Spinning with a friend

A friend of mine is learning to spin yarn on a wheel.  She loves creating colourful, textured yarn and I love watching her.  I'm very lucky she choose my wheel to learn on.

Flax processing tools

dried flax plant with seed pod

removing the seed pods with a dowel

seeds ready to winnow

Once the flax is retted and dried, we break the flax.
This begins separating the boon (chaff) from the fibres

The flax is then scratched using a wooden sword and board to remove more boon from the fibre.

The flax is then passed through the hackles, starting with coarse ones like this

Long and spiky, these hackles work well.
Traditionally the spikes would not be round, but have three or four sides,
with very sharp corners

Carding cotton into punis

Cotton Boll

Seeds easily removed by
gently holding fibre and pushing out the seed

Charge the cards with the fibre

Card the cotton to organize the fibre

Rolling the carded cotton around a knitting needle

To create a puni which keeps the fibre organized and easy to spin

The cotton I'm working with for the tutorial didn't come in boll form (that's from a floral shop), but rather it's already been removed from the spiky shell and is ready to separate from the seed.  The seeds are about as heavy as the fibre, so a pound of cotton, actually makes about half a pound of fibre, and half a pound of seed.  But with luck, maybe these seeds will grow and the house will be full of cotton houseplants.

cast-on bonnet for auto knitter sock machine

There are some times in life when one simply needs professional help.

About three years ago, when my arthritis finally forced me to stop knitting, I received the  most wonderful machine: An ancient circular sock knitting machine made by Auto Knitter.  I had great fun trying to get it to work, and I was nearly there, but in the end, life happened, and it was time to put the machine away.

Although, to tell you the truth, at the time, I think I had the machine working perfectly, it was simply the user that was broken.

So, for the first time in over a decade, things in my life started to calm down and I was able to take my Auto Knitter to a mentor and see if he could fix it (or the user) so that knitting could happen.  Getting help from someone with loads of experience and enthusiasm for the machine - that was amazing.

I'm very happy to learn that it was mostly user error.  I now know how to do the knit stitch, picot edging, decrease, yarn overs, cast on, cast off, and change yarns.  Yet to learn are turning a heal and the purl stitch, but once I know those I can make just about anything.

To practice my new skills, I have been making cast on bonnets.

It's a funny looking thing, but what it does is provide an easy way to cast on stitches on the knitting machine.  Trust me, it really does.  Maybe I'll show you some time.

This one is for my 80 needle cylinder - see, 8 stripes.  I'll make one for my other cylinders once I have them up and running.


The ultimate goal, once I have the machine running perfectly, is to make socks with yarn I've spun, with wool from my sheep.  Hopefully it doesn't take another three years to get there.

Cotton silk puni

This is my first attempt at making a cotton & silk puni.

The yarn it made was pretty good, but a bit more slubby than I liked.  With a bit of practice I think I can create much better punis (cotton roll thingies that organize the cotton for easy storage and spinning).

I have some purple silk fluff that I don't really know what to do with.  The staple length is short, only about 1/2 inch long.  So I thought, why not blend it with cotton for a long draw style spinning?

So I bought some cotton from ARaysCreations on etsy.  I bought an entire pound of it, which is a lot when it comes to cotton.  This cotton is unprocessed, it still has seeds in it.  The seeds are a bit fuzzy, so the fibre isn't super-easy to get off, but with a light touch, it come off fast enough.  Certainly faster than picking vegi matter out of wool.  I'll be saving the seeds with the idea that maybe they will grow.

To make the puni, I applied both silk and cotton fibre to the hand cards and followed this tutorial.  It spun up quickly on my charkha wheel.

Pretty handspun yarn

Merino, corriedale, baby alpaca, angora, and silk blended together on my wild carder - all little bits I had left over from teaching some spinning.  I played it with a fine single of bombyx silk that I 'borrowed' from another project.  Final yarn is textured, soft, with a strong silk core.

I've half a mind to put this on my etsy shop, but Knotty by Nature put in a request for more yarn, so It's going there tomorrow with a few skeins of alpaca/icelandic wool yarn.

Shooting star

Last night I saw the biggest and brightest shooting star I've ever seen.  It was huge, like an airplane and although it was bright white with all the colours like a prism, it was at the same time deep crimson.  It came in very steep and felt like it would hit the trees across the road, but I'm certain it was much further away than that.  Just before it drew even with the tree tops, it winked out.  I don't think it touched the ground, but it was amazing to see a meteor that large and that close.  I had to be looking in that exact direction, at that exact moment, on that exact day.  Half a second delay or too soon, and I would have missed it.  That rock, or chunk of ice fell into this planet's atmosphere at that exact time, and it will never do so again.

