Cockeyed Spinning

 Merry Christmas y'all~ I'm on the road homeward bound. Remember- 

Keep Christ in Christmas!

Preparing fiber to spin is quite labor intensive when dealing with sheep's wool. It has to be washed to get most of the lanolin, vegetable matter, and other things out of the wool. Then it is combed and possibly blended with other fibers before you can sit at your spinning wheel.

Before I moved here I bought a whole merino fleece. I think the total weight was 7 lbs of usable fiber by the time I skirted it and got the second cuts (very short fibers) out of it. I used the suint method of washing the
wool. The suint method is a hands off, less labor intensive way of cleaning sheep's wool. It's basically a rain water fermentation process that takes a full week to halfway accomplish. After it's soaked and rinsed, it is sun dried. It sure beats the traditional way of washing wool in the sink bit by bit and matching water temperatures so the wool doesn't felt.

After it's dry, there may be another step or two involved before the actual spinning can take place. The sheep's wool has to be aerated or picked into fluffy clouds so that it doesn't clump. I've bought a picker for this. If you are spinning locks, that's a different type of spinning all together. Then, you have a choice whether to spin from a cloud or comb it out into batts or rolags. Combing the fibers aligns all the fibers in the same direction. Before my stroke, I spun in all the different variations.

Since my strokes, I prefer batts or rolags. It's just easier to draw and spin. I predraft my fiber to make up for my one handedness. I can hold the bulk down in my lap with my affected arm. It took me two years to teach myself spinning one-handed to get  a fairly consistent end product. I'd been spinning on my great-great-grandmother's wheel since I learned how to spin as a child. When I got that spinning wheel upon my mother's death, my love of spinning became a winter pastime for me. I was determined to get it back after my first and subsequent strokes.

Once I conquered spinning one handed, I donated my great-great-grandmother's wheel to a museum. It had become rickety with age and and to have a craftsman rebuild it would have taken away from it's antique value of the wheel. I bought an electric spinning wheel from Heavenly Handspinning. Jan and her husband are terrific people. Great customer service! And because I ordered it as a birthday present for me, she threw in a free carrying case for me. Now, they live just 30 minutes away from me since I moved up to north GA. No more shipping charges and a quick road trip for me. LOL

I rarely work with sheep's wool anymore. I only use it to blend merino wool with my angora. I buy it in roving form and pick it apart. This will change if we get the Baby Doll sheep I want in the future. But now, I mainly work with angora and/or alpaca fiber for spinning. Neither one has lanolin to have to wash out so no more washing before spinning. Both fibers are very easy to felt so I save the washing for after I've spun it into yarn. I'll comb it out with hand cards and go to my spinning wheel. It's a much simpler process.

Mel mentioned before I moved in with her, that she wanted to learn how to spin. She even built her own spindle and then a spinning wheel. I bought her an Ashford Traveler wheel (first picture) the first Christmas together. She's slowly working up to spinning on it after almost three years. She first had to learn the basics of fiber prep before spinning. That's how my grandmother and mother taught me. First things first. She already knew how to groom the rabbits.

I can now enjoy watching TV while I spin again, while with her it still takes heavy focus. There's a definite learning curve getting you foot and hands moving in different directions. The focus is the hard part for her with her ADD issues, but she'll get there with time and practice. Her favorite way to spin is from a cloud of fiber. This, for her, produces a single ply, thick and thin yarn. I prefer consistent sized strands that are plied together. I've had a lifetime to gain this ability. If she keeps at it, she'll be there in no time.

In truth, our differences make a blended cockeyed homestead work. To each their own with a common goal in mind. She'll have an idea for this or that, and I'll guide and egg her on slowly until completion. It's like this for preserving food stuff too. Mel bought a 23-qt pressure canner and a water bath canner before I got here, but she never canned anything with them. She had nary a canning jar around. The same thing went for her dehydrator, meat and grain grinders. Along comes Jo who knew how to use such items and brought her own as well. I put all of them to use.Come to find out, she detests preserving food stuff. Just helping me, she would look heavenward for patience. That's okay. Together, we have a storeroom and freezer filled with food. We both love that. Two different outlooks for a common goal.

That's it for this week.

Y'all have a blessed day.

Jo

A Long Winter's Rest-Not in Homesteading

Santa's catching some ZZZs

During winter things slow down, but not on a homestead. Winters are spent caring for your animals and doing all the things you weren't able to accomplish during the year. The only thing getting a long winter's rest is the garden and orchard. It should be sleeping soundly with temps in the teens at night.

For the rest of us, we're just as busy as any other time. We do switch gears though. We switch the rabbits and chickens from their automatic waterers to water bottles and buckets ahead of freezing temperatures. All the animals get a thick layer of straw added to their enclosures. The rabbit cages will be mucked out weekly now to compensate. The chicken house will continue with deep bedding. The circulating, cooling fans come down and are replaced by lights. It gets dark mighty early and people need light to keep from tripping over things that jump out at them in the dark (a bale of hay, a rake, a table, hoses, and even a suspended rabbit cages <grin>). One side of the rabbit barn roofing tarp (windward) will be pulled down and fastened.

