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Needle Felted Chickadee

I had some fun with needle felting today and made this little chickadee.  I think next time I make a bird it needs to be much bigger.  It’s very hard to needle felt small objects! 

I”m sorry for the poor quality of the photo, I took it with my cell.

Don’t forget to check out Alpaca Farm Girl’s Fiber Arts Friday!

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New 8/7/09

Here’s photos of the above Chickadee’s bigger friend.

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My 3rd ever hand spun skein of yarn!

I had a nice quiet weekend and with mother nature constantly raining on us I had the opportunity to spin on my drop spindle again.  I spun up a nice 3 ply yarn out of my boy CoHo.   The fiber I used raw neck fiber.  No washing, no carding, just brushed the top out and spun.  I’m very happy with the result.  It’s fuzzy and very soft.

Since it is neck fiber it did have some guard hair in it.  I picked out some as I brushed but in the end it didn’t seem to add any scratchy feeling to the finished yarn. I put the skein around my neck and it was cuddly soft so I’m not concerned with the guard hairs I missed.

This skein will hopefully be enough to finish my scarf I started last week.  Since I’m using a small drop spindle I usually only can spin and ply about 50 yards at a time.  Blah.

The photo was taken before I put the twist in it so it’s loose, you can see it’s a nice tight spin 3 ply.  Some of the plys came out really neat black, grey, and almost white stripped.  I can’t wait to crochet it.

skein

Check out Alpaca Farm Girl’s Fiber Arts Friday for more fiber things people are doing.

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Preventing Algae Growth in Water Buckets


I accidentally found a way to prevent algae growth in my water buckets.  Usually with warm summer weather I’m forced to dump and scrub 5-15 gallon buckets every day or every other day because black or green algae starts to grow in the bucket.  Yuck!  If I’m not willing to drink out of a bucket I don’t expect my livestock to.

One of my horse show winnings I had acquired 2 tubs of Quench! (Equine electrolyte) .  Quench is added to the water to rehydrate horses providing needed electrolytes.  Well it turns out that it does more than that!  After adding it to the water for both my horses and alpacas I noticed I no longer had algae growth in my water buckets.  Now I’m down to dumping and scrubbing buckets on the weekend more to make me feel better than me really “needing” to. 

The manufacturer recommends 1 scoop per gallon of water but I found 1 scoop per 5 gallons still keeps the algae away.  This dose also seems to last the whole week.  The undesolved particles rest at the bottom of the bucket and every time I refill the bucket with water they mix back in. 

I’m very satisfied with Quench!  Not only does it give my animals needed electrolytes in hot summer months it also keeps my chore times down with all the buckets I was forced to clean daily.