Combing Cashmere Goats

Since it is just now the beginning of Spring, it is time to harvest cashmere. Cashmere comes from goats. Almost all goats have an undercoat that they grow for the winter. Cashmere goats are simply goats that have been bred to have long enough fiber to spin. The goats may be sheared, but then you also have all the hair I prefer to comb the cashmere while it is shedding out and before the hair starts coming out, too. I use a variety of rakes and combs and may comb the goat 2 or 3 times until I get most of it. You see the photo of the combs and a bag of cashmere, the process of combing and in the third photo how the goat looks with one side combed and the other side not yet combed. This is a labor intensive process with a fairly small harvest. That is why real cashmere is valuable. Much of the cashmere made into sweaters these days has an amount of fine sheep's wool in it. That is why you may be able to get a "cashmere" sweater for cheap.

New Pastel Paintings

With the unusual amount of snow we have had here in Tennessee, I have gotten some nice references for paintings. I hope you enjoy these.

Spinner's Retreat

The Natchez Trace Wilderness Park was the location of a spinner's retreat last weekend. What is that??!! For those of us who are crazy about wool, yarn, spinning, and fiber animals, it was a time to get together and share, eat, learn new techniques, and dye wool. It was very enjoyable as we made new friends and caught up with old ones. I even got to play my pennywhistle with Magda, (who is from Holland and plays the accordian) and Anna, who plays the fiddle. Sharing our knowledge about our techniques and lifestyles is important. Galyna from the Ukraine shared that in her country, people have forgotten what a spinning wheel looks like. They were not encouraged to keep the skills and crafts alive and people are forgetting how to do them. She tells us how happy she is here in this country because she is able to do all these things.

With the cold, snowy weather we had, I did two things: I painted indoors and took photos outside. I purchased the tulips and painted them before they drooped too much. I guess that's what tulips do in a vase.

I also took advantage of the unusual snow here and took oodles of photos. This pastel was done from one I took of the horses covered in snow.

Pastel paintings

I worked a little more on the painting I did a few days ago. I've realized that when you paint the skyholes (where you see the sky through the trees), it is a bit darker in value than the sky. I think I have improved it.

I've also learned that I have to take photos of my artwork outside. With my particular set up, this is the best way. The previous post, I had tried to take it inside because it was raining.

Here is a painting I have been working on for a while. I painted it from a photo that my daughter took. I keep going back to it to work on things I see. It's good to let a painting sit for a while. I see things I don't see at first. I think this is the final version. By the way, these paintings were done with my own hand made pastels. I think I am getting a good collection of colors.

Angora Bunnies for Sale

I have enjoyed my beautiful French Angora rabbits for years. I have shown them and won prizes with them. I now am offering babies for sale. They are $35 each and come with a pedigree. The bunnies in these three litters are not too closely related to breed together.

Here is a lovely litter of bunnies out of my champion buck, Leonardo. The mother is a golden steel. They were born Dec. 19th. There is a squirrel buck, a chocolate agouti buck, and a broken squirrel doe. She has a very nice pattern. I personally love the squirrel color.

This litter is the one that I posted about last month, the bunnies that almost died of the cold. They were born Dec. 19th, and they are beautiful now! This is a fawn buck, a cream doe, and a chestnut buck. Their father is a red, and their mother is a black. There is a red in the litter and an copper agouti that I am keeping for now. These bunnies could throw reds.

This litter has two does and five bucks. Born Dec. 4th, they are all a very good cream color, almost fawn. Their father is a good blue cream (tort) with very thick wool and their mother is white.

I've been dyeing, ( but not dying )

It takes quite a lot of time and effort to get my wool prepared to send off to be carded, but I finally got there. First there is all the washing and selecting and weighing, and then dyebath after dyebath of Shetland wool and angora. I like a 75% wool and 25% angora mix. I like to put similar colors together, such as turquiose and blue, and navy, blue and violet. When carded, this makes a depth of the color, in that it comes out almost iridescent and you are seeing the different colors and not just one flat color. Incidentally, this is the effect one strives for when painting in pastel. Instead of blending, adding one color over another makes for a much more interesting sparkling effect.