Fiber

All packed up and ready for some fun!

Posted by kenleighacres on June 17, 2010
Posted in: Felting, Fiber, sheep, Uncategorized. Tagged: . 7 Comments

As I mentioned in the previous post, we are headed to Black Sheep Gathering.  This is one of my favorite events of the year!  I love the sheep, and the fiber, and the colors, and the textures!  The best part though – is seeing all of my friends.  Several are staying with us and I am looking forward to visiting. 

My goal for this year was to be well prepared and not get overwhelmed like I was last year.  I am happy to say that I have accomplished this and am feeling ahead of where I should be instead of terribly behind – what a GOOD feeling!!!

The beds are made…

The felting projects are done…

The boxes are packed and in the car…

The display boards, signs, and marketing materials are ready to set-up… 

The event officially opens on Friday, which means we will be very busy tomorrow setting up our vendor booth and moving the sheep in.  I will take lots of pictures and fill you in on all of the fun!

and you can be assured that everybody at this event will answer ‘yes’ to the following question –

A rainy day and colors of the rainbow

Posted by kenleighacres on March 30, 2010
Posted in: Felting, Fiber, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , . 4 Comments

Yesterday was a nasty day – sideways rain for most of the day with a frigid wind that whipped right through you.  A good day to stay inside and work on some projects. 

My son has been wanting to felt a life sized cat 🙂 can’t say he doesn’t have lofty goals!  I wanted to try a new idea that was rolling around in my head.  So we grabbed some wool and got to work.

  

It was going to take a lot of needle felting to get a life sized cat, so I took a technique I have seen before and had him wet felt the body. 

You start by using a nylon and stuff it with wool…

keep stuffing until you have the desired shape and it is packed tight.

Then comes the easy part – throw it in the washing machine!  Run it through one washing cycle and one drying cycle.  To save on electricity and water, I threw our items in with a load of laundry.

I wanted to see if I could make the little sheep bodies with this same technique.  I stuffed the amount for one sheep and then tied a knot and stuffed more in.

I used this otherwise ruined fleece.  It is a blueface fleece that I washed and didn’t get all of the lanolin out and it is very cotted now.  It worked great!

Here is the start to his cat.

We felted the head seperate from the body and he needle felted them together.  He is going to needle felt legs, ears, and a tail today and add the finishing touches tomorrow.  He is so excited to have an inside cat 🙂

I had a request for colored sheep, so we played with kool aid and dyed the little, felted sheep bodies.

Dyeing with kool aid is so much fun and very safe for kids to help with.

You can even blend colors!

Look at all the pretty colors!!!

Much prettier than outside where it is STILL raining and our pastures are full of creeks and ponds.

Shearing 2009 – Part I

Posted by kenleighacres on November 23, 2009
Posted in: Farm Life, Fiber, Jacob Sheep, shearing, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , . 2 Comments

It’s shearing time again!!!  Fresh fleeces and clean sheep.

In addition to shearing the ewes, I decided to have the lambs sheared as well.  Their fleeces are so pretty and they are starting to get full of hay and junk from being in the barn.

Sheryl agreed to shear the sheep in groups of 15 again.  She came this morning and sheared all of the lambs and will be back in December to shear the ewes.

Here they are – waiting their turn…

 

You can see Magoo, the llama, in the background watching over the whole operation.

Here is Chance, looking a little confused about what happened to her!

 I love the colors in this fleece.  It belongs to this big boy…

He is a new addition to the herding group.  His name is Thatcher and he is a Jacob/Border Leicester cross.  I love all of the leicester sheep.

There are several lambs in the herding group that are too dark for the Jacob standard, but look at all of the black/brown wool I have now!  It is beautiful.

My husband was here to help and it was so nice.   He helped with the sheep and I was able to skirt the fleeces. 

A new blog and a giveaway!

Posted by kenleighacres on July 1, 2009
Posted in: Felting, Fiber. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

I have been struggling with promoting my fiber studio on this blog, I would like to keep it a little more personal and Wordpress does not support selling items, so I have started another blog over at Blogger.  In celebration of the new blog I am having a giveaway over there. 

Here is a hint…

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Join me at – Kenleigh’s Fiber Studio  

The colors of a fleece

Posted by kenleighacres on May 7, 2009
Posted in: Felting, Fiber, Jacob Sheep. Tagged: , . 2 Comments

Ok, I may be a little biased – but Jacob fleeces are awesome 😉  I have been working on my Black Sheep Gathering Spinner’s Lead entry and I chose to work with Symphony’s fleece. 

