Angelo - the Cotswold ram lamb - Part I

Through one of the fleece/spinning forums that I am part of, a very nice farmer has been welcomed to our "flock" so that he can sell his award winning fleece direct to hand-spinners.  He keeps and shows a beautiful flock of Cotswold Sheep.  These are one of the Longwool breeds and he shows his sheep and then after the fleece have been sheared, he shows those too then at the end of the show season he sells the fleece to hand-spinners.  I put my name down for one and it has arrived.  WOW, its beautiful!!!

This is Angelo, the ram lamb that the fleece has come from and a photo of the fleece that Rob sent to me before I purchased it.  Angelo's grandfather won the title of Champion Ram at the Royal Show.

Rob looks after his sheep extremely well and spends hours picking out all the VM from his fleeces so that they are in pristine condition for showing.  This fact, and the fact that his fleece are out-of-this-world, make his fleece highly desirable and there is currently a waiting list, which at the time of writing is about 2 or 3 years long, meaning that is the length of time you have to wait to get your chance of getting your hands on one of these.

The starting weight of this fleece is 1950g but as you can see, its not white and its full of gorgeous lanolin which is great for the sheep, the fleece and my hands but not so great for my hand combs.  Nice long staple and lots of lustre.  Can't wait to see the wonderful yarn that this will make.

There was a small amount of second cuts and rubbish weighing 96g, a very small amount given the size of the fleece and a pile of locks waiting to be washed looks fantastic.

Washing

I used my usual method of washing a fleece which is separating the locks from the whole fleece and using net laundry bags to soak the locks in hot soapy water, regular dishwashing detergent is fine.  I usually use one that also has anti-bacterial qualities too.  My fleece has 2 hot soapy soaks to remove dirt and grease, followed by 2 plain hot water soaks to remove any residue soap and also to remove any further dirt trapped in the locks.  Important: always run the hot water first, then add the soap and carefully/gently swirl the water.  Do not shake your hands in the water, you do not want a bubble bath.  Carefully lower the bag of fleece into the water and push down slowly and gently into the water.  That is it, leave it alone for about 20 minutes, do not touch it or you will end up with a bag of felted mess.  The hot water and soap will do its job perfectly well.  When it comes to changing the water, you carefully lift one end of the bag over onto the other end (fold in half basically) and then lift the whole thing out and let the water run out before gently squeezing most of the excess water out, DO NOT WRING.  Fill sink with fresh hot water and go again.

Just look at that water, and that is from the second hot soapy water soak.

Clean by comparison, or is it?

The locks on the left have been washed but the tips are still a bit mucky but these can be gently rubbed underneath the water and usually loosen up and shed their dirt.  The locks on the right are in need of washing.

Lay out to dry, whoops, missed a bit of a dirty lock there, which was soon rectified.

Just ignore our mess in the background, my hanging drier is out in the utility room/storage area for some of the gardening bits and pieces and recyclable boxes etc.  Look at how clean it looks close up now.

Black Shetland - Re-visited

You'll never guess what I've done.  I've only gone and gotten myself another Black Shetland fleece from the farmer in Morval, Cornwall that I had the others from.  Not only that, but this fleece has come from the exact same sheep as the last Black Shetland fleece but she is all grown up now and has given birth to a lamb of her own.  Shame I don't have any pictures to show you of cute lambs.

I forgot to take a photo of the fleece this time so I will show you the last fleece again.

This year's fleece wasn't as nice as the shearling fleece, but then lambs wool is traditionally the best quality that you can get.  We've also had a lot of very wet weather over the past year and this plays havoc with the quality of the fleece.

I took delivery of 988g of fleece but noticed a lot of vegetable matter and second cuts in this years fleece.  Normally I would remove as much as I could but there is so much of it I decided to leave that job to the combs, they are so much more efficient at it than I am.  I just got on and washed the fleece, leaving me with 644g of clean fleece.

After I sat and combed the entire fleece I had a large bag of waste and just 414g of hand-combed nests waiting to be spun.  This is not much, a poor % yield, but what there is is nice, better than I was expecting after seeing the state it was in when it arrived.

I split the amount in half and spun two singles.  When I came to ply, I added a new twist.  Yes I plied both of the single Shetland strands together but I also added in something else to make 3 ply yarns.

To my first yarn I added some fine red cotton yarn, spinning to sport weight 179g/304m made up of 87% Shetland Wool/13% cotton.

To my second yarn I added some fine magenta cotton yarn, spinning to sport weight 152g/310m made up of 86% Shetland Wool, 14% Cotton

To my third and final yarn I added some baby pink cotton yarn, spinning to double knit weight 153g/305m made up of 84% Shetland Wool, 16% Cotton.

