Category: Fiber Arts Friday

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Fiber Arts Friday – Shearing and Skirting

It was a long wait through some hot days but all of our alpacas are finally shorn!  I mentioned a while back that I attended the shearing clinic up at Jay Ward’s place this spring and I got my chance to do some more hands on shearing on my own animals.  I made the mistake of saving the last 3 animals for myself to shear.  My legs were shaking from fatigue after wrestling all the alpacas before them as the header.

My lovely shearer Chris Hatch was so kind to coach me though and gave me great tips on how he runs his pattern and handles all the smaller cria and tui jobs.  Thank you Chris and good luck in the alpaca shearing contest!

Of course after shearing you end up with bags upon bags of fiber everywhere!  12 animals time 3 bags each equals 36 bags stuffed with fluffy fiber.  So, I’ve been working my way through all the bags skirting them on my new skirting table.  Picking out VM as well as changes in color, guard hair, and consistency.  Which means I’ve created even more bags of fiber! (FYI The red on the cria’s nose is loose minerals, she looks like Rudolf though)

The good news? Those folks that participated in our Raw Alpaca Fiber CSA… your fleeces have been skirted, packaged and shipped out already!  You should get them soon! For those of you still wishing to take part in our CSA we do have full and half shares for Spinners and Yarn left! Check out our Etsy Store for details.

Oh yeah, last but not least progress has once again been made on the alpaca fan shawl.  I’m on pattern row 29 of 30! I was worried that 30 pattern rows would not stretch out enough for my wingspan but I think I might be ok.  We’ll see.  Worst case I might add 2 more pattern rows.

So what have you Fiber Arts Friday folks been up to?

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Fiber Arts Friday – Dying to Crochet

Welcome back Fiber Arts Friday Fans

I’ve done a few goodies this week.  The weather of extremes went from cold and wet to hot as Hades and wet.  We finally broke down and bought an air conditioning unit big enough to cover all of our small cabin and installed it last weekend.  Good timing too because the humidity was over 80% and it hit the 90’s this week.  For the first time in my life I got to sleep in AC goodness.  Yes folks, I’ve never lived in a home that had AC before so this was something special.  Since it was nice and cool inside I didn’t mind doing some fiber fun!

  1. Alpaca Shawl – On Pattern row 27 out of 30.  I’m thinking I might want to go more than 30 rows on this one because it is for me and well, I’m a giant. I have over a 6 foot wing span so having a shawl a little longer and wider would nice
  2. Peruvian Green Scarf – I’ve been working on the basket weave scarf this week.  I really don’t like knitting.  It’s annoyingly slow and I’m so much faster at crochet.  I can easily crochet 3 stitches for each one I knit.  Zzzzz…. But I only have 1 skein and knitting uses less yarn so and I want a really long scarf so I’m stuck.
  3. Dying – Remember all that DHA Yarn that I spun up about a month ago?  Well I finally decided to get it into the dye pot and put some color on it. This time instead of saturating it in dye and going to heavy bright colors I wanted a more variegated and mute color.  I think they came out great!  FYI I just put the 3 skeins up on Etsy if anyone would like them!
  4. Bulky Crochet Hat – Unfortunately one of the skeins I dyed I forgot to tie so when it came out of the pot it was one solid clump of knots. Ugh.  I dried it out and got to work detangling it.  Once I had it all sorted out I figured I’d put the time into crocheting it into a hat.  Unfortunately the colors didn’t come out at all when I took photos of me wearing it but the 2 center photos more closely resemble the muted wine colors I chose for the dye.

 

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Fiber Arts Friday – Allergies

Welcome back Fiber Arts Friday Fans!

Let’s see here what have I been up to?  Well last weekend I set up the new skirting table and worked through all the Lollypop fleeces.  (Lollypop is the name of the Humane Society Farm).  Later that day I found out a very important piece of information about myself and wool.  I’m allergic to lanoline! Yup, I did ok skirting until I itched my cheek and my face totally broke out in hives.  It has been a week now and the hives are just about gone.  That will be the last time I skirt wool, I’ll stick with alpaca from now on.

My alpaca shawl is coming along nicely I’m currently on pattern row 25 out of 30.  I’m so close to being finished!  Unfortunately I’ve hit a crochet wall and I’m rather bored of it so I started another small project that I can switch back and forth with to keep my mind going.

Here’s the start of the new project.  It’s is a basket weave scarf out of a Peruvian Wool and Tencel blend.  Very soft and super shinny.  Since most of my fiber festivals and vendor fairs are in the fall I figure I got to get a move on some inventory and this seemed like a good start.

What have you been up to this week?

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2011 Alpaca Fiber CSA Shares

Did you know that Dutch Hollow Acres started the Alpaca Fiber CSA movement? We have been offering CSA shares of our annual shearing for over 3 years now.

CSA or Community Supported Agriculture is often associated with farmers markets and food harvests but it also applies to natural fibers. Fiber farmers like Dutch Hollow Acres spend all year caring for and selectively breeding our fiber animals in anticipation of our annual shearing.

Last year we offered only raw fiber CSA shares which sold out quickly. This year with the addition of more animals to our heard we will be expanding our CSA shares to roving/batting and hand spun yarns.

The pricing is as follows

$75 – Raw– Alpaca prime blanket fleece (Beige or White only) This is a 1 time share and will be shipped out after the animals are sheared. The fleece will be skirted before shipping.

$125/$63 – Spinners – Quarterly (4x a year) shipments of alpaca or alpaca blended fiber ready to be spun. Colors and blends will change with each shipment throughout the year.
Full Share = 2lbs
Half Share = 1lbs

$150/$75 – Yarn – Quarterly (4x a year) shipments of alpaca or alpaca blended yarns handspun by me. Colors and blends will change with each shipment throughout the year.
Full Share = 2lbs
Half Share = 1lbs

Double check the title of the listing before placing your order.
Etsy
DutchHollowAcres
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Fiber Arts Friday – Skirting Table

Guess what, it rained, again, which meant indoor projects. I don’t have a skirting table so it seemed like something worth tackling.  Especially since our shearing is coming up soon.

Supply list

(4) Elbows
(2) T’s
(5) 5’ sections of 1.5” PVC pipe
(1) PVC Glue
(1) 10’ roll of ½” hardware cloth
Lots of cable ties

The hubby was kind enough to help me through the math to get all pipe to the right lengths. He also assisted with a few extra hands to glue everything together but getting the hardware cloth on was all up to me.  That took quite awhile and I have a few stab marks on my arms from the process but it’s done! 

It is 5’ x 5’10” so I should easily be able to get a whole fleece out on it for skirting.  I’m planning on setting it up on a few saw horses that way I don’t have to worry about legs and storage.  A flat table can easily be put away.

I’ve also been working away on my alpaca shawl.  This is it’s “parked” state for the photo.  I have 19 out of 30 pattern rows done so far.  I hoped to have many more done but all the trouble I went through this week keeping my horse alive took priority.  Don’t know what I’m talking about? Read Here.

That sums it up! Have a good weekend.

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