Busman's Holiday

After a week of cold and wet, it's nice to have a change in the weather. As it is, I spent part of yesterday at work moving flats stored under tables, because they were going moldy from the cold wet conditions.

Monday and Tuesday, however, were just about perfect - dry and sunny and not too hot. I had the two days off, by request, because Monday was the annual shearing day at L'Ourse Qui Danse. Busman's holiday indeed - I traded in a job where I'm on my feet all day for a shearing bee where I'm...on my feet all day. It makes for a long day (8 am when we arrived, and dusk when we left) but it's great fun, great people - and great food, as it's a potluck lunch and supper. (Wish I'd taken a picture of the spread). Most of the team has been at shearing before, so it goes smoothly. A whole system in place and a (superhuman) shearer, and all 21 animals got shorn and skirted before supper.

A couple of the younger guys were in charge of catching and moving alpacas. For the ones in the further barn, they have an enclosure of scaffold and snow fence which gets pulled to the shearing site, and works very well. We stopped skirting to watch the parade go by.

They use the same contraption to bring them back again - except this year, one of the alpacas, Cayenne, refused to wait, and bolted back to her barn the minute she was done being shorn. All we saw was a streak of brown, followed a minute afterwards by a guy in hot pursuit.

The boys turn the alpaca over to Tom the shearer and his team. They strap and hold the alpacas in position on the table, while Tom shears and calls the rough grade (quality) of each section. While the animals are down, they also get pedicures and shots.

One person is in charge of collecting the shorn fleece, and turning it and its rough grade over to Johanne (the boss) and her sister. They sort and pack it into bags labeled with the animal's name, grade, and the year, plus keep samples out for their records, and the mill.

The bagged fleece comes to the skirting team (that's my group!), who have lots to do:
weigh and record quantity of each grade, and record color, texture, staple length, lustre, crimp, and guard hair presence in the first-quality fleece,

then pick hay, second cuts, and off-texture bits out of the fleece. (And ooh and aah over the texture, of course).

We get supervised, because sorting's an important job, and because there's a lot of temptation to just take the fleece home and roll in it. Chantal's dog and Johanne's cat are on duty here. 

And at the end of the day, we had a studio filled with bags of fibre!

Wet and Wooly, part 1

Out to the parents' this weekend, and I was hoping to have a chance to do a bit of work in my dye garden. But it rained ALL WEEKEND! Ok, so it let up a bit in the mornings - I took advantage of that to go and pick myself a few flowers - but it was wet the whole time, and I don't particularly like gardening in the rain.

On the other hand, when you stay in and work, you can get a lot done too. Mostly fiber-y, natch. No pictures of the work in question yet, you'll have to wait until tomorrow for that. It was going on midnight when I got back last night, and I didn't want to hunt the camera and hope the batteries were charged. But...

1. The pink and orange yarn is done, all spun and plied. The first skein has gone AWOL, though, so I'll wait to wash and set the yarn when I find it.

2. The baby kimonos I was working on for gifts are done - blocked, ties made, and embroidered. The felted baby booties are felted and drying, after which I have to do the velcro and maybe a bit of needlefelting.

3. Sorted all the remaining washed and undyed Jacob fleece I had and put it through the carder, for 2 batts each white, lt grey, dk grey, and black. The belt broke halfway through, so I had to improvise. Nylon cord (rather like large shoelacing) of the appropriate diameter, with the ends melted together to make a continuous loop and the join smoothed, did the trick.

4. Helped my mother with warping her loom for some rag rugs destined for the kitchen and living room.

and finally 5. Went over to Kim's (she of the mitts - Ravlink) to pick through this week's shorn fleece before they dispose of it. Came home with a garbage bag or so. Wish I had pictures - her duck has 5 little yellow fuzzy ducklings, ever so cute! The duck is the only bird she has currently who seems to know how to do it, though. Apparently her hen which is setting is only setting on one egg now, being in the habit of eating the eggs she's setting on, at the rate of one per day. And the goose has a nest which the gander is fiercely protecting - but his mate only sets on them when she feels like it, so I doubt there'll be any results there either.