Not much later in the night, just before Tuesday finished with us, my grandfather passed away.  He had been very poorly the last few days, and in the end it was a blessing that he didn't have to suffer anymore.

Green cotton

Every insomniac knows, there's a point in the night when one realizes that sleep simply won't come.  For me, it's usually Monday nights, I don't know why, perhaps it's just the horrible notion that Tuesdays hate me.

Instead of venturing to the land of nod, I spent the night spinning cotton.

I call this colour - ghost of green

Beautiful, natural colours of cotton.  I'm fascinated and inspired that cotton has so many natural colours.  Browns, golden, bage, green, red, white, and I bet even more.  For more on naturally coloured cotton, check out FoxFibre - Sally Fox has some amazing cotton plants that she's bred over the years, 

off white, unbleached cotton

These days I'm working on my support spindle skill - perfecting my cotton spinning on a takli spindle.  It's very portable and fast.  Not to mention, it fits an impressive amount of thread on the shaft before needing to unwind.

Sometimes I feel like using my charkha wheel.

I've even been playing with cotton bolls and discovering different ways of preparing the fibre for spinning.

Then there's the plant...

These days, every time I want to grow something exotic, someone tells me 'it won't grow here'.  In the past, I've believed them, only to find the next year that everyone is growing it.

So this year, I've stopped believing them and decided to try cotton for myself.  So far it's right on schedule.  Don't know if it will make fibre yet or not, but hope it does.

Rigid Heddle magazine coming soon

Recently, I received a brilliant little Rigid Heddle loom.  It makes weaving a snap and can do some amazing tricks.  But that's a story for later.

About the same time, a new magazine was calling for submissions.

A magazine about Rigid Heddle weaving.

A rigid heddle loom I saw long ago

Just a hint, it's something well worth keeping an eye on.  I don't know if I'm allowed to say any details yet, so, I'll just say I'm excited about what's coming up.

Wild, native silk moths - what a wonderful excuse for a walk in the woods

I've been thinking about wild silk moths again.

These days,'wild silk' seems to mean two distinctly different things.

The most common meaning is that the silk is produced from domesticated silkworms in a way that does not kill the 'worm'.  The silkworm is allowed to hatch from the cocoon before harvest, this creates a textured thread as the individual silk fibres are broken as the moth chews its way from the cocoon.  This is different than regular harvest style, which creates a very smooth silk, the worm (caterpillar) is killed, then the silk is reeled from the cocoon in one long strand.

But that's not what I'm talking about.

What I want to talk about, are silk moths that live in the wild.  There are all sorts of different types of moths that produce a useable silk.  Several of which are native to my area.  If one is lucky enough to find a giant cocoon or three in the wild woods, one might be able to hatch out some moths.  A boy moth meets a girl moth and they make moth eggs, which hatch into caterpillars, which create silk, which can then hatch into moths... and the cycle continues.

Then again, there are places out there which do both - wild silk from foraged wild silk moth cocoons.

These are some Polyphemus cocoons I hatched out a few years ago.  They are a beautiful large silk moth, with big 'eyes' on their wings.  Four lovely moths hatched out, but alas, the mood wasn't right or something, and the moths didn't decide to bless me with worms.

Some native silkmoths are endangered, harmed by declining habitat and chemicals.  So any attempt to catch and raise these moths, should be undertaken with care and consideration for the overall silkmoth population.

The wonderful thing about wild silk moths, is that they eat a large variety of leaves.  Unlike domestic silkworms that want either oak or mulberry, most wild silk moths are willing to consume dozens of species of trees.  This makes feeding the little masters so much easier.

My plan this winter, is when I take my goats for a walk in the woods, I will keep an eye out for wormsign.  Cocoons.  Sometimes in the leaf litter, other times in branches of trees, who knows where.  I bet if I keep my eyes open, I might just find something exciting.

Some silk moths that may live around here (including a bit about what they eat)
Polyphemus of course
Hyalophora cecropia
Hyalophora columbia
Hyalophora euryalus



Here's a list of moths native to British Columbia, and another list of North American that create silken cocoons that have potential for silk harvest. I suspect my list of possible native silk moths for my area is woefully incomplete.

Fall Shearing, 2015 and beer brings deep clothing talk

11 sheep got a haircut today.  Got 6 nice lambs fleece, first shearing, and one nice adult fleece - all lovely for handspinning.  The rest were too tippy or short so I put them to one side for felt making.

