Shearing Done!

Shearing done for 2011.

Lots of sticky fleeces and hard shearing sheep. Not entirely sure of the issue. Some is probably weather, ours was not the only hard shearing flock, some is also coats. I ran out of larger size coats and so they were on too tight and I think that caused problems. Sticky means there are more second cuts than normal but they are still really nice wool. I may have some pictures later which I will add. I didn't take any but some of the people who were helping did.

Now comes the task of shipping out the pre-sold Ravelry fleeces and then getting the rest on the web site before lambing begins.

March Wool Work

I needed some white wool for blending with our black for new rovings so I went over to one of the big range flock operations during shearing to buy some wool.


Getting the next batch of sheep in for shearing.




The big flocks hire large crews. This crew had 13 shearing stations and the sheep go up the inside, get shorn and the wool drops out the back and the sheep climb out the front. This particular flock was going to take 2 full days to get shorn. They have about 2500 ewes.

Yarn and Winter Knits

We got the yarn back from the local wool mill in Palisade. I had pure Black Welsh in bulky and sport weight, blended Black Welsh and Polypay in bulky and then some pure Polypay in Bulky and sportweight. They all came out looking really nice.


I want to make a hat for Joe Sperry from the blended wool since the Polypay came from his flock. I plan to full it so Ken gets to be the model for testing the sizing.

Getting Ready to Open the Shop and Fun for Chickens

We are starting to get more customers. We are not officially open with regular hours until the end of May but I do open up if people call first. Here is the wool and meat shop. Lots of lovely rovings in stock and a lot of new yarns as well. Plus we still have our lovely Black Welsh socks and meat.


Wall of Wool


Socks, yarn and some combed tops

Chickens are now going out most every day. I tried to get some good pictures but ended up chasing chickens for almost an hour!


This is a Gold Campine hen. The bad thing about predator savvy chickens is they are very wary and so very hard to take pictures of.


The Russian Orloff did finally allow me to get fairly close.

Shearing Done

A bit late with my blogging. But we finished the shearing for the year. Several fleeces sold off the shearing floor. Skirting will start in the next few weeks and be up on our web site for sale later.

Getting Ready for Shearing

We got the shearing set-up built yesterday. We rebuild the catch pen and shearing floor each year under the hay barn. As always it looks like we will have snow and rain for shearing. So I am yet again scrambling to see if I can keep all the sheep dry. We will shear 137 this year on Saturday.

Ravelympics Medals

Well I am nearing the end of my Ravelry Knitting Olympics. I was on 2 different teams. Team WIPS2010 with 2 projects for WPIS Dancing. Sadly I will not medal in this event with either project.

However For Team Tardis I have medaled in 4 events with a total of 5 projects!

I have 3 entries in this event for frogging old projects.


The first is an old unknown garter stitch thing. I have no idea what it was supposed to be so it clearly had to get frogged.

The second project to frog was my Brown Dragon Shawl. After I discovered I was twisting stitches in one section and knit the same row twice elsewhere it was clear I had to start over. I frogged it without remorse and decided I need to find a better way to keep the pattern in front of me when I restart this project.



Last was Growler Cozy Rev 2. The bottom section did not felt at all so I had to rip it back and try to pick up from fulled stitches.







Another event I entered was Flying Camel Spin. I had a bunch of roving from our sheep Brownie from 2006. This was her last fleece and I really wanted to spin it all up. I managed to get most of it done, 470 yards worth for my entry.





The final 2 events I entered were the Designer Pattern Skeleton and the Felting freestyle with my modified Growler Cozy Pattern.

I managed to get them done in just 2 days!






Here is the pattern:
Growler Cozy Pattern - Sized to fit a US Standard 64 ounce glass growler.

I used a very soft 24 WPI 2 ply that felts well and size 10 or 6mm needles. You need a circular or 2 and some DPNs and a tapestry needle.

My swatch started out as a stockinette swatch with a 2 stitch garter stitch border. Un-fulled it was 6 inches top to bottom and 30 stitches or 6.5 inches between borders. The swatch was 7 inches in total height

After fulling 4 inches high 4 3/4 inches wide between borders. If your yarn fulls differently then you may need to adjust the number of stitches for your growler cozy.

CO 28 stitches

P first row then continue in stockinette until it measures 3.5 inches long

K1 Kfb (Knit in front and back) to end
P
K
P
* K1 then Kfb * Repeat between * to end. You should have 82 stitches
P
K
Continue alternating P and K rows until this section is 3.5 inches long.
Set up to do a P row but instead
Cable Cast on 30-31 more stitches
Place Marker, join and the knit in the round

Continue to knit in the round until the body is 11-11.5 inches long or so.

Base
Rnd 1 K2tog around
Rnd 2 Knit
Rnd 3 Knit
Rnd 4 and all further rounds
K2tog K1

Just keep doing that all around switching to double points as required and moving the marker as required or remove marker entirely until you have 4 or 5 stitches left.

