Well, it's been several months now since I updated my blog. The summer seems to have flown by and through one thing and another I've just felt unable to get stuck into writing.
I've been setting up a small business from home called Croft Cottons and have opened an Etsy shop of that name.
I haven't got all the stock listed yet. It's a busy time of year! I am making things from excellent quality cotton such as wedding and baby bunting, pillowcases, cushion covers, hand made fabric covered buttons, toddler to teen clothing, purses, bags...........it's an ongoing project shall we say!
One piece of very good news is that my lace shawl took 1st prize at our local show and I also won 12 other rosettes for various things including photos, jam, pickles and the like.
I was very proud when a photo of my Soay sheep Shulah took 1st prize in the animal photograph section and my lovely cat Magda got 2nd prize in a photo of her. You may have noticed, it's not my photography I'm proud of, it's my sheep and my cats!! And that's just how it should be.

Since last posting on here I have bought two more Soays. They are wethers. One is 2 and a half and the other 1 and a half. here are a couple of photos of them. First is Bram................

And here's little dark faced Brok

And last, but by no means least my 'grey sneedled specky faced' Shetland called Beulah........

Believe it or not, that is the name given to a Shetland yow (ewe) of this colour. She has a beautiful face. Here's a closer one of her face......

My final piece of news is that I have my own piece of land now to put my sheep on. Well, technically it's not mine but I have use of it for the unforeseeable future, so it's much better. I can actually see the sheep out the bedroom window if they're grazing in the middle of the park. When I come out the front door with the food bucket they see me and all start running towards the gate. Most of them can now be hand fed, which is great if you need to get hold of one for any particular reason! Brok is always first at the gate and has now started arriving with a piece of long grass hanging out each side of his mouth. Perhaps his way of saying thanks for the ewe nuts I bring!

Well, it's gone 1.00am and I should be in bed so I'm going to sign off now. I will update you soon. Will be building a sheep shelter very soon before our winter weather sets in. You never know here in Shetland just how good or bad it will be and Soays in particular do not cope well with the wind and rain. Shetland sheep are very hardy and cope much better.

Oh, I almost forgot. I got a new arrival in the field a few weeks ago. A little lamb, which would appear to be last year's lamb, just arrived one day. No ear tags or paint marks. Nothing to tell me where she came from or who she belongs to. So she's still with me and her name is Landiah. Isn't she a little sweetheart...........

Washing My Soay Fleece

They say there's a first time for everything and for me this was definitely the first time ever for washing fleece, made all the more exciting because it came from one of my own Soay sheep. As I've mentioned before, Soays shed their own fleece so there is no need for clipping, but you have to be vigilant if you want to get as much of the fleece off as possible. My Soay, Yaisah, had shed almost half of her fleece before I got the rest off. I did, however, get most of Shulah's fleece.
So follow me with words and photos as I take you through my first tentative wool wash!
I started at about 12.45 pm and looked out all the things I would need. I wasn't sure whether to use detergent or soap flakes as I'd read that either is acceptable, but in the end I settled on one of my favourite detergents......

Fleece smelling like apples? Hmmm..

Please comment below this post if you have found that one particular soap or detergent works well for you personally. I'd be very interested to hear your views on this.
I weighed the fleece just out of curiosity and this was the result. Remember, this is roughly HALF a fleece from a year old Soay lamb. Next year the sheep will yield a thicker and heavier fleece.

So I filled a small bowl full of lukewarm water and the detergent and gently pressed the fleece down until it sank down into the bowl.....

Soay fleece is VERY greasy but I wanted to keep some of that in the wool to assist with the spinning process so I felt that lukewarm water was the best. Next time I will make the water a little hotter though. This is all a learning process and I'm enjoying the learning as much as the process itself!
As all my sheep are on a heathery hill apportionment with some marshy areas among it, I was not surprised to find that the water soon became very dirty. This photo is actually the second blot. In my excitement I forgot to take a photo of the first!

I was timing these washes carefully because it's important not to let the water temperatures vary, so I didn't keep it in the basin long enough for the water to cool too much.By this time the clock said......

I took three photos of the fleece after the second wash while it was on the draining board. You may be able to see the amount of lanolin in the fleece. When wet it appears almost like a hoard of tiny wet particles of rice. If you squash it between your fingers it is just a greasy mess and quite unpleasant but very good for the skin on your hands! Here are the photos I took......

And then I got distracted and took a couple of random kitchen shots!!!

I love these bull plates. I have five of them and paid only £2 each for them. They measure approx. 11 x 9 inches and I like them very much.

I'd never actually keep pigs ( unless they stayed tiny piglet size!!) but I do love paintings of farm animals. This pig painting isn't very big and is painted onto a block. It looks nice in our kitchen.

