Zig and Henry

It's quite a chore to get a good picture of these guys.. and as you can see, I still have some work to do! (since the best picture i could get has a wire running thru it) But this is Zig (left) and Henry - twin brothers, both sporting their summer fleeces.

Zig really is a calm and gentle ram. When the others want to butt and bully around, he is just off to the side. (Him and Joe.. neither one likes to get involved in disputes) I told Zig he looked a little mean in the pose, and for him to just let his personality shine thru....

Then I got this....

No.. that's not quite that either.. Zig is really sweet, but these pictures just don't describe him well. Maybe it's because he doesn't smile much.

Henry on the other hand, well.. this picture fits him.

These boys have the thickest, richest thel coat. (the undercoat) Their wool last year, as yearlings, made such nice rovings, that i'm looking forward to seeing how the wool from them works up this year!

I'm hoping, that with all the thel they produce, to separate some of the thel from the tog (the outer coat of wool) and felt just the thel to see how that will work up.

I made a cobweb felted scarf a few days ago from last years fleece (Ziggy's) and as far as the experimenting is going here, this is my favorite yet. I am still working on the scarves - learning what works.. what doesn't. This one needs to be felted more. I'm finding that with the layers being so thin, it takes a lot longer to felt than if they were solid, thicker layers.

This scarf took less than 1.5 ounces. It is light, yet, when wrapped around my neck, (or the neck of a headless form) it's a nice shade of warm.
And hey- the dyes I ordered just came in! I am really excited to try handpainting the scarves.. yet, I have promised myself I won't get the dyes out until things get a little more caught up around here! One thing (well...30) at a time.. dyes will put me over the limit, but it's great motivation to knock a few other things out of the to do category.

Cobweb Felting

We had a great time at the Kentucky Wool Festival this year. In the sheep & wool tent, we each demonstrate a fiber related skill - from carding, to spinning, knitting, weaving, and much more. My demonstration was wet felting. I have so much to learn about wet felting, but the basics of it are really simple: Wool + Soapy Water + Agitation = felt. I was motivated to try new projects while at the wool festival, so I made a little goal to experiment more with purses, and scarves using the wet felting technique.

I was particulary inspired by a small sample of merino that I wet felted at the festival. It felted with such thin layers and draped so nicely. I wanted to try this with our icelandic lamb roving. (after all, we get a good deal on icelandic wool.. a little grass, little hay in exchange for the wool, and not to mention, we have a good deal of it - especially now that it's shearing time!)

This is what came from that experiment -

This scarf was made by layering very thin layers of roving and felting using soap and water. The wool was from a moorit badgerface lamb. The scarf draped nicely, like I had hoped and was soft to the touch. There were a few places on the scarf that were very thin -almost holes, so I went on-line to research scarf making and was surprised to learn that this style of felting actually has it's own name- Cobweb Felting. It is intended to be very thin, sometimes with some holes even!

I am looking forward to felting more scarves using this method, and have ordered some dyes to experiment with hand dyeing the scarves also after they are made. There are just so many things that you can make with wool (and other natural fibers) and so many different techniques to try!