To start with we made a pen with pallets and binder twine.  The trick with this sort of pen, and hurdles in general, is to stagger them in a zig zag style for strength and support.

Larry certainly has grown this last year.

I remember when he was cute little fluff ball that followed us everywhere.  

After wrestling sheep in the mud, I got a bit thirsty.  So, in my same sheep wrangling cloths, I went to my local brewery to fill up my growlers.  Growlers are basically two ltr jugs that we take to the beer making place and they fill them up with fresh beer.  In my opinion, growlers are a good thing.

I like this brewery.  It's new and getting quite famous, so there are usually some tourists or townies hanging about.  But the bread and butter business seems to come from people in fluorescent safety gear or overalls.  The brewer(s) make beer on site, in locally made vats, while employing local people.  The beer is brewed in small batches and it is darn fine stuff.

There was a fella there, and somehow we started talking about clothing lines produced in North America, and how few there are these days.  Bla bla bla, environmental impact, labour issues, stuff like this.  I made my usual comment about how awareness of local issues like food have made people receptive, maybe it's time that there were more locally made clothing from local materials.

He replied along the lines that yes, it's important and yes it would be a good thing, however, making a big deal of the local issue is too gimmicky.  It's better to make a quality product and focus on that.  If that means using local materials and employing local people, then people who care about it will seek it out.

It was quite a powerful thought for me.  Being thirsty, I immediately connected it to the fresh beer that was filling my growlers while we talked.  Why did I choose this brewery?  There must be over a dozen within easy drive of my home, most of them fill jugs.  I passed at least 10 other sources of locally made alcohol in the 5 minutes it took me to get to the brewery.  Why do I buy my beer here?  The atmosphere, sure.  The localness, also important.  But it's the taste more than anything.  The quality of the beverage brings me back.

So maybe it is a good time to start producing locally made clothing from local materials - but not solely as an act of rebellion against globalization (or whatever we are ranting again these days) but as a source of quality, long lasting, everyday wear.  Something that is dearly missing in our world.

Carding alpaca and icelandic with bamboo

Carding today.  Icelandic wool with Alpaca fibre from my rescue boy Tyrone.  Tyrone's fibre is as soft as his personality - very.  A splash of bright copper coloured bamboo dyed by an artizan up island.  Both the sheep and the alpaca wool come from my farm.  Talk about local.


The copper is shiny and shimmers in the light.  This will make some lovely textured yarn.

Been a difficult year for the animals, especially sheep.  Drought makes it so we have to buy them more feed, and with the second and third hay crop being sparse, the cost for their keep has jumped.  No grass to munch on is hard on their teeth too, as they nibble at the scrubby bits of brown grass next to the ground, get dirt in their teeth that wear them down so quickly.  Don't know about the winter.  But I do know they need to do more to earn their keep or we will have to cull a good chunk of the flock.  Makes me sad, but that's farming.  Prices go up,  Income stays same.

But the good news is that the shearer is coming soon for the fall fleeces.  Yes, another expense, but worth it.  He does my fall health check for my grass munchers to catch anything I might have missed.  The fall fleece is the best, as it hasn't had the weather and winter rains beating at it.  5 Lambs fleeces to look forward to.  The adults suffered stress from the drought, so the fleeces there won't be very good for spinning, but maybe I can experiment with felt making.  Never made felt before, but it looks like fun.  Short fibre wool is suppose to felt well.

Fibreshed and random thoughts

Lately I have this thought in my head.  It's not completely formed up yet, but it's getting there.

A video about fibresheds (fibersheds for those in the USA)

A fibreshed is like a water shed or foodshed, but about clothing.  It's the bioregional area around us where we can source the raw materials needed to cloth ourselves.  An amazing thought.

In the video she uses a lot of cotton, which does not grow in my area.  But flax does and it's awesome.  I've been learning a lot about flax through the local flax to linen group.  Warmth from wool, llama and alpaca.  Cool clothing from linen.

I wonder lately why my opinions of hand made clothing is so crewed.  I imagine ugly blocky garments from bulky yarns.  But why?  It doesn't have to be that way.


This idea is about beautiful clothing of classic design, that can be produce by local artisans using local materials.  Like people use to in the past.  Maybe not a whole wardrobe, but a substantial amount of it.

I want people to see that hand made textiles can be luxury as well as artful.  I don't know how to put it yet.


To help make space and fund my sheep's voracious appetite, I've re-opened my etsy store.  This time I want to focus on the more luxurious items.  Fibre, yarn and cloth, all made as much as possible from locally sourced materials.

