For SALE: Commercial Wet Felting Machine

I've decided I need more room in my fiber studio so I'm selling my commercial mini-mill wet felting machine. This thing is awesome but I don't have room for it. It makes a 3x4 wet felted sheet of fiber in a very short period of time and it's way too easy to do it... just lay out the fiber, add soapy water, shut the lid, and turn on the timer. It really is that easy.

Here's a few pics of it:

This is NOT an item that can be shipped. It must be picked up in Axton, VA (an hour south of Roanoke, VA and an hour north of Greensboro, NC). Price is $3,500. You can see some of the items you can make with it besides felted sheets in my album on facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.115758885163564.18806.100001883600456&type=3

For more info please email me.

Sad News

Sad news to report. We found Zap's cria (36 hours old) dead from unknown causes. This is the first cria born on our farm we've lost in the 10 years we've been raising alpacas. It's definitely a sad day here on the farm.

Zap's New Baby

May 20th we FINALLY got our special delivery... Zap had her baby on day 356 and he's a dark silver grey! Here's a few pics of the new cria running around. He's less than 24 hours in these pics.

This is the latest cria who doesn't have a name yet and he's being checked out by Amerikhan All Star.

Right side

The white-ish coloring you see on this cria is actually very light silver grey with tiny little black spots in it. His front lower legs are spotted with black spots and light silver grey fiber.

This is Zap (mom) on the left, the new cria in the front and in the back is Amerikhan All Star.

Now let me explain the story behind WHY this cria is important. Zap, the mother, is a BEW (Blue Eyed White) out of two tuxedo grey alpacas. From what I've read and gathered over the years this is a big deal because it's thought that there are no known BEWs out of two tux greys because of something called the lethal grey gene. Zap is the exception and possibly the only known BEW out of two tux greys. The short version of what this means is that she would be something called homozygous grey which up until now was as mythical as a unicorn. IF Zap really is a homozygous grey it would mean that no matter who she's bred to she will ALWAYS produce a grey offspring. She's 2 for 2 so far. It's going to be interesting to see what crias she gives us over the next few years and I'm still looking into how we can definitively prove she's really the mythical homozygous grey the genetic gurus in the alpaca world have always talked about.

I'd love to hear your comments on the cria or the genetics of the cria. In the meantime... baby needs a name. It has to be an "electric" name. His mother is Zap (she eats electrical cords) and his full brother is High Voltage. His father is Dynomite. So far we've come up with Dynomite's Short Circuit. If you've got any suggestions we'll take them.

Carolina Fiber Fest 2012

Plyed and Dyed booth at the Carolina Fiber Fest 2012

 

I spent all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday having an absolute blast in Raleigh, NC at the Carolina Fiber Fest. I did lots of spinning and finished up a few skeins of yarn.

In this pic I'm spinning some super yummy watermelon colored baby cormo that I ended up plying with lime green. I finished this skein as we closed up the booth on Saturday and Sunday I spent knitting this skein with some lovely kid mohair boucle. I'm making a summer shrug and I'll post pics when it's done.

Hopefully I'll spend the next few days relaxing then I'll reopen the Etsy store with a ton of updates. Next month is the Charlotte Fiber Fest which means no rest for the weary.

New May Yarns

I wanted to show you a quick look at some of the yarns I've spun up in the last week. This is 14 of the 24 skeins I've spun in the last 9 days. These won't be listed in the Etsy shop because they are headed with me to the Carolina Fiber Fest http://www.carolinafiberfest.org/ next weekend.

That fuzzy beige one is a yummy super soft alpaca cria fleece! One the left of it is the darker blue mohair I dyed the other day and on the right is the light blue wensleydale.

Dying Mohair

Ok, so I couldn't help myself! I'm supposed to be spinning like a mad woman to get ready for the Carolina Fiber Festival but the mohair I brought back from the Let's Get Naked Festival was screaming my name. I skirted, washed, and dyed up 5 lbs of it on Tuesday and sat it out to dry. God rewashed it for me with an unexpected rain shower as I was out feeding alpacas so it got to be put back outside on Wednesday for another round of drying.

I spun up a couple skeins of the dyed fiber and a couple skeins of the white (not pictured) as soon as it was dry. You know of course that I spin more of a specialty yarn than a traditional yarn so I really loved lockspinning this mohair!

I'm back from the Let's Get Naked Fiber Fest

Wow what a weekend! To me, this was a working vacation in the mountains. Incredible surroundings at the base of Graves Mountain with vendor tents lined up in a row. I got to sit down and spin in this peaceful environment AND I got to shop for fleece while it was being sheared right off the animals. It doesn't get much better than that for me.

I have to show you pictures of my van when I returned home! It's full of fleece and I couldn't be happier about it. This is taken from the side doors of the mini van. On the left pic is bags of Cormo and  Rambouillet/Finn crosses. The brown bags in the right pic are mohair and there's more of them hiding in there... about 30 lbs worth! On top of the brown bags is a gorgeous CVM fleece. Not in the pictures is 5 cria fleeces, 4 lbs of roving and I'm sure there's something else I forgot about hiding in there.

With just a little over 2 weeks left until Carolina Fiber Festival I had to come home and SPIN like crazy. I'd love more than anything to sit down and process all this fleece but I need more yarn to sell at the events first.

the Let's Get Naked Fiber Fest is definitely one I'll attend again next year!