Spring shearing is bigger than fall shearing.  The goats, all four of them, get sheared twice a year - spring and fall.  I've done this myself for as long as I've owned goats, although I started off poorly.  The first time It took me several hours per goat and I only had the stamina to do one a day.  Even with as few goats as I have, it took me a week or more to get them all sheared.  And they all looked like a four year old had gotten a hold of the scissors.  I'm sure they went back to their shelter and laughed at each other's hair cut.  And probably laughed at me.  But I've gotten better over the years.  I still only do one a day but even the worst of them only takes me an hour now and they actually look pretty good.  And Bernadette, who has wavy hair instead of curly dreadlocks, only takes me about 20 minutes.

The llamas and alpacas are a whole different story.  They are sheared only in the spring so we only have to fight the battle once a year.  Last spring, when they needed to be sheared for the first time in my care, I had never seen it done.  I decided I should hire a really good shearer.  My intention was to learn from an expert and then shear them myself after that.  Enter Sean Price.  He is part owner of Figment Ranch in Cypress, TX and has been shearing llamas for over 17 years.  Sean is wonderful.  He's young and strong and has a great hand with the animals.  His version of "tough love" is delightful to watch.  He expects the animals to stand up and stand still and put up with this once a year procedure without complaining.  He's not rough or abrupt but his expectations are high and amazingly, the animals always seem to rise to the occasion.  He's efficient and calm.  Two things I'm not when it comes to shearing.  And he knows the animals well enough to know when to back off and let them rest and when to push through and get them done.

Notice that Tucker, in the first picture, has very little hair on his head.  It's a llama thing.  Llamas also don't have much hair on their lower legs.  Scamp, on the other hand has a very fluffy head and the fluff on his legs goes all the way to the ground.  This lead to three very funny looking alpacas last year.  It was my first camelid shearing so when Sean said they don't shear the heads or lower legs of llamas, I said that was fine for the alpacas too.  I ended up with fuzzy headed, fuzzy legged bobble head dolls when he was finished with the alpacas.  They were cool and comfortable for the summer heat but they looked pretty funny. 

This year I requested that we shear the alpacas heads and lower legs so I would get more fiber and so they would look like the pictures of sheared alpacas I'd seen.  No problem.

Llamas and alpacas really do look odd after their sheared.  Their bodies, neck and legs are long and thin.... really long and really thin.  They have a concentration camp look to them.  You really get used to seeing them fluffy for almost the entire year and it's startling to see them nearly hairless.  Regardless of how they look, you can hear the big sigh of relief when they finally get a chance to take off that fur coat!  As much as I want the wonderful fiber they produce, shearing is more important for their comfort and health, particularly in our hot and humid climate.

So the llama and all the alpacas got sheared.  I have wonderful fleeces to pick through and send off to be processed.  They all got their annual shots and had their toenails trimmed.  Sean charged me a very reasonable price.  And the whole thing took about 2 hours!  I've watched Sean shear my animals twice now and have decided not to try and learn how to do it myself.  He's good and he's fast and he's charming and he's reasonably priced.  What's not to love?

We have been talking about having a natural dye workshop for quite a while.  I love the natural dyes although Peggy is happier with the acid and fiber reactive dyes.  It's great that we cover all the bases between us.  The Tall Pines Spinning & Weaving Guild, located in North Houston, asked us to put on the natural dye workshop for their members this spring.   I had told Gloria Chuckman, president of Tall Pines, that I thought 10 would be our maximum number of attendees.  We ended up having five, plus Peggy and I, and that turned out to be the perfect number.  Any more people and we might have been falling over each other.

We had quite a bit of our yarn already mordanted and ready for the dye pots, and for sale, when people arrived although everyone brought yarn of their own to dye.  We set up pots to mordant all the new yarn in - Alum, Tin, Copper and Chrome.  Somehow we never got around to using Iron.   

We spent most of the morning mordanting and collecting dye stuffs.  We chopped down Yarrow from one of my garden bins,

gathered Bronze Fennel from my front garden...

and picked up oak galls from under my various oak trees.  My dear husband, Ron, made us a wonderful lunch of salad and sandwiches so after we'd eaten we were ready to dye.

