit with me!

Greater Baltimore Weavers' Guild

This is the time of year when I get really busy. If you look at my schedule, you will see that I have a lot of shows over the weekends between now and mid December. I am not going to set my shop up, if the shows are back to back - unless you call and say you are coming. I did the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival this past weekend and sold most of my freeform yarns, so I will be working on new ones starting Wednesday.

Tomorrow evening I will be giving a presentation to the Greater Baltimore Weavers' Guild on Fiber Connections: Art and Science. I will be talking about how I got the nerve to call myself an artist. I designed two shawls to illustrate some of my points. I used funky yarns in both and elastic yarn in one of them. The photo above shows what happened when I took it off the loom. The ripples are a natural result of the elastic yarn. I never waste - so the piece above was woven to finish the warp. I will be dyeing it at the meeting.

This is one of the finished shawls. I used a variety of white fibers - all whites are not the same color. This piece includes Rambouillet, Suri alpaca, kid mohair, Merino, and tencel. The shawls will be available for sale after the November Textile Museum presentation.

Art and Science

 At Spinquest last month I learned a new technique for spinning a funky yarn from Wildhare Studios. I knitted it up to see what it would look like since she did not have a sample available. Very interesting effect - like a shag rug, but not a yarn that I will spin often. Too time consuming and not as showy as I would have expected. It did make a cute little scarf - about the size of my boas.

 At Spinquest, I realized that the easy coast fiber artists are much more traditional and that they really like the pretty packaging. I have the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival next weekend and I plan to take roving, batts and mohair locks in both plastic bags and the plastic containers above to see which sells better. All of the plastic containers have pretty tags and pricing in them.

 Marc and I are going to be pros at the Famancha method of determining when the goats and sheep are parasite ridden and anemic. The second vet I had come out said this goat is good. Is it not ugly? Marc and I have also taken a course on using a microscope and centrifugue to determine what kind of parasites are living in my animals. Gross subject, but I don't want to over treat and make the wormers ineffective. We have the microscope and test tubes. Just waiting on the centrifuge. This is a little too much like being a scientist for me. Marc has really taken to it.

 The chickens are now running around in a temporary pen. The grass is gone and I am supplementing them
with garden scarps and grubs and slugs. Yuck! At least the bugs are not getting a chance to reproduce!

                                   
 I am still listing yarns on my eshop and etsy. The west coast customers are mainly looking for the art yarns, so they are my focus.

I have been asked to give a presentation at the Greater Baltimore Weavers Guild on October 2, 2012 on Fiber Connections: Art and Science. The Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. saw that and has asked me to do a talk on weaving and its connection to science on November 29, 2012. As a basis for my discussion for the Textile Museum, I am weaving two all white shawls with lots of texture. One will be very traditional, while the other will be more like a tapestry weaving on a countermarch loom with a few twists - since it has elastic yarn in it. . One of the shawls will be dyed at the Baltimore meeting.

Upcoming post - we have bought a tractor. Does that make us farmers now?

Lazy Days of Summer

It would be easy to say that I am lazing around this summer, but not totally true. We have been gathering animals up almost nightly to treat the animals for worms. We have learned how to do the FAMANCHA test and about 10 animals are still seriously anemic. I am going to shear a few of them over the next few days, since the stress has caused them to blow their fleeces. My feed bills have become vet and medicine bills.

My garden is thriving. I love the sunflowers and I have been playing around with a few apps on my ipad to create some cool looks. This one is called Broken Wall. I love the Twirl the most.

I have been canning tomatoes in various forms. I have Thai peppers and have been adding them to make hot sauce. Seems like tomatoes are turning red every time I walk by them. I am picking them as soon as they start to turn red, so the slugs and worms do not get them.

My sister, Nadia, came to visit with her husband, so I took a break from spinning. I have to get back to carding, since I am going to Spinquest in Front Royal, VA, as a vendor this Saturday. If you are looking for some cool stuff from independent fiber artists, come check it out.

I am also focusing my yarn sales on my online eshop. I am listing periodically on etsy, but have discovered that people get lost there since there is so much.

Fog? Yarns!

I took this photo early yesterday morning. Makes me think of fall. I had just let all of the angora goats into Watusi's area, since it is now fully goat proof. Watusi got moved up to the pen near the house.

 This was taken in the afternoon. The goats are making a serious inroad into the ragweed, so I will not have to mow! The farmer is coming to build the 3 sided shelter for the alpacas in this area tomorrow. It is the last one that we will do this year. Next year we will fence in more areas where tractors can't get to mow the hay and put shelters there. It will allow me to rotate pastures and keep the animals from having so many parasite issues.

I listed these yarns on my eshop last night: www.uniquedesignsbykathyshop.com. Buy 2 or more and get free shipping. Let me know, so I can send you an invoice.

Colors

My multicolored sunflowers are now opening. The colors are very close to the colors inside my house. I love them! I will dry a few, but will probably give most of the seeds to my African Gray and the goats. They love them and it helps their coats shine.

These are two of the photos that I took for someone who wanted to see what colors I have in kid mohair. The tan skein above is Suri. I have been spinning for projects and just realized that I need to be spinning for the shop! Most of my colors have gone pastel. I am going to have to spin and then dye to get some vibrant colors.

These are all kid mohair batts. I have almost finished spinning the one on the left and will over dye it with slate blue. I plan to spin and dye each one a different color. The sheen shows up beautifully in this photo.

Above are mohair locks from two "black" kids. The silvery gray one has taupe tips and is as soft as a white fleece. The one on the right is the blackest fleece that I have ever had. It is funny since the black kids all start out pitch black when born.