Tag Archives: angora yarn

Baby Bunny Photo Bomb!

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The babies are 2.5 weeks old, and at the peak of cuteness. Enjoy!

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after shoot

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group 2 weeks

This litter’s colors are 3 black and 2 agouti. I will be keeping one of the black ones if it is a doe, but the rest I will be selling, so feel free to leave a comment and reserve a bunny for you!

From Bunny To Yarn

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I finished my first real yardage of Angora yarn! I made my first weaving project, a scarf. Here is the yarn- a lot of time and effort has gone into it!
I blended a 75% alpaca to 25% angora mix, from my French Angora buck, Andre. This yarn has taken most of the summer and fall of 2014 to prepare for – I custom made a hackle to blend the fiber on, harvested the fiber from Andre, I waited until the Rhinebeck festival to get the alpaca, I blended, spun, Navajo plied and steamed the yarn, warped the loom, and now I’m finally using it!

Here are pictures of the process.

Andre, the wool producer

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My custom hackle- here I’m blending the alpaca and angora to spin.
custom made hackle, hand made hackle, fiber hackle, fiber hackle for sale Here is the finished yarn- Navajo plied, roughly 250 yards.

angora yarn, french angora rabbit, rabbit fur, rabbit wool, angora rabbit yarn, hand spun yarnThen I steamed the yarn, warped the loom, and started weaving!

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I finished the scarf with a technique called hemstitching, which ties off the ends of the woven piece and gathers the warp into groups of fringe.

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And here is the finished scarf!

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angora scarf, hand woven, womens gifts, what to buy for mothers day, easter, hand made scarf, hem stitching, angora scarf Thanks for reading!

The Results of 1 lb of Merino!… and the Escapee

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All the way back in September I was given a huge ball of green Merino wool to spin. It’s taken me 2 months to finish it, but it was a good learning experience.

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Tweed Merino 3-Ply HangingI did 3 skeins of true 3-ply, (my first) using my new Lazy Kate. I learned that to create a nice defined 3-ply I should hold each single at an angle from all the others. I did 2 skeins of Navajo Plied yarn, (also my first) and figured out that I either over-spun or over-plied it, because while all 3 skeins of 3-ply were balanced, both of my Navajo plied skeins were unbalanced.

I also did my second attempt at corespinning with this wool. This time my corespinning turned out much better than the first attempt.  I tried this time to spin it thinner, so therefore it wouldn’t be as chunky and get caught in the orifice.

I got around 550 – 600 yards out of this, not counting the 30 or so yards of corespun.

corespun yarn, hand made corespun yarn

Free Range Bunnies

 Steffy (Stefano) has escaped from his cage three times and has been found wandering around the yard! At first I thought I had left his cage door open by accident, but the third time he escaped I had just groomed him and put him back in his cage, so I knew I had fastened the latch right!  I watched him for a minute and figured out that the little bugger had been biting the wire of the cage door and shaking it as hard as he could. If he did it for long enough the latch would come unhooked, and then, bunny freedom! I soon fixed that!

Well, thanks for reading! God Bless, Rebekah

My Own Angora Yarn

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I’m doing a spinning contest, so I needed to take the yarn off my spindle so I could start spinning the new yarn, a cotton/angora blend.
There’s not very much yarn on the spindle to it’s a mini-skein.

spindle

I made myself a quick skeiner stick to wind the yarn on.

niddy noddy
winding on nn
wound yarn

Now to make the angora yarn bloom, you are supposed to “full” the yarn (soak the yarn in several changes of very hot and cold water while mashing and agitating the yarn.)
I used a potato masher.

mashing yarn

The next step is to whack the damp yarn on a hard surface to make the angora bloom. I did not take pictures of this step.

finished yarn 1I didn’t really need to do this whole process for such a small skein, but I wanted to try it. It’s my first yarn from my own angora, after all!

My First Try at Hand Painted Yarn!

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On Saturday I attempted hand painting a 50% alpaca/50% wool bulky yarn for the first time!

It turned out great! I used Jaquard acid dyes for this project. First I soaked the yarn in cold water with about 2 T of white vinegar, and covered the counter with a garbage bag while it soaked (it’s works nicely and we didn’t have any plastic wrap, which is what you’re supposed to use.) I then mixed my dyes with hot water, but they cooled down over the time I was dying. Probably not a big deal. Then it occured to me that the yarn might need to be hot, so I microwaved it for about 2 minutes, but that cooled down too. It’s the vinegar acid and the steaming afterward that sets the dye.

I spread out the yarn on the garbage bag and painted that dye on! I used a cheapie foam brush for the dye. I wasn’t too happy with the way it looked after I painted it, but the steaming was yet to come. I wrapped it in the garbage bag the long way, coiled it up like a cinnamon bun, and than put it in a steaming basket over boiling water. Once the water boiled, I turned the stove down to low for a half hour and let it steam.
I was a bit concerned about the garbage bag melting, but thankfully it didn’t. When I unwrapped the yarn it looked great! The steaming mellowed and blended the colors wonderfully!

edited swirl yarn

yarn, yarn label, blue sky alpacas

the yarn I used

dyed yarn

my set up for dying

edited wet yarn

soaking the yarn in cold water after steaming

edited swirl yarn

the lovely finished yarn!

edited skein yarn