For a while now, I have been wanting to dye my own wool. I have been investing in wee packets of Gaywool dyes from the Threshing Barn and plucking up the courage to get started. I am always so inspired by the colours I see around me and ache to be able to paint - but I can't. However, weaving comes the closest I can find to being able to paint with wool hence the Orkney scarf below, woven in my own wool plus yarn from Whistlebare in Northumberland. Anyway, I think there was a morning when I should have been somewhere but it was cancelled, so I got started. Used a combination of pan and microwave to get the dyes truly set, and then hung my first batch out to dry.: What's hidden away in here is a beautifully dyed lace-weight skein, which I have kept for myself. Will dye some more lace-weight though.
It has been a strange lambing period this time: changeable weather (some of it very good indeed) but the lambs were slow to start and on the whole it was a very stop and start effort. Which is frustrating. This autumn we will probably sponge the ewes again, which will be an entire blog post in its own right. I must remember to take photos. We have ended up with 33 lambs, (10 male and 13 female - so fewer half-hoggets for everyone to eat next autumn) and two non-lambing ewes. Everyone gets another chance on our holding. Our first lamb was a huge single tup which we have named Arthur - now morphed into King Arthur on account of his relative size and presence. The name originally chosen to remind Paolo for ever of the bet he didn't place (and we are habitual Lucinda Russell-backers) on One for Arthur, the Grand National Winner born that same afternoon. He is still growing well, has been left entire and likes having his photo taken, especially when he can show that he is nearly as big as his mum already: We now have a couple of patterned ewes and we put these to a fawn tup, who between them have produced some very pretty patterned lambs, included one who looks as if she has had her feet and tail dipped in hot chocolate. More photos to come. We have decided to Heptavac the sheep from now on, which means injecting all the adults twice, and now the lambs twice too. They don't seem to mind it so much! I was lucky to receive a copy of the Maker's Yearbook earlier this year and it has certainly concentrated my mind about how to promote the wool more effectively. I was lucky enough to get a last-minute stall at the St Abbs Wool Fest (now in Eyemouth) although this meant snaking a day off out of the lambing field and leaving the under-Shepherd in charge). I did a lot of research into how to make the stall work, what other vendors wanted to pass on in the way of advice, and set a promotions budget so that I could make the stall look as professional as possible in a short period of time. First step to get this bright and cheerful pop-up banner stand made, then a trip to IKEA (the gates of the underworld) for table-cloth, fairly lights and baskets in which to display my wool. Also what seemed like an eternity of printing and sticking on labels to each ball of wool, ordering cards and postcards. Finally remembering to organise a cash float and get myself a card-reader! Finally though, I arrived at the venue; everyone was really kind and helpful and I managed to get the stall set up to look like this! What a proud moment that was!
Great things about the wool fair were: - the other friendly stall holders - the great range of classes available (which I really wanted to attend) especially the felted fishy class! - the huge number of really interested and enthusiastic customers who arrived as the door opened and didn't stop coming until the end - the great refreshment service which kept me supplied at the stall with copious amounts of tea all day and of course the Giacopazzi's icecream at the harbour before I headed home. Enormous credit to Jenny Howe who organises this event. It's superb! Next St Abbs Wool Fest is 4th November 2017. Excited already! Haven't written for a while so am writing and dating these to reflect what's been going on over the Spring! The sheep are getting very close to lambing now - predicted start date was 28th March - and we need to feed them more over the last six weeks as this is when most foetal development takes place. Weather has been mixed including snow and hot sunshine! Spent a beautiful week in the Northern Dales and finally started on my Moorland Ripple Blanket by Attic24 . I love her work! Progress has been slow but the colours are great and the blanket currently looks more like this: Came back and went along the next day to Edinburgh YarnFest at the Corn Exchange.
This event describes itself as the UK's premier urban knitting event and it is huuuuge! I owe the organisers of this event so much for all the love and support they've shown me over the last year or so: believing in the idea of LammermuirWool before I did! I tried very hard to restrain myself from buying anything (too much) but it is always good to catch up with friends who run stalls at this event, particularly Amanda Perkins Crochet Blankets, John Arbon (both because - as we all know - Lynton rocks), Ange at WeftBlown, the ladies from Whistlebare who modeled my Orkney Scarf, woven in their lovely wool, Jenny at SkyBluePink, and Ronnie Eunson from Uradale Yarns. It's exhausting though - all that looking at wool and feeling inspired, by just how creative people are - so didn't stay all day and went home very proud of my stash (pictured below). As you can see, there are quite a few books there; and they don't count. Do they?: Tupping time is a crucial part of the year, and decisions about which tups to use on which ewes develop over the course of the preceding months. The old saying is that 'the tup is half your flock', meaning that it is responsible for half the genetic make-up of next year's lambs!
