turkeys – Felting and Fiber Studio

Some life on the farm.

June 16, 2016 shepherdessann Comments 20 comments

Today the turkeys arrived, we ordered 3 kinds to see how they grow for us. Some white ones and some bronze ones and some called artisan. The whites and the bronze came as week olds.

There are some videos below. they do not seem to be loading up here while I am editing. I am hoping they work once published. If not I will try tomorrow using the video camera instead of my iPhone. They are quick time movies so I am not sure the problem. If you know please let me know.

The artisan where only available as day olds. Here they are in there travel box. they do not give them much room when traveling as it is safer if they can’t move around to much. I like their marking. They are in a bigger box under a heat lamp in my studio, right next to a box of day old chickens that one of our loose birds hatched yesterday.

I gave the laying hens some new shavings in their nesting boxes. then spread the rest of the shaving bale around. They all run outside while I am doing it. It is very scary it seems. They are chicken chickens of course. Then curiosity takes over and they have to come in a check it out.

Every children’s book I have ever read about farms says roosters crow in the morning. I am here to tell you that is true but they also crow mid morning and at lunch and in the afternoon and evening. The only time they do not cow is at night. At least I have never heard them because I am sleeping.

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It seems one of the young roosters though he could be in charge and found out he couldn’t. The up side of bird politics is I got some really nice feathers donated by the looser. I think they will look very nice on a hat. The rooster is fine just short a few feathers. I can’t eve tell witch of the to young red ones it was.

One last video this is Star(ving) getting her bottle at dinner time. She has grown into a sturdy little lamb since you first met her. http://feltandfiberstudio.proboards.com/thread/2818/daily-dose-fibre?page

Round the farm.

November 13, 2015 shepherdessann Comments 14 comments

I haven’t done a thing with felt this week. I have just been relaxing after the show and trying catch up on all the things I wasn’t doing while getting ready. I thought I would show you a few things around the farm.

Every morning when I go out the door the Turkeys are there and they walk me to the van.

In the picture on the right you can see 2 of the toms are all fluffed up and there heads are quite blue.

With it being fall we got wood in. We get 2 loads like this.

We heat with an outdoor wood boiler. I like it much better than when we had an indoor wood furnace.

To night as I write this one of our pigs has started to have piglets.

Piglets are very cute. Now it”s time for bed for me.

More Cup Cozies

July 8, 2015 shepherdessann Comments 14 comments

This week I made more cup cozies. I made 2 sets of flat ones that will have buttons. I started out with a rectangle. I decorated them in a random way. I then cut them into 4 at the prefelt stage. The purple has some orange blobs of orange throwers waist. It should show up again when they are dry. The green has some of my hand spun single yarn. It is quite stable until you wet it then it get its twist back and goes all crazy.

I finish them on a glass wash board. It is very fast.

These are the rest of the ones I made. They will get buttons. Some will fit a coffee mug and some will fit travel mugs or water bottles.

Here are some of my buttons I will be picking through for these. I have many more if I need them. I will use a thin round black elastic loop to close them. That way I think people may be able to adjust them by looping them once or twice as needed.

I also made some that are like the cardboard sleeves you get at take out places.

The multicoloured one was made using a batt and prefelt triangles I cut out of some scraps. The black one is regular merino top with a white silk hanky stretched over it. The white one is made with prefelt and a black silk hanky stretched around it. The white one shrank much more top to bottom then the other two. I didn’t look carefully at the piece I had before using it. Prefelt is directional. If I had looked I would have used it in the other direction.

I use the washboard to finish them as well.

This is the group drying. I really like the way the back and white ones look like marble.

If you made it this far here are two unrelated pictures. One is my grandson helping me with my ice cream cone at the farmers market on Sunday.

And the turkeys I showed you a few weeks ago. The first one is when they are 1 week old. They are now 4 .5 weeks old. They grow very fast. They will be moving to new quarters this week.