Gwendolyn

Meet Gwendolyn...oops! She is so friendly!


She came here last fall as a lamb, very wild. However it only took three or four days and I was tripping over her each time I went in her enclosure! Once Shetland sheep trust you, you have high honor in their minds. Gwennie is a purebred Shetland ewe who is a moorit blaeget. That means she is a beautiful shade of brown with golden tips NOT caused by sun bleaching or damage. The tips are honey colored and beautiful! I was sooooo excited by her wool! It is very long and strong, yet fine enough to be pleasantly soft. Sock ewe! Being a avid spinner and knitter, I feel I have a better understanding of wool on the hoof. Getting to know fleeces takes a long time, and I still have lots of experience to gain, as we all do. However, this ewe made me happy right away. Turns out, she is of the same line that I've picked visually and by feel in my other sheep. Wooly Bear is the same thing. That amazes me....

Her front legs are not the conformation I'd like to see, but she is nice in all other ways. Good back legs, good topline and size, well sprung (she's standing on a slope here, giving the appearance of being higher in hip than she really is), nice head and tail (she stuck it out here so you can see!).

Her wool is crimpy and a little more consistent neck to tail than I'd like to see. I like britch wool as long as it isn't toooo coarse. Her britch is a little soft. She doesn't really fall into the longish/wavy category as she has good crimp, yet not crimpy enough and too long to be in the kindly category. So she's a......kilong!
One advantage of having a small flock that you shear yourself is that you can shear in the morning, skirt and pick immediately...make your assessments, and put the fleece straight into the tub! By mid-day, the fleece is sheared, skirted, weighed, recorded, washed, and drying. I like that! Then it's time for a coffee break to dream of how I'm going to use the wool! Here are two balls of her yarn I spun up as soon as it was dry. Notice the honey highlights! I loveeeee those! I've learned that in making wool into roving, you'd loose that beautiful honey color...it would get diluted in the carding process. By spinning a freshly washed and dried fleece without carding, you get this beautiful effect. Isn't it pretty?
So of course, I had to make socks right away! First I spun up the whole fleece. That took me a few days. Then it was on to socks! I had spun this wool on my Ashford Kiwi (a no bells and whistles pleasant little wheel that I enjoy very much. Meanwhile, my all bells and whistles Lendrum is sitting...waiting...) I spun a heavier worsted weight singles, then plied two singles for a 2-ply yarn that would be heavy and warm enough for the NEXT brutal winter I'm sure we're about to have. By making the socks sooo warm, I can wear them in my mud boots without need for winter boots. They are also so cushy that I am secretly delighted every time I take a step in them. If you don't have to do winter chores, it's hard to know how unpleasant they can be sometimes. It is such a luxury and pleasant feeling to have these socks on. They really take the bite out of bad weather!!

So not only do I have the pleasure of knowing Gwennie, and watching her playfulness, and enjoying her personably friendly nature, but I have, with a little work, wonderful fiber to make delightful garments with that I've come to treasure. That's worth the work! If you haven't had the opportunity to wear Shetland socks yet, hummm.....don't wait any longer! Get yourself some and see what I mean!

Can you knit?

I LOVE knitting socks. It was challenging to learn how to knit them, but I stuck with it. When learning to knit something new, or even learning the knit and purl stitches themselves, I find that people expect to pick it up really quick. They get frustrated if they cannot do it perfectly right away. Knitting, along with most skills in life, is a skill that takes time and practice to learn. It is bumpy in the beginning. You'll make mistakes. Your knitting won't look like an experienced knitter's piece in the beginning, but it is beautiful anyway. Trust yourself to learn. Trust that with forgiveness of your inexperience, that you too can become a great knitter. Save your beginning knitting so you can look back at it and see very concretely how much you've improved. I have a hard time convincing new knitters of these things. They want to learn how to knit perfectly NOW and they don't want to save anything, unconvinced they'll see any difference.

I often tell my new knitting students how in times past, girls and boys learned to knit from teachers who were helping them frequently, and how those students learned at a young age, practicing sometimes for a few years. Children would learn as young as four or five years of age, of course with forgiveness of their newness and mistakes as their fingers learned the dexterity and coordination. By the time they were nine or ten years old, they'd become the primary sock knitters for the family, expected to keep the family well supplied with socks through the long winters. In times past, people understood that it takes time to learn something new and become good at it. Mistakes were ok, and often vaporized as skill increased. (That is a really fun moment!!!)

