April Showers..........

........bring really dramatic April rainbows! Here is a picture of a double rainbow that appeared after a thunderstorm rolled through. You can barely see the colors of the second rainbow in the upper left hand corner of the photo. I know. It's probably just the reflection of the main rainbow off of water crystals or something like that. Either way it was very,very pretty.  The colors were really bright, vibrant, and clear. If you look real close at the trees at the bottom of the rainbow, you can actually see the rainbow through the trees. It was really amazing to see. I was out in the rain taking photos because it was just so spectacular. Well worth days of rain and the season's first thunderstorm.

It's been quite some time since I've posted on my blog. Things got kinda crazy around here.....both with my kids and with the farm. The shearer for the camelids came. Only had one llama sheared this year. I opted to hold off on having any of the alpaca done. I'm curious to see what they look like with two years growth on them. Besides their fiber just looked really short. Even the shearer thought they looked short. So he had an easy day with us. Trimming toe nails and trimming teeth on those that needed it.

I was hoping to have started shearing my sheep by now. Unfortunately it's on hold until all my clipper blades come back from the sharpener....who has had them for closes to a month now. When we checked on them we were told that he's been too busy to even look at them.....and are we in a hurry for them? We only have sheep starting to roo out!! His response..... "well, I will try to have them done and ready for you to pick up in about two weeks." Two weeks!!! I'm afraid that by then most of my fleeces will be hanging off of trees, fence posts, and anything else the sheep can rub against. I've been toying with the idea of roo'ing my sheep by hand....but they aren't real crazy about standing still and having me pull their fleece out. I've been picking on poor Charlie. He's ready though. He's roo'ed out his head and is working on his neck.  There are two or three others who are like Charlie. The rest, thankfully, are still in full fleece and aren't showing any signs of roo'ing.

Onto spinning.....been playing with my Jenkins Delight turkish spindle. I'm in the process of spinning up 4 ounces of a merino/tussah silk blend (colorway - Autumn) on it. Pictured is my first two cops already wound into center pull balls ready for plying....my spindle with another cop in progress, and the fiber I'm spinning. Below is pictured my first skein of yarn. I plyed it on my Spindlewood square drop spindle. There is about 304 yards of a fine fingering weight 2-ply yarn. The skein weighs one ounce. Needless to say, I'm real pleased with the yardage. I've already got another center pull ball ready and am working on another nice sized cop. I know I can fit more fiber on my spindle than what I do. The problem is it starts to feel too heavy and I feel like I'm either putting too much twist into my single......or it's getting heavier in size. So I tend to spin smaller amounts. I feel it keeps my yarn more even and the spinning is more enjoyable for me. I'm hoping to end up with enough yardage for a pretty lace shawl.