Author: denisemor

is a “Motorized by The Man” carder.

It’s been in the works for a while (birthday was back in Jan), and we were really close to a solution a couple of weeks ago.
The first try was with a belt sander, coupled to the drum axle with a chuck from a drill.
Only problem- it rotated counterclockwise.

Plan B involved the sacrifice of an old White sewing machine that we found on craigslist.
Here it is after already having donated all the necessary internals-

And here is my old carder hooked up to it’s new power source-

which is controlled by the footpedal from the sewing machine-

I’ve been playing with it a bit today, and it is really cool. The foot pedal leaves my hands free for picking and feeding in the fiber, and when the motor is not running I can manually turn the drum backwards to remove the batt without having to undo anything.

And I can always remove the pulley and put the handle back on if I need/want to go back to arm power.
Will try to shoot a little video sometime this week of the newly energized machine in action!

And in case you’re wondering what ever happened to my Tuin sweater- it is finally starting to look like something!

Don’t know that I would ever sign on for this much duplicate stitch ever again (millions of ends), but I think it’s turning out pretty neat. 🙂

Felix-

Griff, who is normally very gentlemanly once you lay hands on him, was a total bugger. Really didn’t want to give up the winter coat.
But in the end we prevailed.

and Frank.
Sorry, didn’t get any pictures of Frank.
Frank and Felix were both pretty felted, but somehow on Frank’s back there was a lot of dirt and grit. Like someone had poured a bunch of builders sand on him. Trying hard to imagine how it got there.

We also did CDT vaccines, dewormer, and hoof trimming. So it was a pretty busy morning.

And when it was all over, we played ball-

Ah, the pups do love a little fetch.

Oh hey- and Friday I was over at Schoonover Farm for their spring shearing.
It was a great time, as usual, and I came away from it with a lovely fleece from Rueben, a 15 year old wether.
Check it out:

Lookin’ pretty good for an older gentleman, eh?

This weekend we made a start on the shearing!

Edgar was (of course) the first candidate.
Here we are mid-haircut-

Kinda messy and disorganized the first time out, but he was very patient with me as I fumbled around with the new electric shears.
And he was rewarded with lots of goodies 🙂

He still needs to have his tummy cleaned up, but all in all, I think he looks pretty good!

I took a little different approach with Chone- started from the butt and worked forward.

Here he is mid-fleece explosion!

Chone’s fleece is so nice this year- and it’s amazing how much of it there was on his tiny little body!

So we’ve got three guys left. The plan is to catch them in the shed next Saturday morning and finish the job.
We’re due for vaccinations, dewormer and hoof trimming too, so it will be a very sheepiful morning.

I got off to a bit of a slow start this week with the colorwork for my Tuin, but now that I’m getting a feel for the duplicate stitch and keeping track of the chart, it’s going more smoothly-

Look! Flowers! I see now that doing it this way is going to take a long time, but I do like having control over the color placement.

In other news, with The Man’s help, I made a minor tweak to my already amazingly cheap and highly useful PVC and conduit Niddy Noddy-

With the addition of a few holes and some old metal knitting needles, it is doubling as a portable lazy Kate!

And I can even store the needles in the center section of conduit.

Neat, eh? (Skye doesn’t see what all the excitement is about) 🙂

Sheeps are starting to ask about getting haircut appointments, but the weather hasn’t been cooperating. Maybe next weekend I’ll be able to get a start on shearing!