Day One

Today was the first day the entire mill was set up and running.  It's a huge learning curve and I think it will take a while to really get the hang of everything.  Adam already has a head start on me because he spent some time at Belfast's mill.

The back bay.  This is the carder (left), drafter (right) and the spinner and plyer in the back.  The vacuum hose runs from the carder to a box that collects any loose fiber for the felting table.

The front bay.  This is the fiber separator (left), the steamer (front right), the felting table (back right) as well as the cone and skein winders (not seen)

The washing system, worktable and sink

Picker and drying racks

This is what fiber looks like out of the picker room.  It's opened up and very fluffy and loose.  This is some Shetland that was dyed about two weeks ago.

Then it gets fed into the carder.

Then through the drafter

And then it gets spun, plied and steamed before being wound into skeins.  Our very first skein is tiny, about 54 yards, and is currently hanging up to dry after having the processing oils rinsed out.  

So all in all, not a bad first day. We have a few things to tweak, but it was awesome to get in and start working on the machines.

The Time Has Come

We got a call last night from Robert, who told us that our machines will come at 1pm today.

Today.

This morning we're kind of alternating between giddy, shell shocked and trying to be calm and act as if nothing out of the ordinary is going to happen.  Nothing at all.

Right now the Verizon guy is installing new phone jacks in what will be our shop/office area, because upon redoing the walls we discovered that what we thought were functional phone jacks were just glued to the wall with no wires behind them.  I'm kinda glad we discovered that before I spent a few hours plugging things in and wondering why they didn't work.

It's still a little hard to believe that this is all happening.  By tonight, we will have all the makings of an actual working mill.

Mill Update

Last week two guys from Belfast Mini Mills stopped by on a run to New York to drop off a spinner for us, and to let us know that the rest of the machines should be coming around December 15.

Which is two weeks away. 

TWO WEEKS!

We're really excited to finally get our equipment in place and we can't wait to be trained on all the machines and finally start taking in wool for people.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

From our family to yours

 

 

have a wonderful and safe holiday

 

 

and try not to eat too much!

 

 

 

 

Sunday Morning Feeding

complete with snowflakes.  Winter is apparently not taking any time at all in getting here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wovember

Happy Wovember!

Also,  we came through the storm just fine with only a few branches down.  We didn't even lose power for more than a few minutes and are very very thankful for how lucky we are.  Hope everyone else is doing well and gets power back soon!

Rhinebeck

We've just started recovering from Rhinebeck on Saturday.  It was an absolutely wonderful day- but exhausting too!  So much to see and do (and buy).

The weather was stunning. warm with blue skies. 

 

Too warm for Adam to wear his new hat.

 

We hit the fleece sale first thing in the morning, and met some lovely people while standing in line-twice.

 

We ended up buying over 80 pounds of wool to spin into yarn for the mill.  Some gorgeous

Cormo, which I hope to make into light weight sock yarn and a LOT of springy Corriedale for medium sock yarn.  We also got some alpaca to blend with our CVM wool for some worsted weight that we hope will make some beautiful sweaters, hats and mittens. 

 

After the fleece sale we were off to the barns to check out all the shops:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then we saw the animals:

 

 

 

 

 

Adam's parents bought these two Romney ewe lambs, Willow and Ivy, for their farm. 

 

 

 

And the sweater turned out pretty nice, even if it was a bit warm for it.

 

 

 

 

 

Rhinebeck Prep

Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool is this weekend! 

We're really excited and making shopping lists, both for ourselves and for the mill.  We're hoping to get some beautiful fleeces to make some goodies for the mill store.  I have to say that it's a little heartbreaking to be shopping for things that won't actually go into my stash, but Adam keeps reminding me that if we want the business to be successful, I can't view the mill as my personal yarn factory.  Drat.

Because Rhinebeck is pretty much wool mecca, people are kinda nuts about their Rhinebeck Sweaters.  I'm one of those people too, except this year I waited until a week before to become nuts.  The time crunch combined with "must have a Rhinebeck sweater" fever resulted in Adam driving me to the yarn store in Honesdale Saturday afternoon and then swearing that if I knit for the whole afternoon and didn't make him apple crisp for his efforts, he would cut all my yarn into 6" pieces.

I took that threat seriously.  He got apple crisp.  And I picked out an awesome pattern:  Selkie

I justified my insanity because:
1.  Selkie is made out of bulky yarn.  Bulky yarn knits faster.
2.  Selkie is made on size 13 and 15 needles.  So it would totally fly off my needles. 
3.  Selkie is actually a cape/wrap, so there aren't any sleeves.  That makes it really just half a sweater, and half a sweater would be way faster than a whole sweater.  Right? Right?

By Saturday night I had a collar half done:

I LOVE these buttons.  They're handmade and I managed to find four matching ones in the store.  The yarn is Debbie Bliss Winter Garden, which I'm kinda meh about.  One on hand, beautiful feel and colour to it- it's a baby llama, merino, silk and linen blend.  On the other hand, I picked out so much freaking hay and hard linen bits I feel like I could have fed it to the sheep and saved some money on our winter hay supply.  I suppose the name justifies it- it certainly had enough plant matter to be a garden. 

