California Red-What’s That?

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Originally uploaded by galut5

While Corriedale is my first love, California Red is the flirtation I cannot resist. When I want the feel of a wool slipping through my fingers I look for Cal Red.

California Red is a very new breed. They were developed in the 1970’s from crosses of Barbados Blackbelly and Tunis breeds. The original idea was to create a wooless sheep with a better carcass. This was a failure, but the offspring were noticed by another breeder and they further developed these into the breed today.

This breed is athletic and deer like in appearance, but have an easy going temperament that makes them easy to handle. They not only handle heat well, but also cold. Flocks of them can be found from Mississippi on north into Canada. From the dry heat of California to the wet and variable temperatures of New Jersey.

I was introduced to California Red wool by a local shepherd. Unfortunately she no longer lives in my area. At that time she was the only breeder in Wisconsin and I haven’t found anyone else in the state that has them.

California Red has a medium fine oatmeal colored wool interspersed with red hairs. The wool portion is finer than Tunis, but the red hairs produce a product better suited to rugs and outerwear. The texture of the fleece hovers between a down type wool and a fine wool. There is a definite lock structure but it is much coarser than many fine wools. The breed also has an excellent carcass that when judged side by side other breeds scores favorably. This breed is well deserving of the dual meat/wool status it has.

If you get a chance, try your hand at some. You just might be surprised.

Soay-An Experiment in Patience

I manged to get some Soay fiber from Amelia Carlson.  She was able to send me a small amount of fiber from one of her own animals and one from another farm.  And as a result I got both types of fleece.  This fiber was challenging, but not as challenging as I feared it would be.  The short staple being its biggest challenge with the slippery hairs in addition.  Actually the hairs in the fibers spun up  quite nicely.

Here is the hairy type.

And the back of this looks like

Here is the wooley type.

Most of the vegetable matter fell out of these locks during processing.  It was very short, somewhere around a one inch staple for each of these.  I first tried one of my smaller spindles and found I could fairly easily spin both types of fiber on it.

But before I show you yarn, let me show you this.

That is hair on the left, and a partially dehaired lock on the right.  Last time I dehaired something like this was some Scottish Highland Cattle I once dehaired.  This is not recommended way of processing Soay unless you have lots of time and really good light.

So I took these two types of fleeces then carded and combed each type.  First the hairy fleece.

Carded.

And combed.  No attempt to remove the hair was made, but you can see that the combed version is less hairy than the carded.  Plus all the light colored tips seemed to have been separated out.

Now for the woolly type of Soay fleece.

Once again carded.

And combed.  This fleece was nicer to work with, but not exactly something I would want to wear next to my skin.  I am planning on making some sort of amulet bag out of what I spun.

Just to remind you, the staple length on this fiber is around 1″ it is very short and I seriously considered using my charka for it, but one of my lighter Bosworth spindles handled it nicely.

I would suggest trying Soay, but I do not recommend planning a big project for it unless you are reenacting or replicating an artifact.  Spinning a large amount will be challenging to your patience.  But it is fun to try to play with something that has not genetically changed as much as many other sheep breeds have changed.

In other news, I’m working like a mad woman.  It is insane at my day job right now.  Soon it will return to a dull roar, but not for a few more weeks.

Mas is doing well.  He passed his herding instinct test with flying colors.

See small black puppy take after his Daddy and chase sheep!

He turns 5 months old tomorrow…which means I need some more pictures of him!  These pictures are now a month old.

Oh oh oh…and looky what I got from my Spunky Pal on Ravelry!

Wow!  What a haul.  That white ball in the corner is Sea Silk and the reddish roving is pygora and a longwool blended.  If you are on Ravelry you can check out the swap results here.

I’m drinking a toast to everyone who is at or going to be at SOAR.  I’ll be honest I’m jealous, but I want to be there next year!  I guess I better start saving money now.