I think they look pretty good together and certainly something different for me.

Black Shetland Beaded Lace Shawl - Design L7

I enjoyed knitting with my own hand-spun wool so much that I am keen to do it again but this time I want something a little more challenging.  I can't wait to start knitting with some Black Shetland wool that I have spun up and I do have quite a few skeins of it.  I've chosen a design that has a lot of beads and have ordered the beads to go with the yarn.  The beads I am going to use are Size 8 Toho round seed beads in shade 83 metallic brown iris.

I started making this on 15th April and with this design you have to thread a given number of beads into the yarn to make the beaded tassel as you cast on.  You then work the first part of the pattern and put to one side and repeat a further 6 times until you have 7 scallops.  They are joined together as you knit across all of them and continue making the design.  All beads other than the tassels were added painstakingly one-at-a-time over the individual stitches which means that they cannot move out of position by sliding along the yarn and into wrong place over a period of time.  There are 5,083 beads on this shawl.  Well I did say I wanted something more challenging!

It was all crumpled up when it came off the needles.

A good soak and block soon sorted it out and those are the same scissors in the first of the above before and the below after photographs to give some idea of what a difference finishing off a shawl properly makes to the final garment.

I finished knitting this on 5th July 2013.  I love this design as the shaping around the neck line helps to keep it in place and makes it sit where it should.

Want to know how I made the yarn for this shawl?  Just click Black Shetland Fleece

Alpaca and Shetland Wool, together in harmony

I do love a nice Shetland fleece, I don't know what it is about them but I love touching them, so soft and bouncy and light to the touch.  I was so impressed with the Black Shetland fleece when it arrived that I went back to the same farmer in Morval, Cornwall and bought some more Shetland fleece from her.  500g of "light fawn to cream" that was also sheared in June 2012.

I washed this fleece when it arrived last year but have only just gotten around to doing anything more with it.  It was pretty dirty and after washing I was left with only 340g and after being combed that went down further still to just 186g of lovely soft combed top ready to spin in whole range of colours, with one particularly dark nest standing out from the crowd.

I had also bought some lovely cream Huacaya Alpaca last year too from Abacus Alpacas in South Cerney, Gloucestershire from one of their lovely Alpaca's called Dakota, so pretty!

1000g of main body fleece, once washed and combed left me with approx 671g of lovely combed alpaca top to spin in similar shades as the Shetland fleece.  I decided to blend equal amounts of both the Alpaca and the Shetland together and then to spin the left over Alpaca on its own.  The first picture below shows the same weight of Shetland (left) and Alpaca (right).

I only lost about 3g during the blending process and I managed to get 3 skeins of lovely soft 50% Shetland Wool/50% Alpaca yarn in double knit weight: 64g/161m, 141g/330m and 167g/338m.

From the Alpaca being spun on its own I managed to get 4 good sized skeins of yarn.

They weighed in at: 117g/200m, 117g/200m (yeah, WOW, two exactly the same, not an easy feat),

120g/220m

and 131g/288m

Buying a Job Lot of Jacob Fleece

I had so much fun with my first Jacob fleece that I decided to get some more and looked on Ebay to see what was available.  Low and behold, 7 Jacob fleece available at a low price just around the corner from my home at a farm that I never even realised was there as it is situated behind a couple of cottages on the Birmingham Road, Water Orton, about one-third of a mile as the crow flies across parkland, the A452, the M6 and a farmers field but seeing as I cannot fly I had to take the 5 minute drive as its 1.9 miles away by road.

Stuart and Katie had only moved in towards the end of last year and were busy doing the place up and turning it into a rural training centre for a range of vulnerable people.  Here is a link to their website Hillcrescent Farm to read more about what they do.

Back to the fleece, and I had no real idea as to what I was going to get other than that they were Jacob fleece and there were 7 of them.  I took large black bags with me, just in case they weren't bagged, good job I did.  I had a quick look at a couple of them before I handed over the cash, they seemed OK, not cotted or rotten, not overly coarse and for the price that was good enough for me.  This was the first time the sheep had been sheared since being in the ownership of Stuart and Katie and they had no idea of what a handspinner expects of and looks for in a fleece.  I provided them with copies of some useful information sheets that I had about preparing fleece to sell etc

When I got home I examined them all properly and I had to skirt them myself, removing as much daggings and the poor quality fleece from around the edges, along with any large pieces of vegetable matter (VM).  The weights underneath each fleece are the skirted weights.  I didn't bother to weigh them before I skirted them.  They are all photographed in the same place in my kitchen.  I nearly fell over a couple of times due to the lanolin making the floor slippery, which required a good mopping with hot water and disinfectant after I had finished.

