Shepherds' Spring Farm

Last time I told you about our demo at the Log Farm shearing day. When they seared the first sheep they brought over the fleece and laid it out under the tent so people could see it. I used some dog brushes to make small rolags from the fleece and then used my drop spindle to spin some yarn.

Being me, I didn’t take any pictures of the carding or rolags so when I went to the guild I took a bit from one of the fleeces still waiting for a new owner and made some more and both Jan and I took pictures.

You can see all the debris from carding, so much falls out. Then my sort of rolags. The dog brushes are small so it’s hard to make a real roll.

I added the wool to the yarn on my spindle, then I plyed it and wound it off to be washed.

A nice close-up so you can see how dirty it is.

At the demo, people had lots of questions about how to wash it, when to wash it and did we have to wash it. The answer to when is at any stage along the way or not at all. I don’t suppose a fisherman in the North Atlantic is too fussed about his waterproof sweater smelling sheepy.

About how to get it clean.  These fleeces are dirty and full of hay bits and other dirt. Carding them takes out some, spinning it takes out some and washing it takes out more.

I wash in a dishpan with Dawn dish soap. It is a good degreaser and most of the dirt is stuck in the grease ( lanolin).

Here is the water after the first wash

and the second wash

Then I rinsed it and let it dry. Once it was dry I shook the skein over the dish pan to see how much more would come out. I was surprised by the amount that just shook out.  There is hardly any debris left in the yarn and what there is would pick out easily as you were knitting or weaving.

Here is the result, with a small amount of unwashed yarn I kept for comparison.

Spinning in the grease is enjoyable on a warm day. The lanolin helps it slide. It’s not so fun on a cold day when the lanolin gets sticky and doesn’t like to slide. Washing fleeces is not one of my favourite things but a little yarn is fun.

If you recall I did a small slow stitch piece in January. Look here if you missed it:  https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2024/01/26/slow-stitch-on-felt/ I enjoyed it so much that I thought I should do one a month. They are not very big, 4 inches by 5 inches or 10 cm by 13 cm. The base and all the bits and pieces fit in a sandwich bag in my purse.

February has Valentine’s Day so I decided on a heart theme. I rummaged through some offcuts and found this piece with lots of silk embedded in the surface.

I then had fun going through my threads to pick out my colour palette. Mostly pinks and a contrast. Later I will add a dark blue as a contrast.

As you can imagine with this being a slow stitch project and a portable one I didn’t take as many pictures as I should have but I think I have enough to show my progress through the month.

I wasn’t sure where to start so added the month and a felt heart with a simple outline stitch heart to make it pop a little. You can see I was thinking about the second heart when I remembered to take a picture

Some were online I saw someone stitching over an object and wanted to try it. I wove some pink floss over it.  I didn’t like the white and did try to carefully cut it out but that did not work at all. The cardboard was much too stiff.

so I did some unstitching and then tried again. this time I took a Ferrero Rocher Chocolate wrapper and after smoothing it out some, covered the heart. and tried again.

Just as an aside I was very disappointed in my Quality Street chocolates this year when I discovered they were in waxed paper. One of my favourite things to do at Christmas as a child and now was to flatten and smooth out the foil and transparent plastic wrapper. I know it’s more environmentally responsible to not use shiny plastic and foil but it is just not the same.

Anyway here is my foil heart.

I added more hearts as the month went on.

You can see in the last picture I added some multi-strand multi-coloured colonial knots, here’s a close-up. I didn’t like them they just didn’t seem to have anything to do with the other part of the piece. I was hoping the multi-colours would tie them in but it didn’t.

So out they came. I decided that scattering little X’s around to represent kisses would work better.

Here is the finished piece for February.

I know there are no X’s on the left edge but I did that on purpose, with a view to making them a book later and that would be the bound edge. So now I am on to March, You will have to wait to see what it ends up like.