Thread the yarn through the last 4 or 5 stitches and weave in all the ends.

Make 2 I-Cord strings each about 15 inches long leaving a 10 inch tail on the cast off end.

Using a tapestry needle take the long tail and pull the I-Cord through the top edge of the cozy. It's easiest to do this before felting but it can be done later. Take care not to cut the yarns. Sew the end back to the I-Cord using the tail end of yarn. Doing it this way means you can replace the cord when it gets worn or breaks.

Full the fabric until it fits the growler. Stretch over a growler while wet and pin the top together with a safety pen.

Once it has dried you can use the ties to tie up the top.

Paonia Mountain Harvest Festival

Sunday AM down to the Town Park for the Mountain Harvest Festival Farmers' Market.
Ray came to help at the booth and took care of it so I could take a break occasionally.

Monica from Small Potatoes Farm selling potatoes and garlic braids.

A good day, lots of sales of meat, socks and even some yarn.

Farm Tours & Sheep Coats

No Pictures. This morning before the big main farm tours started as part of the Paonia Harvest Festival we sorted out some of the sheep and put coats on. They are now in the winter corrals on hay. They look a bit silly in their coats but it keeps the wool clean.

Promptly at 11:00 the tour folks started arriving and I was doing solid tours from 11 until 5:30 pm. No pictures unfortunately. It was a good day, something like 75 people came to the farm and learned about how their meat and wool is produced.

Socks and More Socks!

We've got lots of socks.


Our big order of socks has arrived. We now have crew, knee high and terry socks for sale. These are 70% Black Welsh Wool and 30% nylon. Hand wash and dry flat. They will be too coarse for some people but are very durable and warm.

Prices are $15.99/pair for Crew socks, $20.99/pair for Knee High and $25.99/pair for Terry socks.

They make great Christmas presents for the hiker or hunter in your family.

Sample Socks, Cloak and Concrete

We got samples of the socks we are having made from our Black Welsh Mountain wool. We will be offereing both a hiking crew and a terry sock in mens and womens sizes. These are the first 2 samples.


I also put a label on my fabric.


Bill used the tractor to do final filling of the holes before the concrete truck arrives.


Getting the size just right.


Concrete truck pouring the footers.




The extra concrete will be used to change the orientation of the pad for the propane tank. We need to rotate it 90 degrees so its easier to use the new walk-through elk fence gate.


The rams came up to be in the shade but Winnie was very concerned about the concrete truck so was right there with them.

Combed Tops!

We've gotten back a huge order of lovely combed tops. This is some amazing wool! I'm so excited I had to start spinning some myself.

It's spinning up really nice.

Shearing Done!

I was too busy to take any pictures but we got the entire flock shorn yesterday. We had a good crew, a bunch of folks from Ravelry came and the Clocks and people from Mesa Winds Farm. We started about 8:15 am and got done about 1:15 pm. 132 naked sheep on the mesa today. Eifion shore straight through, then we had lunch then off to do other flocks in the valley. Finished with a couple of pints at Revolution Brewing. Ken and Eifion are off to do the last 2 flocks today, I'm home sick with a cough and stuffed nose.

Wool looks pretty good, I'll start skirting when I recover from this cold.

Getting Ready for Shearing

Before we cleaned the shearing floor.

After we cleaned out the old hay.

Spent today finishing cleaning the old hay scraps out from under the hay barn where we shear the sheep.

Up next is building the sheep sweep and getting everything ready.

Shearing is a week from today, 28 March.

Etsy and Ravelry

Not many pictures lately.

I have been getting my on-line stuff organized.

We now have an Etsy shop as DesertWeyr . I only have a few things there for now. I'm going to see how it all goes before deciding whether to put more there or not.

I'm on Ravelry as Oogiem. I'm a yarnie on Ravelry for all of our Black Welsh and blended yarns.

All of our products can be purchased through our on-line store at our main website here. I've got the last of my 2008 fleeces up there. Once those are gone that will be it until shearing, currently scheduled for the end of March.

Monmouth Cap

Here is another Monmouth cap knit from the top down with our Black Welsh Mountain bulky yarn. This is what it looks like before fulling it in the washing machine.



And here it is after being washed in the machine.

Yarns and More

I'm getting set up on Ravelry as a yarn vender. Over there my username is OogieM and our yarn brand is Desert Weyr. Here are the yarns I currently have in stock.

This is a blend of 50% Black Welsh and 50% Western Fine Wool from a local Delta County flock. It's designed for lace or socks. I have skeins and also have full cones if you want a lot of it.


This medium weight is also a blend but has more Black Welsh in it so is a bit darker. Ideal for comfy sweaters.