Oops no, that was the time after the first wash! Sorry!

Nothing I own is worth a lot of money. If I like it, I buy it, and most of what I love is either presents from much loved family members (those things I DO treasure!) or items picked up at car boots or other sales. After all, we can't take our possessions with us when we leave this earth. Enjoy what you have, even if it cost more in car fuel to bring it home!
Back to the draining board!
The first rinse obviously showed detergent and a little dirty water coming through but after a few rinses it was beginning to look clear and I was satisfied that I'd got enough dirt and lanolin out of the fleece to think about getting it completely rinsed and on the 'screen' for drying. Here you can see the water is clear where I've moved the fleece aside....

The book I was using to direct me in this whole process suggested using a colander to get most of the water out of the fleece and then to get a fluffy towel and lay the fleece in it and squeeze down on it to get more water out. My colander has lots of ideas of what to drain in it but fleece is not one of them!

From the colander to the towel......

Now can I ask you something?
What do you use as a 'rust proof screen' when drying your fleece? I don't really have anything that I would consider totally suitable for this purpose so I actually used a kitchen cutting 'mat' made of reinforced glass. The ones you use for chopping veg and cutting meat. I won't use it again as I wasn't totally happy with it. I found the fleece took too long to dry (but then I did have to dry it indoors). Please let me know what works for you. Just write in the comment box below. I'd be very interested to know.

Well, I hope I haven't bored the fleece off you!!! Please let me know you called by my blog. If you have your own blog I will certainly visit yours too.
Now I'm off to have a roast chicken dinner! Until next time, keep calm and read lots of blogs!

One Sheep and a Few Foals

Hello again,
how is life in your neck of the woods? I'm happy to report that our weather has turned a little cooler! Now I can go out! I am definitely not a hot weather fan.
So today hubby and I went into town. Our usual fortnightly trip to go to the supermarket, library, chip shop (naughty but nice) and a little look in the charity shops. Today I was very excited to find this blue and yellow sunflower tablecloth to match my blue and yellow kitchen. I was even more delighted that it was circular because they seem more hard to come by. It cost only £2.00. Here it is.........

And a close up........

I daresay it won't be long 'til little cat paw prints will be all over it but never mind, I wouldn't want to be without my little kitties and the tablecloth can wash!
If you remember in my last post I told you my sister had given me a £15 gift voucher for a very nice shop in town. Just look what this sheep lover found in the shop......

I've called her "Mayah", as all my sheep's names end in "ah" and she measures 14 x 17 inches. Isn't she just fab?

And now for a cuteness overload! On the way back from town today just see what I spotted. We were able to stop the car in a safe place right where the foals were and I got these lovely shots of them.....

They are so soft and fluffy!
After getting home and having my usual cup of tea and 2 digestive biscuits I went up to feed the sheep and see if I could get any fleece while I was there. I knew my Soay ewe Shulah could probably be 'rooed', (have her fleece plucked off), as I'd rooed Yaisah last week. Soays shed their own fleece so if you want to keep it to spin and knit with you have to be quick once it starts to come off. So I got her fleece off and then decided Leelah's would easily come off too. Leelah is probably my oldest girl. She's a Shetland ewe and has a great personality. She really makes me laugh. When I was trying to get her to lie down so I could roo her she was so determined not to let me I could hardly do it for laughing! It reminded me of when the children were little and didn't want to go in their pushchair. They would stiffen their bodies up and it was really difficult sometimes to get their little legs to bend!
Here's one of my favourite photos of Leelah......

Well, I'm going to leave you with that for today, but I'll be updating soon as I have some fleece to wash and I'll be blogging about that. I'm also doing quite well with the "Arches and Columns" scarf I've previously blogged about so I should have something to show you again in the next two or three days.
Thank you for popping by. Please feel free to follow or leave comments. Tell me where you're from and what you're interested in. If you have a blog I'll make sure to visit you too.
Until next time, keep calm and create!

First Soay Fleece

What a birthday present! My first little bundle of Soay sheep fleece taken from my lovely ewe Yaisah today. Just look at this.....

There would have been more but, as Soays shed their own fleece, half of it was gone before I got to her to get the rest off. I may get nearer the full fleece from Shulah as she hasn't started shedding too much yet. Here are a couple more pics, a little closer up this time. Their fleece is very oily. Good for the hands!!

I've never worked with raw fleece before and as I want to learn how to spin I need to learn how to go through the whole process so I've oredered this book through Amazon......

And then of course because I want to learn to spin using a drop spindle I just HAD to order this book as well.......