We started the indigo vat and cooked up the Yarrow, Bronze Fennel and oak galls along with black walnut husks, cochineal, onion skins and Osage Orange, a total of 8 natural dyes.  Among us we dyed wool, silk, mohair, cotton and various blends.  It was great!  We have a great spin dryer to spin out the water and then hung the yarn up to dry...

We ended up with a nice palette of colors...

A special thanks to Gloria Chuckman for letting me use her photos!  Note to self..... next time let's skip the Yarrow and Fennel.  Both gave us very unremarkable beiges not worth repeating.  I'll try them again sometime during the heat of the summer to see if we get any better colors.  If not, I'll pull up all the Yarrow and plant something else for color.  The Bronze Fennel in our front garden is there to please the caterpillars so that will continue to have a home regardless of it's worth as a dye.  There are lots of other natural dyes to use.  I'm growing marigolds which give nice yellows/golds and the madder is doing well.  I just planted the madder this spring so it will be several years till we can dig up the roots for dye.

We are already planning our next natural dye workshop.  Temperatures are consistently in the 90's now so we will wait till the fall.

We have been dyeing yarn and fiber for quite a while now and use half of an old shed at my place as our dye studio.  The tractor, gas cans and yard tools live in the other side of the shed.  I think the shed started out as a potting shed for the previous owner.  The counters were high and slatted and the floor was paved with large cement slabs, some entirely cement and others just a skim of cement over a core of Styrofoam.  I wish I had taken a picture of the way it looked at the beginning.  We did manage to get quite a bit of stuff dyed but were constantly tripping on the uneven floor and we ended up with sore backs from working at counters that were too low or too high.  Our various small tools kept falling through the slats on the counters and bouncing on the floor.  Not the best of conditions but we did some great work in there.

The shed has great bones.... the doorways are wide, the walls and ceiling are made of corrugated metal and the space is generous.  Our propane burners are inside the shed to protect the flames from the ever present wind but there is still plenty of air movement so we have good ventilation.  Inside we are protected from the wind and rain and sun.  We hung several clotheslines from the trees right outside the dye studio so there is plenty of space to hang newly dyed yarn to dry.  It has all the comforts of home, minus heat or air conditioning, but the uneven floor and awkward counters were maddening. 

We decided last winter to cement the floor and have the counters re-built.  I mentioned the upgrades to Richard, my wonderful contractor, but it took months to get Delbert and the rest of the cement crew out to do the job.  I got the news that they would arrive one Monday in April so Ron and I spent the Sunday before cleaning out all the dye supplies, burners, pots and racks.  Delbert and the guys showed up bright and early Monday morning to take out the counters, move all the odd cement pavers and get all the prep work done for the new floor.

Here the re-bar has been set, the edge forms installed and it's all ready for the cement truck to arrive.  We even added a real porch outside the doorway so we have a place to set hot pots and rinse buckets!

First thing Tuesday morning I woke up to the sound of a very large truck coming up the driveway.  Cement trucks are much larger when you see them up close than they are when you see them on the highway... and they look pretty darn big on the highway!

It took these guys almost no time at all to back the truck into position and start pouring cement.  It was fun to watch!  Here they are spreading the cement.  Once the cement was all in the forms, the guys...

started smoothing it out and making the perfect surface for us - smooth enough to hose off but rough enough that no one would slip on it when it's wet.  They had it all finished in just a couple of hours but stayed most of the day to work the surface every couple of hours.

We let the cement rest and harden for a couple of days and then started moving all our stuff back in.  This is what it looks like all finished.....

The floor is nice and smooth, although about 4 inches taller so the head room through the doorway is less.  Peggy and I can walk through without problems but taller people have to duck.  We had some hooks on the rafters but have added many more along with hooks on the wooden cross pieces so there are lots of places to hang spoons, strainers, hot pad and thermometers.  The counters are the perfect height to work on with smooth solid tops and the shelf underneath is metal hardware cloth so the pots will drain.  It's fabulous!  And it was ready just in time for our Natural Dye Workshop, but more of that next time....