Thursday, January 15, 2009

Blizzard Update ready!

This is our sheep Bettis--he spent his time this week (well some of it) washing and dyeing up his beautiful Icelandic/Merino cross fleece! Bettis arrived with a group of 11 other sheep a few years back. They were part of a very large (150 sheep) rescue in Pittsburgh PA. The flock belonged to people who loved them, and started out with about 20 sheep--and blossomed into way too many, way too fast. They were good to let the rescue assume the flock and most of the sheep did find homes in WI--yey!
Bettis is still shy, he was the most scared of the group when they got here--we named all of them with Pittsburgh or PA related names--there for, Bettis. You know, Jerome Bettis-the bus? We figured as wild as our Bettis was when he arrived, if he bonked you with that set of horns, it WOULD be like being hit by a bus!! He has settled down SO much, he will sneak an apple treat, then take off for the hills so to speak til he is ready for another. The PA group is very close and will always be a family. They are so sweet. Bettis' fleece is soft like Merino, longer like Icelandic but does have some soft kempy hairs too--I have never removed them to spin and the yarn is gorgeous..... This is just one colorway from Bettis so be sure to check the other out too!

And here is some lash yarn that was SO good for me in this wacky weather-- the sheep dyed up some Cotswold lamb locks in these bright, almost eye popping colors. I spun them into a pretty yarn that would be a great skinny scarf, trim for your next project or as part of a felted art piece? Let these bright sunny colors cure the 40 below 0 blues!!

And last but not least, I warned everyone that I was after some of our new Jordan Valley Millspunyarn--to plunk in the dyepot! And here it is! I started out with 7 skeins of the fawn/light DK weight alpaca two ply--there is still more available undyed too-- and rainbow dyed the skeins all in one dye pot. Wa-la, enough for a larger project! The skeins will vary a little because of the loosey goosey dye procedure your sheep friends often employ (hee hee). This is a very comforting, cozy bunch of soft, alpaca yarn--from Jenny's happy flock of alpacas and llamas!
Lots of variety in our blizzard update, and it will even 'snow over' to the weekend-- I needed some more time to card batts but since the weather is SO cold, am spending more time outside than usual. SO, only job for the weekend update is a batt a palooza! More soon, look forward to hearing from you--hope the weather is being kind in your part of the world!!

1 comment:

primdollie said...

amazing goodies as always and REALLY love the lash yarn am drooling over that but have to be good!! DRAT DARN and all that!! love ya Linda