Pure bulky Black Welsh for Monmouth caps and other bulky knit items where you don't want to risk having the yarn color bleed out.

I will be getting more yarns in pure Black Welsh spun in 2009.

Our web site sales page has all the yarns on it. I will be editing as I now have more skeins of the solid Black Welsh than is listed there.

The Woolevator

The new shop second story is a long ways up there. When we stored wool in the old Red Barn loft you could toss the wool boxes up and the person in the loft could catch them. But the new shop is much too tall for that. While going up and down the stairs may be good exercise, when there are something like 100 fleeces to move that's a lot of trips even if you carry several at once. West welded up the crane, we added an engine hoist and Ken built a wooden platform to hold the boxes.

So we had a wool elevator made. Here it is being installed. The idea is that you put the boxes on the platform and use the hoist to haul them up. When it's not in use the crane assembly can swing back into the shop upper story and you can close the doors.
Today Ken and I moved all of the 2008 fleeces out of the hay barn an used the woolevator to get them up to the second floor of the new shop.





It worked really well and was easy to do. Once the fleeces are up there my plan is to set up the skirting table and do final skirting and preparation for sale upstairs. I do a preliminary skirting as we are shearing but this is the final more detailed skirting.


There's plenty of room to store the unskirted fleeces, the skirted and packaged for sale fleeces and still put in all the looms and have space to hold fiber guild meetings or do other craft work. I can't wait for the final bits to be done.

Shearing Day

Saturday was our sheep shearing day. Friday we picked up Eifion. That was the good news. The bad news was his shearing equipment in his luggage didn't make it on the same plane he did. He tried to shear the first flock with my Lister shears and got it done but it was clear the rest of the 30 or so sheep to shear on Friday were not getting done. We got them all rescheduled to Saturday and Sunday. The lost luggage came in at 7pm and we finally got home about 9:30. He shore 2 rams to test all the equipment and then went to bed. Next day we got started at about 8 am. He did the rest of the boys first as it was starting to rain and they were not under cover. The girls all had coats on and so even a light rain would be ok. Then we started on the pregnant ewes. Here they are in the sweep waiting to have their coats taken of and get shorn.
Here is Ken taking the coat of a sheep in the chute. We had helpers, three neighbor kids and our friend Monica who were most welcome. Eifion got through all 118 of the rest of our flock by 1pm and we stopped for lunch. Many of the fleeces are really nice and the sheep were all in good shape.
With our flock done we set off to try to do some more that had been rescheduled. He did 31 at once place then 4 at another. Home for a good mutton steak and wine dinner.

Sunday we started out again with several stops. 2 at a winery where we also got a bottle of wine to try. 2 more at a new place for a person with her first sheep. 6 at another new flock and the 4 more again a new place. We had a person flake out on us. I'd called to confirm that we'd be there on Sunday several days earlier. But when I called to say we were heading there next I was told that they had already gotten their sheep shorn. They didn't even have the courtesy to call and tell me to cancel our stop! I was rather angry and they will not be able to get their sheep shorn again by anyone I help with.

Next stop was for 2 groups totaling 20 sheep. 5 of them hadn't been shorn in two or three years and they were a breed that is supposed to be shorn twice a year. Eifion soldiered on and did an excellent job but it was very tough going. He charged more but not nearly enough for that amount of work. Last stop of the day was for 15 more dairy sheep. Then home to dinner.

This morning we woke up to about an inch of snow after major rain, hail and wind last night. I'm just glad we got all the sheep done as you can't shear wet sheep and it would have been a real disaster if the storm had arrived a day or so earlier. We took Eifion to the airport today. I think his planes got all messed up as the flights have been delayed or diverted but he hasn't called so I assume he's managing to get home somehow.

Next sheep job: vaccinations, federal flock inspection and wormer before they go on pasture to lamb.

Getting Ready to Shear the Sheep

This weekend is the big sheep shearing day. Saturday all the sheep get shorn and I'll have a bunch more wool to skirt and get ready to sell. We had hoped the shop would be done so the wool can go upstairs in the new skirting area but it's not going to happen. I'll be storing the boxes of wool under the hay barn until the shop is done then move it up there for skirting.

First step is every year we re-build the shearing sweep and setup. We set up under the hay barn so we can't have it set up until most of the hay is fed out. Each year it's a bit different as we try to improve the flow of sheep from pens, to getting coats off, to shearing, to back into the pens. It's hard to see but this year we are doing the entire system with wire jug panels. Shearing will happen on the plywood floor and I'll do a preliminary skirting of the fleece off the shearing floor. I just hope I can keep up with Eifion shearing. I'll probably never be as good as the wool handlers we saw competing in Wales in 2006 but I am using many of the techniques they used.



We try to have extra help on shearing day. Our regular helpers can't come this year so we are trying some new folks. It should be ok but it's going to be interesting teaching new people how to do all the various jobs.