This means that in choosing a tup, you need to look at the sheep that you have, and identify what traits you need to breed in to your flock. As there is a breed standard for shetlands, there are lots of clear pointers of things that you do want in your flock and thus also things that you don't! It is rare for one tup to be able to bring you all the breed traits that you need, but that is the golden grail of tup-hunting, buying, breeding and hiring: the perfect tup with an amenable personality, the correct conformation, fantastic wool .... We breed colour to colour which means dividing the ewes into small groups with a tup allocated to each group: white tup to white ewes; black tup to black ewes, moorit tup to moorit ewes (or vice-versa as we took the ewes to visit a spendid island moorit ram on a neighbour's farm), grey tup to grey ewes (as above), and fawn tup across all the patterned ewes. And in amongst all this complication, you need to avoid any of the breeding sheep being too closely related. The tups came out yesterday and went back to their winter grazing, where their male friends greeted them with hostility and rampant desire. These few breeding tups smell of lady-sheep and so we needed to pen ALL the males very tightly until they ALL smell equally of lady-sheep. Job done for another year. Now just to get ready for the winter feeding regime. Haven't posted since the end of the summer so thought I would do a couple of pieces as an autumn catch up on all things sheep-related.
The end of the summer is traditionally the time when sheep sales for breeding sheep and tups happens in earnest. We attended two official shetland sheep society sales: one at :Laanark and one at Melton Mowbray.As always, we were spoilt for choice with some fantastic sheep for sale. As we have been trying to DOWNSIZE the flock for a few years now, it is hard to justify buying more sheep but ... we did end the sale season with two additionas to the flock: Galtress Squishy (shown left, above) and Muncaster Gwen who is a sweet black sheep with a white krunet head and white socks. We have sold a LOT of sheep this year, but have been able to travel the country and meet lovely new buyers who are just starting out on the Shetland Sheep journey! There's always a wee gap between sales and tupping, so we had a great break away in Kingairloch, where I was able to visit a starter flock I had sold a couple of years ago. The sheep are now all living at Sanna on Ardnamurchan (above), and seem very very happy indeed with their new seaside lives. The lambs are growing very well indeed this year and the ones born early have become boisterous young thugs who will chew our wellies, unzip our jackets and eat our hair given the chance. The picture above shows Birgitta's first ever ewe lamb, a stunning katmoget. Birgitta is the ewe who is getting her annual haircut in the video we've uploaded to our website, and was the first lamb born on this holding.
The fleeces are all away to the Mill in Yorkshire, and we are just deciding what types of yarn to get them all spun in to. Lanark Show and Sale is coming up at the end of August, which means that we only have a few days left to decide which (if any) of our beloved sheep to sell on to other breeders via the market. Sorting through the sheep for the sale is always a bit sad, but also quite rewarding as we can see how the flock has improved over the previous year, and look at the positive traits which we are slowly trying to embed nto the flock as a whole. The Royal Highland Show is a highlight of our sheepy year, and a chance to see the very best Shetland sheep on the mainland. Things were a bit changed this year with the sheep pens laid out differently and the judging taking place slightly later on the Friday afternoon. The judge was Eric Graham, a breeder from Shetland who took his time judging the sheep and awarded the prizes to a number of 'new' faces who definitely deserved them! As well as the competitive side of things, the show is a great chance to catch up with other Scottish breeders as we don't all get together that much. and we took time to chill out in the sunshine after the ram inspections on Sunday morning. I shall write more about ram inspections another time. I managed to get time to see just a fraction of the rest of the show, but made the effort to visit the 3D2D craft tent to visit Weft Blown's stall and introduce my other half to Ange the weaving-teacher. Didn't spend much money this year but bought another pair of Jakoti shears and something to clean grass and scour stains: we need to prepare the sheep for Haddington Show!
The shearer has been and sheared half of the flock and I've added a new page which includes a short film of Fraser at work on our grey katmoget ewe, Birgitta. |
Archives
January 2024
Categories |