I just listed a new Art yarn in the shop.  “Bunny White” is a merino angora 2 ply art yarn that I hand spun.  If you want to see the entire listing with more pictures from various angles go see it here.

I also listed 3 hand dyed bunches of Wensleydale locks in pink, purple, and a blue that is sort of aqua and sort of columbine.  Listed 2 purses, 1 crocheted basket that could be a yarn basket, a fuzzy trivet, and another art yarn called European Yarn as it is the Angora Merino Art yarn that I made the European Scarf and Purse of Many countries from.  I still have a large amount left and decided to sell it as a skein instead of making something else from it.  You might like to visit the shop and see all the updated and new listed items for sale.  The shop is here.  Happy Spinning!!

I have been listing up a storm in the shop these last few days.  I am scared to see my Etsy.com bill!!!  eek!!  Since I discovered my allergy to mohair, I have been listing all that on the shop as well.  I only have one bag of rovings left to list, however I ran out of the two size bags that I use specific for listings so must make a store run later this week.  Finding the motivation to finish the listings might not be as easy to locate! LOL 

If you want to see all the new listings, 30+ or more, as I am now officially over 100 items for sale,  you can view the shop HERE.  It is a perfect locations to find all your Christmas Shopping needs and have them delivered to the person that you are buying for.

This lovely little number is my Black Cherry Merino Alpaca Mohair Scarf.  I hand dyed the Merino 2 ply light fingering weft with Black Cherry Kool Aid.  I was disappointed when it did not come out the dark purple sort of cherry colour I expected, until I put it with the Red Alpaca and Faded Red mohair blends with white merino.  I just love the colours of this.  I think it POP!!  What do you think?

I also hand wove the entire scarf on my Ashford Rigid Heddle 30 inch loom, and I hand spun the bulk of the yarn, hand plying the rest of it.  This was a fun Scarf!!  You can see its entire listing HERE.

This is my Grape Merino Scarf.  It is 100% merino, hand woven, with the wefts being dyed with Grape Kool Aid to get this wonderful colour.  Smells nice too!   This is a 2 ply light fingering yarn I had spun up by Shepherd’s Mill and it took me about 3 days or more to weave this scarf while most of the others I can do in a day.

So what do you think of this one?  It is extra long and extra wide so it can be wrapped around your neck several times.  The listing with more photos is HERE.

This is my Alpaca Merino Mohair scarf done in natural tans, taupes, browns, fawns, creams and whites.  I hand wove this one, as well as hand spun the yarn, and hand plyed it all.  This is one Hand Made Scarf!    Its Listing is HERE.

What are your thoughts on this one?  Feel free to leave comments here on the blog so that I can see what you think.  It is all a learning experience with me as I am now weaving with yarns that I have spun, plyed, dyed and custom made myself.  It is much different than working with mill or store spun yarns.

This is a little lovely that I hand crocheted with a larger size hook.  It is 100% pure Red Kid Mohair.  The scarf is about 2 oz or a little under so you can wrap it around your neck several times and almost forget it is there.  It is an open lace stitch, soft, light, airy and delicate.  Truly luxurious.  Its listing with more photos is HERE.

So again, what are your thoughts on the new scarves?  what is your favourite and why?  any ideas or suggestions? any others that you may like to see?  Remember, all the scarves are listed for sale in the shop and came be see there.

I bought a bunch of angora goats to have my own fibre to spin.  Than the herd grew to large proportions and I coudn’t keep up so I started having them sheared and sold some.  I really enjoy the critters but I had not spun any of their fibre. I started after 1.5 years to spin their fibre and realized I hated it.  It always seems to go up my nose and irritate me.

So I cut back on them more, but I missed them greatly and decided to give spinning their fibre a second chance. I tried and it wasn’t as bad as it was the first time as I had gotten into more spinning, gotten better at it and started to enjoy spinning again. but the mohair was still not my favorite.