 

 

By Sunday morning the collar was totally done and on my third try, I successfully managed to pick up the 100 stitches around it:

 

 

And last night I cast off, had a hysterical panic attack because it looked too short and then Adam calmed me down and promised it'll grow when it's wet and we could block it bigger and even if we couldn't, it's a wrap and I'll have a shirt on underneath so it's not like I'll have a navel-baring sweater so for the love of all things sane could I just go get a shot of whiskey and get out of his way and let him do it.

 

He did it pretty well:

 



 

Now I'm just waiting for it to dry so I can sew on the buttons tomorrow night and be ready to bust down the gates Saturday morning. 



Also, gratuitous snuggly Niobe and Nagu photo:

The Princess and the Peeves

 

This is Princess.  See how she's all alone?  Looking rather concerned- which is completely natural when a herd animal finds itself deserted.

 

That's because the rest of the sheep are here:

 

which is to say, outside the fence.

 

 

This happens all the time.  Skirted Fleece sheep seem to feel that the fences simply don't apply to them.  We apparently installed all of these fences as a suggestion, rather than an actual barrier.  Grass greener on the other side?  Just duck under the fence and help yourself. 

 

Except for Princess.  Princess could just as easily fit under the wire as her more rebellious counterparts.  Except she respects fences.  So she stands on the other side of the barricade, freaking out that the rest of the herd has such a hippy-dippy, do-what-feels-good attitude toward clearly defined boundaries.  You can practically see the hoof wringing going on.   She spends most of the day at the gate, bleating pathetically that "This just isn't ok guys!  Rules are there for a reason!  You're going to get in trouble!"  And the flock just ignores her, munching away happily.  Princess is our flock buzzkill.  And they drive her nuts. 

 

 

AquaYak

 

Nagu

 

We are thrilled to announce that the newest little one is a girl.  Not that there's anything wrong with boys, but in the world of farming girls are a bit more important, especially when trying to build up a herd.  So two girls in one year has made us incredibly happy and very lucky.

 

 

 

 

We've named her Nagu, which means black.  In yak coloring, Nagu is an Imperial, which means she's black with a black nose.  I think she's taking her Imperial-ness a bit too seriously.  She's already a bit of a spitfire, trying to lead the sheep flock and attempting to push over half-sister Dawa.  Luckily for her, Dawa has been anxious for a playmate and is pretty tolerant of her antics. 

 

 





Summer Wrap Up



It's hard to believe that summer is over, and up here the landscape is already changing from green to gold.  It seems like the last few months sort of blew by, and I've been scolded lately for not updating.  And rightfully so, because I thought "Didn't I just do that?" and then looked at the blog and in the last post Dawa was just a baby and now she's three months old.  Yikes.

 

 

Dawa spent the summer frolicking, tormenting Adam by escaping the fence (we found her in the driveway once, playing head-butting games with the very confused chickens) and growing, growing, growing.  She's very proud of her teeny tiny horns coming in and loves to try them out on anyone and anything.  She's definitely a pip.

 

But she's no longer the smallest yak in our herd.



 

 

Two days ago Niobe, who we spent the summer despairing would never give birth, finally had her calf.  Seriously, we were starting to think that maybe she had just *ahem* put on some weight.  (A LOT of weight).   But she was really and truly pregnant and just took her sweet time about it.

 

 

The new calf is solid black and beautiful and everybody is healthy and doing well.  Adam hasn't been able to get close enough to find out whether it's a boy or girl, but we're hoping in the next day or so.

 

 

 

The rest of the herd is doing really well and enjoying the cooler weather starting to come through.

Gaia

 

Octavia

 

Vorenus

 

 

We also acquired a new rooster this summer.  A rebellous spirit found himself in trouble with the Powers That Be at the farm Adam works at, and was headed for some severe punishment for his crimes.  A bit of a rebellous spirit himself, Adam took pity on the little rooster who bucked authority and gave him a stay of execution.  He moved to our farm, where he's settled nicely into our flock.  Meet Codburn. 

 





 

 

 

In mill related news, the last update from Belfast has the machines scheduled to be delivered late November/ early December.  We've been busy cleaning out the garage and making some necessary repairs.  After moving everything out of the front room, we discovered that the floor by the window was a little "mushy."  The ancient linoleum was ripped up and we discovered that not only was the plywood rotted, but the support beams were as well.  So now we have a big hole awaiting new supports and flooring.

 



 

The water tank is in, and the back room is being prepared for the washing system and picker.

 

It looks really rough right now, but it's still miles better than it was when we started.  A lot of work will be done in the next few weeks to get us ready for the machines to arrive.  We can't wait to see it all come together, and I promise to be a lot better about posting the updates as the changes happen.