Fleece No.1 - 1.5kg

Fleece No.2 - 1.6kg

Fleece No.3 - 1.05kg

Fleece No.4 - 1.4kg

Fleece No.5 - 1.1kg

Fleece No.6 - 0.79kg

Fleece No.7 - 1.35kg

A good mix of colours on the fleece, some mostly black, most 50/50 and various qualities between fleece too.  I'm going to have some fun with this little lot.  I guess you would like to see some photos of the young ladies who produced these fleece?

Ok, here you go.  All of these photos of the sheep are copyright to Hillcrescent Farm.

(c) Hillcrescent Farm

(c) Hillcrescent Farm

(c) Hillcrescent Farm

Merino/Silk Blend in Peacock

I got this from Sara's Texture Crafts, 200g of Merino/Silk which is 80% Merino and 20% Silk.

I spun it up as a worsted weight 2ply yarn giving me 203g/370m.

I eventually made a simple shawl with beaded lace leaf edging.

The Long And Short of It - Part Two

This is further to my post of 19th October 2012, which you may want to read before you read this post.

I made a sacrifice two weeks ago, a big sacrifice.

At the end of September last year, I made a decision about what I wanted to do to mark the occasion of my 40th birthday in March.  I didn't want a party and I wasn't particularly interested in presents either, its just more "stuff" to clutter up the house, and I need that like I need a hole in the head.  I decided to grow my hair even longer than usual over the Winter and then donate some of it to Little Princess Trust a charity that makes real-hair wigs for kids with Cancer.

After choosing the original style that I liked and blogging about it, I found another one that I liked more.  It was even shorter but I loved it so much more than the other one and so this is THE ONE that I chose.

I was fundraising all over Winter, even donating 25% of the item price of all items sold from my online shops between October and up to and including 31st March 2013.  I put these donations through my Just Giving Page on behalf of, and in the name of, the customers who made purchases.

I had a little problem with my usual hairdressing salon in December.  My stylist had not managed to get into work that day and so the salon owner was to cut my hair that day.  I told him that all I wanted was a 1/2 inch trim to keep it healthy as I was growing it longer than usual so I could have it cut and donate it to charity.  He told me how he didn't agree with people donating their hair to be made into wigs when there are perfectly good synthetic wigs available and he was quite nasty about it and his attitude really upset me.  He cut my hair and I left the salon with a bad taste in my mouth.  It was not the usual enjoyable, relaxing, pampering experience that I am used to.  It was only when I got home and saw myself in the long mirror that I discovered he had cut about 3 inches off the length of my hair!!!  The air turned blue, as you can imagine, because it was now very doubtful that I would be able to donate the 12" or more that I should have been able to donate.  I vowed there and then never to patronise his salon ever again, even though I had been going there for 15 years!

I put the word out that I was looking for a new regular hairdresser and I found one in the form of hubbies long term family friend, Pauline Babbington, who kindly offered to cut my hair and re-style it free of charge seeing as it for was Charity.  I decided that I wanted my husband and my two girls with me at the salon when I had my hair cut off, not only for moral support but also so that I wouldn't have to go through all that nervous anxiety on the way home of having to make a big entrance with my new look.  I set the date of the cut as 7th April 2013, as this was the first date after my 40th birthday that we could all get together.

So, this is how long my hair was the day before the cut.  It should have been touching my belt!!!

And this is the shorter style I chose to have my hair cut into after the donation. 

And now the photos of the event.

Getting it brushed out

Getting pony-tailed up into 3 pony-tails - ooohhh eeeeerrr its finally happening!

Here it goes, its getting cut off - ooooh eck! No turning back now

Before I knew it all 3 pony-tails were cut off, I was treated to a lovely relaxing wash and was being re-styled

All done!

The back.  It's short for the first time ever and look how soft and shiny it is!  

Hubby sat there whilst I had it cut with pretty much that same look on his face the whole time.

I got 2 x 8-9" pony-tails and 1 x 12" pony-tail to send off to Little Princess Trust.

That 12" pony-tail could well have been at least 14" if I hadn't had "hairdresser" problems in December.

I intend to now keep my hair short and I have been having fun drying and styling it in different ways.  I am still fundraising for them, even though I have smashed through my initial fundraising target and donations can be made via my  Just Giving Page  or by texting LOCK52 £(amount greater than £2) to 70070

If anyone is inspired by my story but is worried about going from long hair to short hair, please don't be worried about it, it's the best thing I have done in ages and I feel so good in myself and about myself.  Not only does it make you feel good doing something amazing for someone less fortunate but having all that physical and emotional weight cut off and getting a fab new modern look does wonders for your self-esteem and although my hair was healthy already, I can't believe how soft and silky it feels now.