Saturday, June 20, 2015

Mid June

The days fly by here on my little bitty farm. The goat kids grow and begin to eat the fresh green stuff all around them.  They have been moved out, with their mom of course, to join the trip.  (Which is another word for herd, or even flock, but I kind of like trip, it's unusual!)
I have moved them out of their nursery, because it will be used to house the little buckling that will be heading our way in a couple of months, and I wanted to let the grazing area rest.  It is cool that while I was musing about whether or not I wanted to get into raising Nigora goats on a slightly larger scale, I realized that the only time I would really need to have a separate place for the buck was during the fall, while I still have unbred does. 

This year, I will be breeding my young does at 7 months, which will be late December.  After this year however, I can breed a little earlier, like in October or November, which means that I will need dedicated housing for Mr. Dash Riprock, only 3 or 4 months of the year.  Then when birthing time comes around the same space can be the nursery, and if I stagger the breeding a bit, I will always have that space available for the new moms to bond with their little ones.

I haven't gotten as much done in the studio as I had hoped this week.  I am in the middle of rethreading my 8/4 carpet warp baby blankets to make a rug or two.  I will change the spacing in the reed, and use up some of this last 40 yard warp.  I am also about half way through winding a red warp for the Hearthside loom.  While Lou Ann and I were at her cousins we were talking about what kind of project I would put on it.  I told her that I wanted to do an 8/4 warp in red, and use a different red to do a textured weave. 

I had been disheartened a couple of years ago when I had so much trouble with the 8/4 releasing color when washed, and I couldn't bring myself to use it again for the baby blankets.  That meant I have a lot of reds and blues that I don't trust to use for overshot.  However, it struck me that if I use all reds in a project, or all blues in a project, I just might be able to get some of this 8/4 out of the stash!



I have been able to get a little bit of spinning done this week.  I received a bit of fiber  from the Black Cat Farmstead, it came with my little red Mayville/Fell spinning wheel.  I started  spinning it right away, and this week, I got two bobbins of singles finished.  Today, I began to ply on my Louet S-10, with it's big bobbins.


I think it is working out rather well.  While I have the big plying wheel out, I will probably ply some of the singles that I have spun at the Museum of Appalachia this last spring.  It is always good to have some skeins of their yarn around to show people.  They think it is really neat to use the wool, that come from the sheep, that crop the grass, right there in front of them, on the property.

By next week, I hope to be weaving on the rug and threading that red placemat warp,  until next time, Happy Spinning and Weaving, Tina

2 comments:

LA said...

I love the idea of the red warp using different shades of red. It would be nice NOT to have to worry about any fading.

Theresa said...

Enjoy your growing herd, breeding is an enormous amount of work (and worry), and I certainly wouldn't be up to it these days. I enjoy having just two horses and two silly wethers. Excellent idea to stay in the same color families for weaving out your stash of carpet warp. Beautiful spinning. I haven't seen my spinning wheel in weeks....