My health started to go down hill.  The animal numbers started to go uphill.  something had to give and it appeared to be ME!!  I started to sell my angora goat herd off, put a lot of the sheep in the freezer and went from 40+ head last winter to only 15 head right now with perhaps another 5 going here shortly.  10 is my magic number that I think I have to be at or BELOW! to be able to find a balance somewhere.

Been weaving up a storm lately, a lot with yarns that I have spun myself.  Found a lot of things I can’t do, some that I can do and make numerous mistakes.  still learning on what I can and can not do and what does and does not work with weaving hand spun yarns.

What does all this mean?  well after making at least 4-5 scarves in the last week, I realized I can’t wear Mohair.  apparently I am allergic to it.  maybe that is why I have hated spinning it, working with it, touching it and wearing it.  Anything with mohair in it gives me the creeps and I tear it off in less than a minute.  I had a sample of a 2 ply yarn that had been spun and given to me.  one ply was 100% angora bunny and 1 ply was 100% alpaca.  I wound the skein of yarn around my neck and wore it outside for 2-3 hours while I did my chores yesterday.  not only did that skein of less than an ounce keep my neck warm when normally I wear a scarf wrapped around my neck 3-4 times, but I didn’t claw it off.  That is a good thing!

I finished a 100% merino scarf the other day, and it was OK for me to wear as well.  so my intuition of having merinos and angoras for my new fibre seems to be accurate.

Today I cleaned out my entire fibre room of anything that has mohair in it.  Raw fleece, Mill processed Rovings, yarns, and even blends that have mohair in them.  Expect to start seeing me list them on line as I am going to clear all Mohair from my ranch as I have sold off all the angora goats so there will be nothing new coming up.  Wow, can’t believe I am allergic to the stuff. Maybe I should have worked with the fibre before I bought a herd of angora goats 3.5 years ago.  can you say DUUUUH!!!!????

My DH (dear hubby) has suggested perhaps I am addicted to treasuries?  Whaaaat?  How could he think that?

Anyhoo, my newest treasury can be see here for the next 48 hours or so.  And you can view this small snap shot of the treasury right now.  Again, I struggled to decide which to make alternates and which to keep as main ones.

I had such fun picking these out that I think Esty.com should allow my treasury to have SIXTEEN items in it rather than the standard 12!  I have said that before, but I don’t think they take me seriously.

I will mix them up during the short time the treasury is alive, but you can see them ALL in this snap shot to the left.

I really do enjoy CricketsCreations and this is one of her pieces that I truly do enjoy. you can see her listing  here complete with numerous photos!

fullenstar is a new artist to me and I can not get over how lovely her item is. you can see her listing here.

I included a picture of her lovely item to the right to show you how glorious her colours are in the picture.  I love how she has dyed the colours, how they blend together, the fullness of her felting and well just a lovely unique design.

SplitRockRanch lives just “around the corner” from me out here in the sticks!  I do like her fleeces and her dyed locks.  check out her fleece in the treasury here.

Well I am off now to go finish the chores here on Alba Ranch and feed my critters so they can produce more of that lovely long wool, fine wool, and mohair you are getting accustomed to seeing in my shop.

If you feed them, they will GROW!

I have been included in my first Treasury on Esty. Charlie had his first inclusion a few weeks ago but this is mine and it is for Berry Confetti!!!

Berry Confetti in my First Treasury!!

A Treasury on Etsy.com is a neat way to show your appreciation and admiration for another artist’s work.  You get to pick 12 items only one can be yours, and most times they follow a specific theme.  This Treasury is named …with Altitude! in Honour of it being in Colorado and our elevation.  It is really wonderful when another artist admires your work enough to include it into a treasury they create!

Berry Confetti is a hand woven rug that I did from Shetland Rovings on a Peg loom that my Father in law made for me in Scotland.  I than dyed it with numerous packages of Kool Aid to get the colour that you see and lightly wet felted it for more strength. 