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She has beautiful hues of dark brown and it is so soft!   

I split the fleece into 3 different colors…

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here are the carded batts.

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After carding the fleece, I felted the different colors into pieces of fabric.  The plan is to turn the fabric into a jacket!  I’ll post more pictures and details, but I just had to show you all of the pretty colors in a jacob fleece!

 

High Desert Wool Growers Fiber Market Day

Posted by kenleighacres on March 30, 2009
Posted in: Fiber, Jacob Sheep, Snow, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . 3 Comments

Yesterday was the 12th annual High Desert Wool Growers Fiber Market Day and the first time I made the journey over the mountains to check it out.  I have been wanting to visit this fiber show for the last couple of years, but it just hasn’t worked.  The main reason has been snow on the mountain passes.  This year I lucked out!

My sister and I had signed up for a vendor booth and left early in the morning.  The following picture is pretty blurry, but it was really dark out!  A herd of about 30 elk were on the side of the road on the way up.

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I kind of shocked her as I started saying “Look, look, look, LOOK!!!”  She finally turned her head and saw all of the elk.  The rest of the trip over was uneventful, which I was thankful for because my sister and I tend to have adventures on our trips 🙂

The fiber day was so much fun and very well attended. 

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Here is my sister in our booth. 

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There were a couple times throughout the day that the entrance was blocked by people.

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All sorts of fiber goodies were available and there were workshops on different subjects throughout the day. 

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There were a few vendor booths outside as well as llamas, alpacas, pygoras, and sheep. 

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My sister and I both had a successful day, we sold a little bit of everything.  She makes beautiful and yummy smelling goats milk soap and our booth always smells so good.

This was a last minute tote that I made and the lady who bought it was so delighted.

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We packed up in record time to make it home before the forecasted winter storm hit the mountains.  We made it home before dark and before the passes looked like this…

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We drove on bare pavement and I am so thankful for that!!!  I was really concerned about getting stuck in the snow.

We were in the car longer than we were at the event, but it was nice to not be gone for the whole weekend.  I spent most of today adding the items that I am carrying in my studio to my online store. 

I am also back to lamb watch duty for this girl… 

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She is officially due on Tuesday and is very uncomfortable!

Wooly Girls

Posted by kenleighacres on March 23, 2009
Posted in: Felting, Fiber, Jacob Sheep, sheep. Tagged: , , . 7 Comments

Symphony and Pacifica are lambs from last year and they recently found their way back home.  I am so happy to have them back.  I am amazed at the amount of wool these girls have…

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Little Pacifica is just a head and legs sticking out of a puff ball!

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Her fleece is 7 1/2″ long and so soft.

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Symphony was a lovely lamb and she has matured into a beautiful ewe.  The wide 2-horn girls are my favorite! 

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Her fleece is stunning.  My goal is to get both of them sheared this week.  They are bred to Windy Acres Lawrence and are due in May!

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Infiniti seemed to immediately remember her sis and was happy to have her back too. 

Here is my latest felting project – so much fun!!!

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I bought the tote bag – it is wet felted (I have these available in my fiber shop along with other fun purses) and needle felted the chicken on it.  A very fun activity on a rainy weekend! 

My first class!

Posted by kenleighacres on March 1, 2009
Posted in: Felt Scarf, felted birds, Felting, Fiber. Tagged: . 7 Comments

I had my first class in my new fiber studio today.  I am calling it my guinea pig class, lol.  It was a test class to work out all of the kinks!  It was a lot of fun.  My students were my mom, my sister, my grandma, my sister-in-law, my soon to be sister-in-law, a friend and her daughter.  There were a lot of laughs and a few tears (felting needles hurt a lot when you stick yourself).  There were multiple projects being worked on…

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My mom and grandma made 3D felted birds, several people worked on needle felted wall hangings, and my soon to be sister-in-law, Patricia made a wet felted scarf.  They all did a fabulous job!

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As I said, there were a lot of laughs and here is a picture of my mom looking shocked that her lump of wool was actually looking like a bird 🙂

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Aimee and her daughter, Hailey, were instant felting pros.

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All of the fun and hard work wore poor Paisley out and she spent most of the day on the bed 🙂 

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Here is Patricia holding up her beautiful scarf.

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Here’s Hailey with her adorable needle felted cat.

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My grandma’s bird is going to hang in her window and warn all of the little birdies outside to not fly into the window.

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Julie didn’t finish hers, but she needle felted a background that had a watercolor feel to it.