Egg production slows down supposedly, but it hasn't with our two=year old hens. I'm still getting six to eight eggs a day coming up on the winter solstice (December 21st). Not a bad haul for ten hens. Houdini went on to his next stage of life...pressure canned and into our stomachs. That's okay, the hens have spoken and we listened. Poor fellow was having a hard time getting any between Lil Red and the hens beating him up. Maybe, we'll try again in the spring for a total Buff Orpington line of chickens, or not. We only have two Buff hens left.

Look at the drumsticks on him!

This leaves us with Lil Red as our only rooster. He's content with his eight hens in the run and roost. I still want a Silkie hen because of their broodiness so I can quit buying chicks. Maybe, our Buffs will go broody next year along with Gimpy/Broody. We'll have to build some brood/setting boxes for them separate from the other chickens and a run big enough for mama and chicks to be protected from the rest of the flock. From experience, I know their cannibal nature. This way they won't be harassed and kicked out of their nests by the other hens.

Since we opened the gate in Gimpy and Gimpy II's habitat, everyone wants to lay their eggs in there now. But since we've put the other chickens back in their coop and run, it's easier on the two, older New Hampshire Reds (Gimpy & Gimpy II) to have their habitat to themselves. They are still producing eggs into their fourth year (one every other day). They are our special pets. Mel hatched them out and they are the only two left.

Video featuring Gimpy!

These were only the short term projects quickly remedied. The long term, all winter long, that replaces the garden deals with angora fiber/yarn production and needlework. I've got a dog sweater/coat on my loom right now, a second one for Nnyus and the one for Herbie to go next. Mel is crocheting a new bathroom rug for her bathroom in cream and lime green cotton yarn. Many hours will be sort of "wasted" spinning in front of the television during the coldest winter months. That's the only "rest" we get in winter. The television rots our brains but our fingers are nimble.

Mel has finished her expanding the floor in her workshop. This project was put on hold while we put the orchard and garden to bed. Her next big project is to build a storeroom out of pallets in the workshop for the extra feed and hay for our Cockeyed Critters. This is a total recycled materials project. We'll be putting down extra sturdy blue pallets for the base floor. We'll be breaking down pallets all winter long for the walls and siding. Luckily, we have a never ending supply of free pallets. We'll be using washed feed sacks as a weather barrier both inside and out. For insulation, you know those umpteen dozens of air sacks and Styrofoam pieces and peanuts that you get when you order or buy something, and people fill up landfills with? You got it. We are reusing those between the feed sacks. Eventually, we'll be adding more pallet wood slats to the inside walls too.We'll even try to reuse the nails the best we can, but we much prefer screws. The only thing we'll have to buy is the plywood for the top and some spray foam or caulk to fill in the cracks. We're trying for a rodent proof room. Just to be safe, I'll buy a 3-gallon bucket of rat killer to put in the room.


Another short project is taking all the aluminum soda cans to the recycling center for cash. Before I came here Mel just crushed and trashed them. I got her to start saving them. Last year, we took a full year's worth of soda cans. Yeah, Mel and I have to have our sodas. We tried Kombucha, but it didn't curb our addiction. Mel was surprised that saving just the cans netted us a $54 profit. Now she saves cans religiously, but not so much to pick them up from the side of the roadways. We turn them in just in time for Christmas spending monies or it'll be put towards one month of electric bills.

I'll be canning some also. What is their to can during winter? I'll can up dry beans, leftover soups and stews, all those tomatoes just taking up space in my freezer that need to be sauced too. They'll be quick meals heated on our wood stove.

Having the wood stove going for winter, there's a dry heat in the house. To combat this, I can or put my water bath canner on the stove to add humidity. Coming from south Georgia, humidity was never a problem. Rarely did the humidity drop below fifty percent. But at this higher elevation, the humidity the other day was two (2) percent outside! I've never seen it that low except for AZ. Without the canners going, it's way too dry in the house.

In spinning yarn, especially angora and alpaca, moisture is the enemy and the friend. Unlike sheep's wool, there is no lanolin in either of these fibers so it's fly away tendencies are high. Coupled with a low crimp ratio, we use spray bottles filled with water and a glycerin mix to help make these fibers easily spinable. I prefer glycerin over oil. It's water soluble so it rinses out of the yarn when washed after spinning.

Halo= fuzziness

While in the garden I reuse spray bottles, but for our wool prep spray, I spend the money at the Dollar Tree for a non BPA spray bottle which is smaller. It only takes a little spritz to condition the fiber for spinning with the lower humidity of winter plus the wood stove. The fiber slides through my fingers much easier. The fly away nature of
the fiber is contained without felting the fiber. Once the yarn is washed and dried, the classic halo of angora is restored.

Well, now I'm rambling so it's time to stop.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Jo