I got the Shetland fleece from my friend Roger, in Pueblo CO, and it was my first time using Shetland fleece.  I decided that I do not like working with Shetland fleece in rovings and weavings as it is very soft and falls apart.  It would be necessary to hand spin it first and than use it in a rug, or felt it like I did with this rug.  I still prefer Merino Fleece for just about everything from rovings to hand spun yarns to mill spun yarns.  I do like my long wools though for working with lock formations in my weavings.

August 8, 2009 is the opening reception for the Wearable Treasures Art show at the Fremont Art Center in Canon City, CO.  I dropped off my entries for the show yesterday so at least I can breathe and that is done.

Now I plan on getting into some heavy duty spinning and creating some things from that once I make some novelty yarns.  I am a bit torn in doing it on my spinning wheel which is faster and my brand new drop spindles, top and bottom, that Christie made for me.  Christie’s shop on Etsy is at this link:  http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5594913 She does not have anything currently listed in her shop, but she has been working on my custom order and you can convo her and get her to make you YOUR spindles as well.  look at her solds and see some of her designs.  She burned our logo into the spindles and we designed the shading and texutres ect together.  she was the brains and creative, I was only the director. haah

these are a couple of shots of the spindles when she was almost done and ready for the lacquer.  aren’t they just lovely?

It has been a very drizzly cold wet rainy day that reminds me of Scotland.  Makes me homesick for it.  Silly huh?  but I am wearing 2 shirts and a sweater, and fluffy slippers..so that must tell you something. After all the hot weather we have had of over 90 degrees heat by 9 or 10 am, this is a bit odd.  I do so hope the goaties do not get sick as these huge fluctuations in temperatures are very hard on their bodies, particularly the baby goaties!

Since my last posting,  Emma did finally kid.  She had a very lovely marked bouncing boy!  we named him Monty and he literally bounces around.  He can be seen at times catapulting through the air, and landing in his favorite spot…on the broad back of Brownie the sheep!  He has attempted it on various other smaller sheep with varying results.

The little premature doe, April, is sitll with us.  she has not been feeling well so we don’t know how she will go.  she has scours and we have no clue why.  Tried various medicines and so far she seems to be determined to keep the scours.  I did wean Jet, Ringo and Blue and put them in the big boy pen a while ago.  The weaning may not have been too premature, but the big boy pen I think may have been.  I do not think they got enough food even though I thought they were.  Ringo was down in the pen at the beginning of this week and than his brother Jet was.  Charlie just said that Jet died during the night.  They were weak from lack of food, so we made them a special pen out of alfalfa hay bales and have had them separate with unlimited food for days…I thougth they were coming on, but Jet gave up the fight.  When Ringo got knocked at the beginning of the week, I thought he was injured internally and would not make it.  He has however still been with us for another FIVE days..so there is hope with him.  We took Blue out of the big boy pen even though he was thin but not as weak as the others.  he has been having fun in the doe pen but he is so close to that age where he could be too fertile.  When we remove the last of our sale animals this week, we are going to separate the really big boys into that far pen and leave the smaller boys in the middle pen so that they can be separate from the girls but still be safe from being in with the big boys until they grow a lot more.  I hope this helps the issues.  sometimes the angora goats just grow so slowly.  Monty is at least a month younger than them and is probalby twice their size and 4 times more energetic!!

After working night and day on my fiber entry for the show, they cancelled it!    so it won’t be displayed but here is it.  Four Seasons:

It starts at the left with the white one as winter, than spring, than summer and than fall going clockwise.  I used Wensleydale, Lincoln Long Wool (coloured and white), alapaca, mohair (coloured and white) throught out the weavings.  there is raw fleece tied in, rovings, hand spun yarn, mill spun yarn from my rovings, but there is no synthetic yarns from any shops or anything other than pure fiber as even the hooks to hang it were braided from left over warps.

I listed six different listings last night on www.albaranch.etsy.com so go have a look and enjoy! it is a great collection of fine yarns that I had got back from the mill.  Mohair, Merino, and some merino/mohair blends.  some white and some colours.  I finally listed some of the red yarns, a medium and a dark fawn mohair yarns!

