Tag: Felix

Reclaiming Felix seconds

denisemor 2 June 3, 2018

I probably should have started with the “best of”, but I had Felix seconds from the cleanup shearing a couple of weeks ago sitting around in the laundry room, so I thought I’d get them washed up. It’s really nice wool, there was lots of little veg and grit, weathered and felted tips, and scurf. Ugh.

So I had to pull out the combs. It was a little short for combing, but most of it lashed on ok. Lots of waste left over (maybe use that for stuffing something), but what I did get drawn off t he combs is pretty sweet

yay 🙂

And knitting-wise, I’ve retreated to my hat comfort zone

using some of the freshly dyed Esther wool from last week and leftover greens from the SuperGreen sweater.

there’s just something about that little circle motif that is very comforting to knit.

Tidying Up

denisemor 3 May 28, 2018October 7, 2021

Finally got a hold of Frank and Felix today, and managed to get their haircuts finished up (Yay!)

Frank wasn’t thrilled to be the subject of my fussing, but was a good boy once I got the halter on him

Felix was another story. He resisted right to the end.
So no pictures on that one.
Man am I pooped.

But they both look fairly respectable now, so I’m calling it good.

In other wool news, I did a little bit of dyeing this weekend!

Trying out Abundant Earth Wool Tinctures

Each packet dyes 7 oz of wool

Since I was dyeing fleece rather than yarn, I decided to go with my big pot, just so that the fleece would be able to move freely in the bath (yes, that is Gus commandeering my chair 🙂 )

Here are the Blood Orange “teabags” dissolving in the pot

And the fleece fresh out of the bath

Fleece in the pot taking up Deep Water in batch #2.

The colors are fabulous. I had a little issue with the Deep Water breaking into bright blue and hunter green- and I’m not sure what I might have done to cause that. Perhaps I screwed up the addition of the citric acid. But once dried and carded together, it all came together nicely- here is a sample skein

Frank and Felix Come Clean

denisemor 4 April 29, 2018

Thanks to the rain on Saturday morning I was able to get a hold of Frank and Felix and start to help them out of their messy, felted winter coats.

Frank was a tough job. Most of his neck and upper back was felted all the way down to the skin. I think that he feels a lot better now that he’s free of it, even though he wasn’t too pleased about me fussing over him for so long. I found it interesting though that his chest and sides were starting to shed on their own- I don’t remember him doing that before. At least it made that part of the job go much more smoothly.

Felix’s neck was pretty felted too, but was easier to get away from his skin, so it went a little faster.

Most of the fleece from both boys was not really worth saving, but I was able to salvage some nice chest wool (after trimming away about and inch and a half of felted tips off it all). It was all damp from the rain, so I washed it right away, and was pleasantly surprised at how white it came out (really should have taken a “before” photo)

Both of them have such beautiful wool. It’s a shame that so much of it ends up unusable. I think I’m going to try the fall shearing again this year and see if that helps.

In other wool news, I finally spun up a skein of my saved up Sadie undercoat blended with Edgar’s 2017 fleece.