The most disheartening thing I experience in conversations with other people about knitting is this..."I tried that but was no good at it" or "someone tried to teach me once but I just couldn't get it". If you are one of those people, you need a new teacher! A good teacher will tell you right away that knitting is a skill that takes time to learn and daily practice, even if it's just a few minutes. Mistakes are expected. Muscle memory can do wonders for you! You will improve....trust me! Everyone can become a good knitter, and I urge you to try! Hang in there! Improvements come faster than you think. But it will be bumpy at first. Expect it, embrace it! It will be sooooo worthwhile!

The socks above came from this fleece (my ewe, Iris -- see Iris blog in July postings). I washed the fiber, then spun the yarn on my Lendrum wheel. The gray socks are 2-ply yarn with an accent purply blue yarn knitted in the cuff and heel flap along with the gray. I LOVE these socks! They are soooooo soft! I've worn them for two winter seasons now for all my winter chores. The underside of one sock has a small hole in it now but the other is still going strong! (My expensive Eddie Bauer wool socks only lasted part of one winter season...frustrating!) The red socks are the same yarn, only dyed in the skein with fruit punch Kool-Aid. They were so bright on a dreary winter day! Fast favorites, too. I did not card the wool. I know that makes some of you squirm, but really, carding is not always necessary when spinning shetland fiber and yes, you get a strong and beautiful yarn. :)


Here is a picture of yarn I spun on my drop spindle, then dyed with lemonade Kool-Aid. The color so reminded me of my Grandmother's daylilies! This beautiful daylily (handed down from her garden and moved with me many times) has a fragrance...yes...hard to believe as most don't. That fragrance puts me right back into her garden as the girl I once was, playing dress up in frilly dresses and sniffing lovely roses and daylilies while she baked peach pie. I cannot bring myself to knit up this lovely yarn so I admire it from my cabinet whenever I happen to look that way.
NEW: You can now leave comments on my blog! Do you knit? Have you always wanted to knit? Leave a comment!

Hand Shearing Iris

Here is Iris in full fleece back in June. She was much wider with all that wool! Being a purebred shetland ewe, she has a lovely beaver coat that is long and soft. I first fell in love with Iris when I purchased her fleece two or three years ago. I so enjoyed spinning and knitting with the wool, I went back and bought her fleece the next year. That fleece was so nice, too! It spun so easily on my wheel that it didn't take long to get the huge fleece completely spun. I made many fine pairs of socks from the yarn I spun. Those socks have made winter farm chores far more comfortable! Being a musket in color, the yarn is beautiful undyed. I have also sold some of her yarn for knitting, and have been commissioned to make socks and a lace scarf from her fleece which are finished and sold.

Since I loved her fleece so much, I asked her owners if I could buy her. They said yes! When I brought her home, she was overweight (they had nice pasture!) and really wild. So I penned her in a smaller space for quarantine, and to try to gain her trust. Each day, I worked with her to accept my presence and touch. I believe wild sheep experience too much stress. When you have to handle them, the sheep and handlers are more likely to not enjoy the work, and be more likely to get injured. Plus, stress and wool production do not go together! After a couple of weeks, I could catch her in a reasonable few minutes, and I had her accepting a halter without struggle. A couple more weeks later and she was my best behaved walker on the halter...so politely walking along by my side! She accepted me and trusted me that being handled was a positive thing, thus making things safer and less stressful for everybody. This paid off big time at shearing! Here is what she looked like after all that wool came off.
I hand sheared her myself, using scissors around her face and neck, and blades for the rest of her fleece. Shearing beaver coats is a cinch as the wool is so clean next to their bodies, and long. It is easy to get the blades into the wool and do a nice snip without risk of second cuts. She is of good weight now, is trusting and easy to handle when needed, and produced a huge, soft fleece for me this year. I'm proud of my work with her!

Iris has become a valuable addition to our flock and yarn inventory. The garments made from her wool have been a joy to work with and wear. A winter day without a pair of Iris socks to wear is a bad day. We are so glad to have her!