I have been making goat cheese every week recently, and boy it is certainly nice to have it again.  Sales are starting up on the etsy shop again, go stop in and buy something!!

I am writing this post again as it was lost, disappeared into post lala land!  I can’t even remember what I said.

Marcie called this morning to tell us that Moo Cow had her lamb this morning.   A very large black ram with some white spots.  We go to the vet tomorrow to have the others checked over, and with it starting to snow and the clouds and sky looking angry I am a bit worried.  We have the trailer already hooked up, backed down and ready to go.  We will just feed them hay in there in the morning and run them in.  That should make it easier to deal with  in the morning if there is snow and we have to leave early.

Once these are all sorted out and given a clean bill of health, we only have 2 ewes who have not lambed yet for sale.  We have a swap on the 15th that is more or less local and if I have not sold them by than, we are going to load them up, take them along with the black guard llama and about 4-5 cats and go to the swap.  Looking to sell the ewes and any lambs if they lamb before than, sell the llama inexpensively to the right person and give the cats away.

The llama is an excellent proven guard but a bit obsolete with four livestock guardian dogs.  He also hates our herd dogs and since we are using them more and more, it will just be easier to not have him on the ranch any longer.  We have one other female llama, who is younger and I have had her since she was about 6 months old.  She is easier for me to work with for shearing and such, and she is also guarding.  She is a favourite of my friends, so she goes to her house in the summer with the goats to guard in her pasture where they don’t have the extreme predators that we have up on the ranch.  The LGD would be a bit of an overkill down in town.

Our bread baking experience yesterday was a total hit, that was our second batch of bread dough and it was miles better than the first one.  So we have now cracked how to do this.  But at this rate, we are eating a loaf of bread a day. ahha  wonder how long the novelty of fresh baked bread each day will take to wear off??  We don’t really need to buy bread anymore, but I do think I might get an electric bread knife.

off now to sort out more merino and mohair fleece and box them up for the mill tomorrow…..

We have not had any more recent lambs. But we have managed to get rid of some!! My girlfriend, Marci, has bought Moo Cow, the spotted coloured merino/rambulette ewe. She is the only one of the four that still has not lambed, but Marci is watching her closely as she is getting rather close. She has also bought Frick and Frack, the two lambs that were saved when Brown Mama died. They are over 2 weeks old now and doing fine. They have spent the last couple of nights outside fully now, as Marci doesn’t have them in the house. They are however, not used to the cold, so they are wearing doggie coats that she normally puts on her Boston Terriers. haha. She is also going to take the black lamb and her mama but first we doing a vet visit to ensure that the mama is fine, and she will also be taking the white lamb in a few months once she is weaned as I am keeping the mom.

They have shown goats and meat sheep in 4H before, but this will be the boys first time showing fiber sheep. There is also a spinning classification for 4H, and her oldest boy has done some spinning and is looking forward to maybe entering that. Regardless of what category they show in, I know the sheep will have a good home as I bought my first goats from her as well as my livestock guardian dogs. I answered an ad in the local paper for a dairy goat and Marci and I have remained friends ever since

We have a black angora doe that is getting close to kidding, and several boer/togg goats, nubian goats, and the dorper meat sheep. I think that we will be lambing and kidding through July this year!! but we will have a lot in the freezer and some to sell for meat as well. wahoo. anyways, will let you know what happens with the new arrivals.

Chaz just got home this weekend. We have the first of his immigrations appointments on Thursday. He has applied for his green card, so there is a whole process and appointments. He got off the boat a week early to get to this appointment. With him home, maybe I can rest up a bit enough to start doing more of my crafts again. I have done some knitting one evening in the last two weeks, but that has been about it. I just can’t seem to shake this being sick with the sinus stuff 100% and when I was taking care of the ranch and all the lambs on my own, it was just dragging me down.

