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May is here, and it is weirdly glorious so far! Almost too hot. Or perhaps I’m just not ready for it 🙂

This weekend brought a couple of cool local fiber events- The Skagit Weavers Guild Silent Auction, and the Wonderful Woollies sale. I made sure to hit both.

Was my first time at the Weavers Guild auction. Amazing bargains. Tons and tons of yarn. But I was mostly interested in fleece/fiber. I came away with some beautiful white kid mohair ( 10 oz, $9) and a bag of white washed wool (2-3 lbs? $5) that looks vaguely border leicester-ish. I think that the two will work really nicely together, and will give me lots of material for dyeing experiments this summer.

At the Wonderful Woollies event, the farm hosting the sale was offering up imperfect romeldale fleeces for $5 each. I picked up a smaller (maybe 8 lbs ?) light brown one, because how can you not, right? Whatever is not usable can just go in the compost.

I’m all about imperfect fleece. Matted tips? veg? discoloration? No problem. As long as there is something worthwhile underneath. So for starters, here’s a picture of the underneath

The length of usable fleece varies a bit, but the wool is so fine and crimpy that it doesn’t need to be very long to be spinnable. I was high on wool fumes when I got home, so dove right into sampling.

Here are the steps I’m taking to salvage the good stuff from under it’s cruddy exterior.

First off, I’m wielding scissors. Trimming off as much as necessary to remove all weathered/veg encrusted/dirty bits

like so

the results-

From there, it’s on to washing. There was quite a bit of yellowing, but I figured that it might wash out.

And some of it probably did, but certainly not all.

For this batch, I thought I’d just card it up and see how the yellow affects the overall color. Might look kind of apricot mixed with the taupe-y brown. And might be a really interesting base color for over-dyeing later on.

So now I’m spinning up my little rolags. Fleece feels really nice and springy. I think I did a better job this time of getting all the grease out in the wash. That has been a challenge for me in the past with finewools. Hope to have some yarn samples to share next week.

And speaking of samples- I did a second run on my Apple Bark dyebath just recently. This time I mordanted the yarn with Aluminum Triformate. Starting colors

In the dyebath-

and the results!

Much brighter/stronger colors on this batch.

In wool-on-the-hoof news, I finished up shearing today! Here is Dottie out enjoying the amazing spring sunshine after her hair appointment.

Here’s looking at ewe, Dot!

Things start to feel like they are moving so fast as May approaches. I’ve been busy outside keeping up with garden and critters.

All the seedlings are off heat and growing fast, with cabbages, bok choi and broccoli already in the garden and tucked in under floating row covers. I hope that this extra protection will let them get well established without the pressure of slugs and cabbage butterflies. So far they seem happy.

Took some time saturday morning to clean out the eastern rollup side panel of the hoophouse, as it has a tendency to collect all kinds of debris over the season, which then gets slimy and nasty. Requires removing the tie-down ropes, unrolling and removing the plastic from its rollbar, and scrubbing/spraying down the plastic sheeting, then reassembling. But it feels good to have it done and knowing that it’s not harboring all kinds of crud. Hope to have a chance to tackle the west side maybe next weekend.

In sheep news, I got a start on shearing Dottie. She’s never been an easy haircut customer, but I got her neck and chest clear, and back past her shoulders. I think that she enjoys the extra freedom of movement, minus her heavy coat, but she wouldn’t ever admit that 😉

I went ahead and washed up this first batch of her fleece since the weather was so favorable. I love her wool, with it’s range of silvery greys.

Also mixed up a small batch of Pat Coleby-esque sheep mineral, using up the last of my available dolomite lime. For my own future reference, the ratio of ingredients (by weight): 25 parts dolomite lime, 4 parts copper sulfate, 4 parts yellow sulphur, 8 parts granulated kelp. I’m providing this free-choice to everyone, alongside the purina goat chow mineral.

It was a good week for spinning and weaving, too.

Just finished the first panel of this current blanket project.That last photo is showing the spacers (recycled paper grocery bags) I use between the panels. The warp ends become fringe in the finished object.

Looking forward to a couple of great events in nearby Bow this coming weekend- Wonderful Woolies fiber sale (6414 Worline Rd) and the Skagit Weavers Guild silent auction (16775 Allen West Rd). Both Saturday 5/2 from 10am -3pm. Should be a good time!

By focusing on things here on the ground. Patch of english daisies in our back lawn

Happy little seedlings-

sheeps hangin’ loose in the sunshine

Feelgood stuff flowing from sheepy sources include Daphne wool becoming batts

and some stash yarn becoming another blanket

Plainweave, 6 ends per inch, alternating white and taupe weft against striped warp (purples, orange, green, teal, grey)

Have a good week, folks-

A couple months ago I mentioned that I’d started soaking some apple bark in preparation for using it in a dye bath, based on info in a new-to-me book, Wild Color by Jenny Dean.

I had an opportunity a week or so ago to cook it up- here’s the bucket with the soaking bark before heating (nevermind the indigo residue ring!)

and this is the color of the bath after a few hours of simmering

I decided to dye a variety of natural shades- bright white, creamy white, beige, and silvery gray (but didn’t get good “before” pictures, sorry). They weren’t mordanted, because the book indicated that it wasn’t necessary to mordant the goods for dyeing with apple bark, and I was hoping to get something like that rosy color (4th color swatch down in book photo above), which corresponded to the unmordanted sample.

Here are my results from this batch-

Not exactly rosy, but a soft, warm yellow. Hard to capture the color accurately wit my camera, but on the grey it reads a bit like a loden green. and it turned the beige a lovely golden brown. remains to be seen how lightfast it will be. Before I do any testing on that I plan to to another round- this time mordanted with Aluminum Triformate.

In garden news, I’m excited to have developed a plan for a runner bean arch –

Still needs a bit of cross-bracing, but hopefully by mid-summer it will be covered in Weinlanderin beans, (and maybe some scarlet runners as well), with enough clearance underneath to stillbe able to mow the between the beds.

OK, that’s all I’ve got for now. Have a good week folks-