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First, thank you all for the kind and supportive comments on my last post.
Losing Walla has been tough. He was one of a kind, and I felt that we really had a special bond.
I know many of have known the pain of losing critters that you care deeply for, and I really appreciate your support.

Denise
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I’d been thinking about indigo for some time.
But it always seemed kind of intimidating.
There are a LOT of ways to dye with indigo.

I felt like I really wanted to have a good understanding of the process before I gave it a go. But I had somehow misplaced the instruction booklet that came with my Earthues kit!

Thankfully, I happened across Cynthia Underwood Thayer’s Indigo Dyeing page

I didn’t have any spectralite in the Earthues kit, but since it is a detergent/excess color remover I figured it wasn’t too critical. Hide glue did come in the kit, and served the same purpose as the gelatin (to protect the fibers in the very alkaline dye solution).

Presenting the lucky skeins selected for dyeing!

Here they are soaking in preparation for their first dip-

My set-up.

And let the dipping begin!

Skeins hanging in an apple tree to dry-

It all seems to have worked out ok! Stash transformed!

We said goodbye to my sweet Walla this past Wednesday.

I had not mentioned it on the blog, but Wally was diagnosed with Lympho sarcoma back in April.
I decided early on that I would make myself let him go as soon as I got the sense that the cancer was starting to impact his quality of life, and went about making his last weeks with us happy and memorable as possible.

Earlier this week he lost interest in eating.

I’m having a hard time writing this, so I’ll stop now.

We was greatly loved, and will be greatly missed.

Apologies to the blog for my inattention of late.

It’s been a little slow wool-wise for the last couple of weeks.

I had been making good progress with the contiguous sweater, but then got down to the underarms and realized that I need a little more room in the chest.

And I just haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet. Yep. Stalled out.

But I’ve been using the good weather to my advantage, getting some fleece washed- and am almost completely caught up! Maybe two more batches to go. Then there is no more greasy fleece backlog!

Suffolk/Rambouillet

Llama

And I have some socks in progress for my nephew, but they are going pretty slowly on size 1 needles. (I should really stick to size 2 as my lower limit.)

In critter news, we got a new chicken last week!

Thought it was a rooster (that’s the whole reason he came to live with us- he had been a “town chicken”), but am now starting to think that it’s a pullet. But he/she seems to be getting on well and blending in with the new girls, so that’s good.

We had a big cottonwood or poplar (not sure which) branch come down in the pasture last week, and the sheepy boys are doing a bang-up job with the cleanup efforts! It’s actually still kind of attached to the main trunk of the tree, so the leaves have stayed green while the guys have been enjoying the buffet.

We’ve been knocking ourselves out doing garage and shop reorganization, but when I have a bit of break, I have been doing some more weaving- experimenting with twill!

I exercised tremendous restraint at the weavers conference marketplace, mostly coming away with photos of the many wonderous offerings-

Manged to get the loom re-warped-

Felix’s butt trimmed up-

(though now that his butt is trimmed, it makes his gut look bigger!)

And got a start on a Contiguous sweater!!

Been meaning to give it a shot for a while now, and I have to say,

It is everything I hoped for!

So simple, and clever and versatile.

Yes, I am a Sweater Geek.