First of all, I finally finished my first skein of handspun 100% angora yarn! I spun it on my Plum Creek Fiber Folk top-whorl drop spindle. The singles were spun Z, then Andean plied S. The resulting yarn is fingering weight, slightly thick-and-thin, as may be expected from my first yarn, I suppose. I tied it with some yellow acrylic:
My first handspun angora!
The second weekend in June was the 2012 Iowa Sheep and Wool Festival, and we attended for the third time. This time we camped on site, and it was such an enjoyable experience! We got to the campsite on Friday morning and then journeyed south to the town where our business partner lives. She was out of town, but there is a wonderful yarn shop there and my mother and I bought some yarn, some fiber, and I even bought some silk hankies to try to spin!
On Saturday my mother and I took two classes together. The morning brought the class "Fearless Dye" where we learned how to dye yarn and roving using Kool-Aid and acid dyes. Multiple methods were explored, including kettle-dyeing, powder-sprinkling, and hand-painting. Look what I made:
Kettle-dyed roving
Kool-Aid powder sprinkling skein
Hand-painted skein
Hand-painted skein
This was made using Tunisian Simple Stitch.
On Sunday my mother and I split up. She took a lace knitting class in the morning and another dyeing class that afternoon. Sunday morning I took a class called Advanced Rigid Heddle weaving, and I learned all kinds of lace techniques, including pick-up patterns and finger-manipulated patterns. I started this wrap:
Here you can see honeycomb lace and lino. I also learned spot lace.
Sunday afternoon brought another weaving class for me, called Enjoy SAORI Weaving. I was put in front of a SAORI loom and told to just go crazy and improvise whatever made me feel good! I used some techniques from my morning class, plus some plain-weave, plus my teacher taught me how to do SAORI multi-color technique:
I made this whole thing in 3 hours!
The Iowa Sheep and Wool Festival was a blast, and I learned so much! I can't wait until next year!
In the month of June we collectively made the business decision that it was time to really take off, business-wise. We need to get an Etsy account up and running and start selling our wares. We want to sell raw angora, angora batts, angora yarn, angora garments, hand-dyed fiber, shawl pins, stitch markers, and more! When we get this all settled I will be sure to update the blog again!
We also decided to get a website up and running. A dear friend is helping us pick out a template that is user-friendly for us and our customers, and we hope to get that running in the near future. The URL will be www.seedorff-family-fiber.com and we will advertise our wares and our angora bunnies that will be available in the near future! We will also be getting a new email address and possibly updating the blog to reflect the new name. The second these things get going you will know about it through this blog.
Also, and perhaps the biggest news of this whole update, is that we have bred one of our does! We bred our tort doe to our black buck, and bunnies will be due in early August. We plan on selling all of our bunnies, so please let us know if you're interested! If we have some success with the tort's bunnies we will breed the broken tort this fall yet. As always, you can contact us to purchase raw fiber, bats, and now reserve your bunny at seedorff.family.farms@gmail.com.
Here are some updated pictures of the rabbits, since it's been awhile since you've seen them. These were just taken this past weekend:
The buck
His fiber
The broken tort
Her fiber
The tort
Her fiber
This post has gotten long enough, but I have one more quick reminder:
We have fiber for sale! We will have rabbits for sale in the near future! Please contact us at seedorff.family.farms@gmail.com!