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She is going to needle felt the word ‘Dream’ on it.  I can’t wait to see the finished piece!

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My mom with her darling bird.

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and the shocker was Aimee and her Rooster

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I love the details and I never would have thought to outline the feathers with blue. 

I’m not sure how she managed it, but my sister didn’t get in any of the pictures.  She worked on a wall hanging with a whimsical goat, sheep, and cow on it.  I will have her send me a picture once she has finished it! 

My first ‘real’ class is next Saturday and I am really excited about it. 

Thanks to my mom, I now have the perfect sign for my studio –

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Catching up!

Posted by kenleighacres on February 4, 2009
Posted in: Farm Life, Felting, Fiber, Jacob Sheep, Lambing, sheep. Tagged: , , . 8 Comments

There are just too many things to do on the ‘To Do’ list!  The overwhelming feeling is just under the surface ready to show it’s ugly face, but the joy that the lambs bring are helping – they are not helping me check things off the ‘To Do’ list however 😉  It is so easy to sit out in the barn just watching their carefree play.  I love the 2-4 week age the best.  They are just sure that the world revolves around them.  We have 7 new babies since the last post, 6 came in one night!  Introducing –

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Kenleigh’s Breeze – Junior x Aimee

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Kenleigh’s Create – Junior x Aimee

Both of these girls are lilac and so sweet.  Create was a little ambassador the other day when a few neighbors came by to visit the lambs.  She enjoyed being cuddled and didn’t squirm like the other lambs did. 

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Kenleigh’s Prosperity – Pilot x Darling

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Kenleigh’s Wisdom – Pilot x Darling

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Kenleigh’s Bounden – Junior x Veronica

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Kenleigh’s Dancer – Junior x Veronica

Bounden and Dancer earned their names 🙂  Within a couple hours of being born they had springs on their feet and were doing cirlces around their poor mother. 

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Kenleigh’s Imagine – Wrangler x Harley

I was REALLY hoping that he was a she because Harley is getting up there in age and she hasn’t had very many girls and the girls that she has had were very light in color.  Her boys are always loudly colored.  Oh well!  He is a cutey and he looks a lot like his dad when he was a lamb.

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Kenleigh’s Wrangler as a lamb.

We have 10 more ewes to lamb and the barn is starting to get very full!

I have been salivating over my felting books and trying to fit in a few projects as time allows.  Here is one that I finished yesterday.

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The really fun part for me is that all of the wool came from sheep that we raised. 

A very fun mail day!

Posted by kenleighacres on January 18, 2009
Posted in: Felting, Fiber, Jacob Sheep, micron testing, sheep. 4 Comments

Yesterday I got a bunch of fun stuff in the mail 😉 

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I talked to a company on Thursday about the felting and felt products that they carry and they said that they would mail one of their product kits to me.  I was shocked to receive it two days later – WOW!!!  They have some very nice products and have been in business for 100 years! 

The second fun item was the prefelt sheets that are sitting on top of the pile.  There are 22 colors and the squares are 10″ x 10″.  I ordered the sample kit to experiment with this product and see the colors.  They can be cut and wet felted with other fibers, needle felted together, felted further by themselves and sewn together, etc.  The colors are very vibrant and I am hoping to play with them later this week.  Depending on how they work, the company sells them in 10″ x 80″, 30″ x 80″, and 60″ x 80″.

The last item was my micron testing results!  Thanks to Michelle at Boulderneigh I was able to send in 17 samples to be tested.  She posted on her blog about the very reasonable testing done at Texas AgriLife Research Center.  The results are interesting and I am really surprised by some of them.  I found a great site for definitions on the 15 numbers that came back on each sample.

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This is a picture of Darby’s fleece sample, her micron count is 27.9.  Her daughter Chevelle’s is 28.2 and her other daughter Liberty’s is 27.7.  I expected Darby’s fleece to be in the 30’s and was surprised that it was in the 20’s. 

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This is Harley’s fleece and looks and feels very different from Darby’s, but it measured very close to the same – 28.7 microns.  I would have bet money that Harley’s fleece was a finer micron count than Darby’s. 

I tested Wrangler’s lamb fleece and it measured 24.8 microns, I had his adult fleece tested this time and it came back as 31.8 microns. 

The desirable range in the Jacob Breed Standard is 26.4 to 36.19 and the acceptable is 23.5 to 38.09.  Our samples range from 24.5 to 36.6 with the average being 29. 

We are still waiting for our first lambs to arrive – hopefully my next post will contain cute lamb photos 😉