Friday, April 27, 2018

Mona Lisa of Fibre

Mona "Muskox" Lisa

What do you know: It’s the last update of April !!! Time sure flies when you are having fun or…are the gravitational waves getting stronger and stronger??? Whatever the reason: Today it is time to treat yourself to something special ! Treat yourself to something super amazing to spin: the IxCHeL Tundra blend with yes,,,wait for it: Qiviut from the Norwegian Dovrefjell national park!! I had a bit of a contest going on my Instagram page (linkie here: https://www.instagram.com/ixchelbunny/ ) : from a very close up close up you had to guess the animal and exactly where the focus animal on my blog tonight and in tonight’s blend comes from.

The first three people to guess all this correct would receive a free top! If you would like to see more photos , behind the scenes looks of our little fibre farm and what I am filling my days with, please follow me on Instagram. There will be many more give a ways and contests in the future ! Now, it is time to announce the winners of tonight  who guessed both the animal AND the country correctly :

Congratulations to : THUMBELINASPINS !  and Pingdini! and Tasmaniamoorit!
Please message me on Instagram with your full name and postal address so the fluffy top knows where to hop to !


Now it is time to give you some more information on this magical ancient animal ! Qiviut is the name of the wool that comes off of the Musk Ox, a gentle giant of a creature often found in Alaska. Once hunted to the brink of extinction, Musk Ox are now considered to have the most precious, softest fiber in the world. Eight times warmer than wool and finer than cashmere, qiviut is rare and it is one of the most luxurious fibres you can choose for a garment.

The softness of Qiviut is something that must be touched to be believed! Qiviut is not only soft, it is also non-irritating to the skin, and is very durable - garments made from it are worn for years and can be hand washed in mild detergent. It retains warmth even when wet.

The lightweight fibre preserves heat in the winter, while also providing cool, breathable comfort in warmer weather. This fibre has been carefully gathered by hand and no animals were harmed in the gentle shedding of it. This fibre generally sells for anywhere between $35-$56/28grams/oz, and skeins of yarn often sell for over $100-200 each!! Fibre count is 100s+ (12-15 micron)!!!

A musk ox mum and her baby

the Qiviut (down of the musk ox)  peeking through the guard hairs

Musk Ox male in Alaska

One of the baby musk ox



The mighty muskox (Ovibos moschatu) is a survivor from the ice age. Possessing powerful curved horns, which hang down like side bangs from a helmet-like skullcap, muskoxen are actually more closely related to sheep and goats than to cattle and oxen (although all of the above are members of the Bovidae family).

Adult muskoxen weigh from 180 to 400 kg (400 to 900 pounds) but they look much larger on account of their thick coats and large heads. Once muskoxen proliferated throughout the northern hemisphere alongside woolly mammoths, but hunting and habitat loss caused them to retreat further and further into the remotest parts of the north until the end of the nineteenth century when the animals could only be found in the unpopulated wilderness and empty islands of northern Canada and deep in the arctic vastness of Greenland. In these remote locations tiny herds of one to two dozen muskoxen still subsist on grasses, willows, lichens and moss while contending with terrible arctic predators and fearsome cold.

Fortunately the muskox is provisioned with fearsome horns and doughty neighbours to fend off polar bears and wolves. The herd is capable of assembling in a ring formation with horns outward to stand off wolves and ice bears (although such a strategy works less well against humans with our projectile weapons). To fight the cold, the muskoxen have fat reserves and one of the most remarkable insulating coats in the animal world.

A muskox’s coat is divided into two layers: a long stringy layer of coarse outer wool and an inner layer of soft warm undercoat called qiviut (this Inuit word now primarily denotes muskox wool but it was once also used to refer to similarly soft warm inner down of arctic birds). Qiviut is one of the world’s premier luxury fibres: it is allegedly 8 times more effective at insulation than sheep’s wool and yet is softer than cashmere.

The Musk Ox survived when the other greats of the Pleistocene – woolly mammoth, mastodon, sabertoothed cats, giant sloth – all went away. And it returned to Alaska by way of New York Harbour. Now, it turns out, the musk ox could again be the great survivor in our new Arctic age of extinction. Ross MacPhee, a curator in the department of mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, says the musk ox’s homogenous genetic makeup suggests it has been through population stress before and can survive boom-and-bust cycles.

“What we find with living musk oxen is they’re not exactly clones, but they’re so amazingly similar that there’s only one explanation,” MacPhee says. “And that explanation is that they had to have had a very severe pinch on their populations. We estimate that that happened about ten thousand years ago.” But that doesn’t mean it’s all good news for the cold-weather beast, which is most closely related to goats and sheep and can weigh up to 800 pounds. The pace of these changes could challenge even an animal as resilient as the musk ox, scientists say.

Brendan Kelly, an Arctic ecologist and research scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says all Arctic species are currently endangered by the rapid speed of climate change. “For organisms to adapt – whether it’s changing body size, or changing the timing that they have their calves, and hence can match when the plants are most nutritious – it really depends on the rate of the environmental change relative to the generation time of the organism,” Kelly says. “So if there’s a really, really rapid environmental change, it’s very hard for there to be an adaptive response.”

As I was reading about Musk Ox I found out that all of the muskox at the Myskoxcentrum in Härjedalen, Sweden, came from Ryøya, near Tromsø, Norway. What?!? Muskox on Ryøya? I knew about the Dovrefjell group and an attempt to introduce muskox on Svalbard, but I had never heard of a group in northern Norway. The search was on.