Terrible me

I know, I'm terrible.  I promised to blog for the Tour de Fleece, but it's almost over and no post.  I almost feel bad about it.

Lots of spinning being done.  Alpaca wool blend, 60% alpaca from my beautiful fibre boy Beau a giant rescue alpaca, and 40% wool from Salt Spring Island.

In other news, for some strange reason, I've decided I'm going to build a yurt.  Still trying to figure out the details, but I set up a separate blog dedicated to my Quest for Yurt Love.  I feel a bit bad starting up yet another blog when the internet is already littered with useless garbles, but maybe it will be useful for future yurt builders.  I'm writing about my research, observations, evaluations, and soon my triumphs and failures.

There is also an ulterior motive to writing the Yurt Blog - I'm a person with a limited budget and a finite number of skills.  I would love to make as much of this as I can myself with as environmentally friendly approach as possible, however, I'm having trouble finding the resources.  Maybe someone out there might stumble on my blog and read about where I'm at.  They might know someone's uncle who has a neighbour who just happens to have an excess of such and such a resource ... or there is a group of enthusiastic group of people who would love to help make giant felt cloths in return for awesome lamb feast.

Who knows, stranger things have happened.

I worry about appealing to crowdfunding so I can buy what I need.  Two reasons why I don't like this - one, just buying the thing doesn't teach me anything new, and two, I don't want to beg for money without giving something back to people - but what?  If I can think of some tokens I can give in thanks, and once I get a better idea of how much the whole thing will cost, then maybe I'll investigate kickstarter.  But until then...

Other things going on here at the farm include saving seeds to return to the seed library, planting out winter veg, getting ready for fibrations fibre fest (which for some reason I've decided to enter as a vendor).

Back to the present

I've had my computer off most of the last few weeks.  It was great, I got a lot of things done both on the farm and in the 14th Century.  The only down side is the mountain of email waiting for my attention.  400+ emails waiting for me...sigh.  This is going to take a while.

I spent most of my week enjoying cooking in the kitchen.  It's wonderful.  A much slower pace of life - Tortoise work if you will.  You know the story of the Tortoise and the Hare?  Where the two critters have a race, the Hare starts out all fast and zippity, but quickly tires, whereas the Tortoise plods along, slow and stead, and unexpectedly (or expectedly if you've heard the story before) gets to the finish line first.  That is what life is like during our week in 1371.  There is always something to do, but nothing urgent.  Just keep on keeping on, until it's done and it's time to start the next task.

Speaking of Tortoise work, it's time to get back to those emails.

Tour de Fleece is coming up in the next day or two, so expect to see me around here a lot more this month.

Strawberry Moon

Strawberry Moon on Friday the 13th, 2014
Rising over the trees, breaking through the clouds.

random pictures

A couple of random photos that I took this week.  I really like the shadow and light in the second one, a bandit sitting on tennyson.

Random animal pictures

 On the whole, I've been spending as little time on the internet as possible.  I feel frustrated by it, as it takes time away from doing actual things.  Sure it's great for instruction and information, but it takes too long to find anything anymore.  But anyway, here's some animal photos to let you know what's up on the farm these days.

geese getting nice and fat, ready for dinner
ram yearling wonders if they will try to eat his ear again

chickens dust bathing 

Abby, a Black Welsh Mountain x Southdown

And her wool

It's a real pity about her wool this year, it has a weak place in it about 2/3rds along, so that when you try to work with it, it makes little noils.

Sam, now called Larry, or when he's really in trouble Samwell Larry Spot, what have you gotten into this time?  But most of the time he's adorable and wants to eat green things - like garlic, or kale, or anything that is fenced off.

Sam the Lamb

Newest member of our farm.

He's all tuckered out from his morning at church and coming to his new home.  I don't know why he went to church, but I am told he loved it and was very popular.

Cute little fellow, follows us around everywhere.

Animal photos because life is crazy but I don't want you to think I've forgotten you

Oh, and suddenly I have sheep

you already know my ram Asterix 

and his friend (ie punching bag) Jeff

These are my three new girls
(from back to front)
A-marry, A-minnie, and Annie

They are such a delight.  Very curious about everything.  The two at the back are pure breed Black Welsh Mountain, a heritage breed.

The Black Welsh Mountain sheep is one of those old breeds that is dying out.  There is thought to be less than 2,000 in North America and only about 10,000 left in the world.  To put this in perspective, it is estimated that there are 30,000 sheep on Vancouver Island alone - that's three times the world population of Black Welsh Mountain sheep.  I feel privileged to help preserve this friendly and playful breed.

Makes lovely yarn