I've found someone who is willing to teach me how to use the spindle and I'm so thankful and very excited about it. I would love to knit a shawl from my very own fleece. That is my goal.
And if all this isn't enough excitement for me, I'm getting 2 more Soays next week. This is my birthday present from my hubby. They are 'wethers' (castrated rams) and were born last year around the same time as the 2 ewes I have so it will make a nice little group. I plan to have perhaps half a dozen Soays and that will probably be my limit so I can add a few coloured Shetlands to my small flock too. About a dozen sheep altogether will be my flock size.
My hubby made a lovely gate for the larger sheep pen today. I was so grateful as it will help enormously when it comes to shearing time. We just need a couple more bits of wood to make it completely safe and sound. My hubby is so good to me and if I need something done or made he always does it and doesn't leave me hanging on or having to nag!! I wouldn't nag anyway, it's just not me.
So, I'll leave you today with a photo taken from the batch I took on Saturday at the Shetland Alpaca and Soay farm. Thanks for calling by my blog. As always feel free to comment, join, follow, ask questions......whatever you want. Here's a pic for you................

Three light Soays

Baby Soays......Adorable!

Just look what I got to photograph yesterday! I had made plans with the couple who own the Shetland Alpaca Farm to come up yesterday and take photos of their baby Soay sheep. I couldn't wait. I slept very badly the night before and got up at 6.00am because of my utter excitement! I know, I'm just a hopeless case.
Here is one photo I just love......

Just chillin'

As you can see, Soay babies are not really like the lambs of other breeds of sheep that we are more familiar with. They are much more like young deer and I noticed the 'bleating' sound they make is also unlike a lamb's bleat. Their coats are quite tight and very wavy, almost curly in places.
Here's a few more pics for you.....

Look at that face!

One of the ram lambs this year has a much lighter coat than they expected, but I think they are keen to keep this little ram to use as a breeder in the future. Soays can be light or dark. They can also have white on their faces. Some people prefer this. It's a matter of personal taste really. As long as the lamb's generational history can be traced back and there is only Soay blood in them then it's perfectly ok to have a change in colour. Sometimes a breeding ram may "throw" a lighter colour, even though he is dark. This is obviously a throw back from a previous generation.

Light Soay

Dark Soay

Soay sheep shed their own fleeces, although you can pull it off yourself if you see that is is becoming very loose and patchy. I notice one of mine is looking particularly straggly so I may try to get as much of the wool as I can so I can try to spin it. Phill from the farm showed me yesterday how to take off the loose fleece. You just get hold of a piece and 'roll' it upwards away from the skin. This doesn't hurt or harm the Soay sheep at all. The new fleece grows back quite quickly too. You can see in this next photo how the adult light coloured Soay is beginning to shed her fleece. Those loose clumps would easily come off with a gentle pull upwards.

I'm just going to finish off this post with a photo of one of their rams called Gambit. He is quite a character. When I arrived yesterday to take photos he was lying back in the sunshine watching all the mothers do the hard work............enough said!!! Here he is in all his glory..........

What a dude!

Back soon with more news and photos. Take care.

Shetland Alpacas

Today I'm going to step aside from Shetland wool and knitting because I want to introduce you to a special family. They are alpacas from the Shetland Alpaca Farm in North Roe up here in the Shetland Isles. The farm is owned by a lovely couple who also keep Soay sheep. This is where my own Soays have come from. They are very well bred and cared for and all being well I am going up there tomorrow to take some photos of their Soay lambs, born very recently. Soay lambs are uber-cute!!
First let me show you some photos of their alpacas, some of which I added captions to. Here they are......

And for all women who have ever asked this question, here are some Soays......

Alpacas look very cuddly but are not too happy to have your arms flung round them. They are a little aloof, but are very pleased to step a little closer if you have something tasty in your pocket that they can have. Their fleeces are dense and soft and make excellent knitting wool. Colin and his wife Phill have recently had some of the fleece made into wool and now sell it from their website. If you would like to look at their site or buy the wool please "click on the baby alpaca" at the right hand side of my blog. There you can also see more photos, some with names attached. I've forgotten the names of the ones I put on here just now, although I know the "Queen of the Castle" is Tosca. She has quite a personality going on there. Well, they all do to be fair. They are really lovely animals. They haven't bred them this year but I think they hope to next year. Oh my! Loads of cute little alpacas. Baby alpacas are called "cria"

So I'll leave you to browse those photos again and maybe have a look at the Shetland Alpaca website. I think you'll find it interesting. I know the wool is gorgeous.
So, call back here soon. Comment, join, follow, whatever takes your fancy. You're always welcome at this blog!
Until next time, be creative and learn a new skill. Now, there's a challenge for you. And don't forget to tell me all about it!!