I have learned how to make bread, artisan bread, in about 5 mins a day. Started with that this week and adore making the breads. I have had a few less than desirable loaves but with the dogs, nothing goes to waste. Domino was actually in the dog house most of yesterday because he “counter surfed” and stole the best of the 3 loaves that we had done. so I guess that means the dogs approve of my making bread every day. just one more step on the road to making things all myself

Things have been changing on the ranch here, with new additions popping out the last few days. my two big white merino/rambulette ewes lambed on Sunday and Monday. Both only had a single ewe, which really surprised me, but their deliveries they did themselves and no calls to the vet like with Brown Mama.

This is #209 and her huge ewe lamb. Since she is a white ewe with colour genetics and was bred by a brown rambulette, I was a bit surprised when she popped out a BLACK ewe. This little gal was up on her feet, looking for a nipple and bouncing off the walls ever since. She is only JUST 24 hours old in this picture and she is so big. She is also taking on a little of her mom’s personality with being a bit skittish, so I have picked her up a few times today already and talked to her to try to calm her a bit. Had to steal her from mom, take her out in the barn yard, and all the pictures that I took in the barn of her were just black and you couldn’t see her. hahah

This is #239 little white ewe. This mom was really big, so I thought she had twins in her. Imagine my surprise when out popped this tiny white ewe and nothing else!! She was up on her feet but not moving much that first day. Now she won’t stay with her mom and is forever running off out of the barn, around the barn yard, getting head butted by other sheep or the goats and generally creating havoc. Her mother can than be seen running frantically around trying to find her. It is probably a good thing that she did not have more than one as this little girl is going to be a handful and give her mom a run for her money.

Other than that, all the other ladies are still holding their knees crossed and there have been no new arrivals today. So off to go do some more chores while it is still day light and I might be able to find some energy!

What have I been up to recently? well it is time that I start blogging on a regular basis as I can’t seem to keep up with remembering what happened since the last time.

We went to Scotland for Christmas and Hogmany. Had a lovely time with the folks and got another great idea for an item of clothing to try weaving on the loom.

We came back in January and promptly got sick. Both of us have been down for weeks, so unlike us as we hardly ever get sick. We sorted out a lot of various things that we needed to do though as ranch life must go on.

We lost one of our new pregnant angora does..sniff..sniff..than we lost a cat..didn’t really need that one….than this week has been a nightmare. It started with Charlie not getting flight details for his travel to Africa on Monday. So Tuesday he was all pins and needles while we waited to see if his office people would get their act together. He had emailed them and called them on Monday to which they had ignored him. On Tuesday, we got a phone call and had 1 hours notice to get him to the airport for his flights to Africa. thanks a lot!

while I was finishing up the last of the chores, I noticed Brown mama was down. She is a merino/rambulette cross ewe that had been heavy with lambs and walking splayed legged for days. she did get up a little bit later but her back legs were shaking. So I hurried him to the airport and got back to the ranch. she was up, but that evening she layed down as if she was resting and never really got back up again. she did try a couple of times the next day, but would take about 2 steps and fall. She appeared to go into labour but was not stressed, so I was checking her every 99 min..that was the most that my kitchen timer would do..ahah all of Wednesday and got nowhere. no lambs. on Thursday I was starting to panic as I had not been able to get the vet out on Wednesday (I had no sleep for days) and my friends couldn’t get here as some were lambing or kidding as well..than one came rushing from Pueblo. He was with her for 5 min and said that her cervic was closed and we had to get her to the vet for a csection. We could hardly move her, this is one big sheep! but we did get her in the truck to rush down the mountain and we ended up having to do a c section that basically cuts the lambs out and than euthanizes her. it was not pretty. she only had maybe a 20% chance of even surviving the surgery so we didn’t stress her any further. She had been down too long.

I now have a ram and ewe lamb to feed round the clock and don’t really have my dairy goats in milk. I also have 3 more merinos that are rather heavy with lambs but no one has lambed yet. what a week.

With all of this, I have not done any weaving but I did get all my yarns from the mill yesterday. I am hoping to get most of the new yarns posted in the shop for sale and hope to be able to do some weaving or something soon. life of a rancher. ahahah