Lambs On-line

November 19 , 2009                    from Gretchen Frederick

Before we get down to business, I want to share a couple lamb photos that Sue took at her farm RedGate last week. Sue’s girls have been lambing like crazy, 12 down and three to go. All big healthy lambs which makes a shepherd really happy. Sue will be at the market this Sunday...you might want to congratulate her.   Here is a red Karakul lamb with white frosting...
...and here are two black ram (have to be!) lambs. Boys...they start practicing their ram like behavior sometimes within hours of being born. It just cracks you up. And this is the polite behavior... Karakul sheep is where Persian lamb comes from and you can really see it in these photos.
Karakul yarn (from the breed you see above) in three natural colors: a silver white heather, a gray heather and a deep black from first shearing of the lambs. This is one of just a couple breeds of sheep that have a true black wool instead of just deep brown. This yarn felts unbelievably well. Stop by and see the new knit-to-felt nesting boxes designed by Caroline Hockenberry.

Clun Forest/alpaca yarn in natural white, solid dyed colors (including two new ones: a soft, washed out burnt orange inspired by the fallen oak leaves I’ve been raking and a pale straw yellow), and hand painted long skeins including three new ones (reds/grays, soft blues/gray/and the same oak leaf color and another soft blues/gray/soft watery green). This is a light sport weight, 2-ply, woolen spun yarn. The Clun Forest breed (see photo, left, a Clun ewe from Blue Heron Farm in Bluemont, VA) grows a down type wool, pretty fine and very very springy so this yarn has a lot of elasticity.

This yarn is perfect for our new pattern for fingerless mittens. This pair is knitted in Clun Forest yarn (storm cloud blue), a springy yarn that hugs your hands. They feel great and leave your fingers free for sheep handling or shopping at the market. You can make a pair of mittens with one skein of the solid, or two pairs with a long hand-painted skein (one for you, one to share).

	Corriedale yarn and the Corriedale hat kits. This is a much heavier yarn, aran weight (think aran sweaters) and great for mittens, scarves, sweaters, throws etc. that are quick to knit in this big yarn and...it felts. This is the yarn we use in the knit-to-felt brimmed hats. Either in a kit with accent color for a hat band, or the adjust pattern you can knit with one skein (see pictured).
And most of our kits (great gifts...) including the kit for the fun hat with ear flaps that comes with your color choice of polar tech lining.	The Dorset Suffolk sock yarn is the other yarn that works beautifully with the fingerless mittens.

Thank you to Jessie (and Mischtilde a 2 week old Nigerian Dwarf goat) of Blue Heron Farm for modeling for us!

---

The Yarn Story

Greetings! Here is the beginning of our yarn story: growing the wool (okay, the sheep do that and it takes the Romneys nine months to get nice and long). Monday morning, when it was dry and warm, I took this shot of Princess Lily, she is a lamb:
	Then, in the afternoon, our favorite shearer Margi Dunlap came to shear....
...and by late afternoon, they were naked!

Now it’s not so warm and very dark and gray, but the goats (grudgingly) let the sheep in the barn so they can stay dry and warm.

So I have 13 fleeces in the shed and most of them will become Solitude yarn. But first they will go to Sue at her farm (RedGate) and she will wash each fleece, one at a time in 5 gallon buckets (using their new solar heated hot water and detergent), rinsed and then laid out to dry thoroughly either in the sun, or now...in the basement. Later, they will get packed up along with fleeces from other Romney sheep that we have selected at farms nearby (on their shearing day) and together they go off to be spun at a small mill in New Mexico to add to our batch of semi-worsted spun Romney yarn.

Worsted spinning is a method used with long fibers. The wool is pin drafted to make the fibers parallel when the twist is put in. This makes a smooth yarn that (especially with the lovely Romney Lustrous Longwool) is silky to touch, very shiny and will be hard wearing. When the spun yarn gets shipped back to us two to six months later, it is on cones; we skein it and tie it off specially to prepare it for dyeing, then those skeins get washed, then go into a dye pot and stirred and stirred (think three witches) so it’s dyed evenly (which tangles it up pretty good). The next day the skeins are removed from the dye pot, straightened a bit, rinsed as many times as it takes until excess dye is removed (two to ten times) and hung up to dry. Then each skein is put on an umbrella swift (to hold it) and re-skeined so it will be easy (untangled) for you all to use. Users note: we always tie the two ends of the skein together with a bow, then tie it in three other places to keep it from tangling. You can cut off those three ties (carefully) and know the bow tells you where the ends are.

It takes awhile to dye enough colors to have a palette going, and I started dyeing this batch over a year ago. Plus in this yarn we have three undyed colors: white, gray and dark brown (upper right in the photo). I love this yarn. Yes, they are my sheep and I am anything but impartial but still, it is just buttery to knit with.

Not a normal day for a farmer at all...

We are very excited to be part of the new White House FreshFarm Market. The opening day was extraordinary for so many reasons, many of which revolved around Michelle Obama coming to the market and giving it and (I hope) farmers markets all around the country good publicity.

The hardest part of the day was accommodating the security. Phew. I cannot even begin to imagine what it must be like for the first family. They do need to eat good food to stay positive and productive. I was exhausted by the end of the day; it was at least twice as hard to do this market (12.5 hours door to door) as I think it will be on normal Thursdays for the rest of the season. I won't bore you with all the details, but check out the top photo. The man in the foreground was (surely) Secret Service. He is intently watching the metal detectors that were just to the right of our stand that everyone had to go through. Then look just above the green Quail Creek tent top at the left of the photo and you will see two men with very big binoculars and high powered rifles. We felt quite well protected.

The speeches were admirably brief and extolled the virtues of fresh food. We all (Joan Ferenczy and I from Solitude and Sue and Bill Bundy of RedGate Farm) took turns walking down to the other end of the street to hear them...and see Michelle of course.

The most wonderful part of the market though came after all the hoopla. The market was really well attended. We got to see some of our long time customers that we now know work downtown, plus many new customers who were surprised to see yarn at a farmers market. Then there were quite a number of knitters who showed up looking for us because some great person posted on Ravelry that we would be there.

The market continues on Thursday afternoons through the end of October. Looking forward to next week!