It turns out that there is a flock of more 40+ animals now running around free on a small island named Ryøya off the coast of Tromsø. NRK’s Ut i naturen television program made a 24-minute show about “Moskusøya” (“Muskox Island”) in 2006. Unfortunately the show is in Norwegian, but even if you don’t speak Norwegian, it’s still worth watching for a while if you want to see muskox running around and scientists trying to catch them. In the Ut i naturen program, we also get to see some historic television clips from the 1960s when the muskox first came to Troms.

In 1969, 25 muskox calves arrived in northern Norway via boat from Greenland. The idea was to raise muskox for their wool as domesticated livestock. The University of Fairbanks in Alaska had some kind of research project related to muskox husbandry (I haven’t looked into that yet) and the idea was transferred to Norway.

The undercoat wool of muskox, known as qiviut, is a highly valuable wool: it is warmer than wool, finer than cashmere and hypoallergenic. Sounds like the perfect winter clothing material, except that muskox are pretty rare and not widely domesticated – which makes it a very, very expensive material

In 1969, the herd was established at a farm in Bardu with the hope that eventually every farm in the area could have 2-3 muskox for a meaningful supplementary income. But by 1975, calls for the end of muskox experiment were being made. According to media reports, a hunter was killed by a muskox and the muskox population was being devastated by a virus (hmmm, sounds familiar, right?). So in 1976, the herd was moved to northern Troms, and five years later, the Tromsø University is taking care of them to preserve the species.

The Department of Arctic and Marine Biology took over the herd and moved them to Ryøya to study their behaviour and adaptation as arctic animals. Muskox as livestock in Norway didn’t work out, but who knows what the future holds. The Qiviut are still here.

If you watch the TV program, you’ll see that while the scientists herd the muskox to collect measurements and/or for transportation to the overwintering station on the mainland, they quickly pull out the qiviut, which they sell to support their research. Qiviut is a bonus of having muskox in Norway — if you can catch them.

Well , don’t you worry I caught some of it for you !! to support the musk ox population growing not only on the American continent but also in other habitats that are good for them. This will enable the species to grow, get stronger, adapt and hey, probably outlive us all, since they already did that to the woolly mammoth.

Don’t worry, if I EVER find a woolly mammoth, I will share its’ wool with all of you …

A Qiviut cowl, the warmest and softest thing you will ever wear

So, this week it is Qiviut !!!!

Only a small amount available so please don’t wait too long for this amazing blend that spins like a dream !


So, here it is: a Qiviut blend to cuddle up to tonight !

Have a fun weekend with lots of fibre play and love!!

All my contact details and "HOW TO ORDER" are also to be found at the end of this week’s blog entry. And please remember: Every time you buy from a small business or a farm you are not only getting something unique and handmade but you are supporting so much more !

IxCHeL Tundra Tops

50 grams AU$25

Qiviut 25% , Cashmere, Silk, Tencel, superfine merino, English Angora Bunny








Wolfsbane -sold-






Peacock Dance Off









Gothic Purple







Birdcage-sold-






Attack of the Killer Fridge




Cabaret




Disco Vampires





Natural




Velveteen




Mood Indigo-sold-






Have a Creative and Fun week!

All my contact details are here:



How To Order:
1. You can email me on ixchel at rabbit dot com dot au or ixchelbunny at yahoo dot com dot au
2. Message me on facebook or 
3. Message me on www.ravelry.com  where I am ixchelbunny.
4. message me on Instagram where I am @ixchelbunny

I will email you right back with all your order details and payment methods.


Any questions? Any custom orders for yarn or dyeing fibre? : Please don’t hesitate to ask! Always happy to enable.



Dates to put in your Calendar

SUNDAY MAY 13TH 10AM – 3PM 

HANDKNITTERS GUILD OF VICTORIA YARN AND FIBRE SHOW
COBURG TOWN HALL
BELL STREET , COBURG, 3058
A fabulous day filled with lots of yarn and fibre goodies and spindles, bowls and lots more !
An amazing day out !
Hope to see you there !
You can find the IxCHeL Stall and wall of colourful yarns and fibre at stall nr 1 and 2 at the front entrance. You can’t miss us !

Friday July 20th to Sunday July 22nd 

Australian Sheep and Wool Show, Bendigo.
Go to http://www.sheepshow.com to see what is happening and book your tickets. The Bendigo Sheep and Wool show is the biggest wool show in Australia ! with an amazing amount of woolcraft, indie dyers, a huge amount of tops, yarn, craft, felt and spindles, spinning wheels and anything you need for your knitting,crocheting and crafting.
I will be there with an amazing amount of new exclusive wool blends and yarns, batts, felt and landscape and botanical natural dyes and so much more !!!
I will also have spindles by the amazing Bearded Dragon and lots of fibre tools as well from darning mushrooms to noste pinne and needle cases to distaffs. And, there will also be some wonderful Turkish spindles from my friend Scott Snyder available again !

Get ready for a fabulous weekend filled with lots of craft and fun !!!








 RABBIT ON !
((hugs))
Charly
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Friday, April 20, 2018

Doubt is Wisdom but Creativity is Better


Max, Smoke grey English angora


Thanks for your patience! Todays internet connection was so slow and it took every single ounce of me not to throw our router out of the window....IMaybe today was my friday the 13th of last week..LOL Last Friday the 13th went by without a glitch (phew) , life has gone on without major catastrophes here and , dare I say it, filled with getting lots of fibres and yarns dyed, spinning up a storm to get as many fluffy bunny and other handspun yarns done before the biggest yarn event of the year in May. It is one of those times that I am both filled with happy anticipation and a complete fear and dread. Hear me out.

A wise person once told me that doubt is wisdom. Never be too sure of yourself or become a know it all, never become so confident that what ever you do, thee is no consequence of your action because hey, everything is going to be great anyway, so why bother. If you become too over confident, I always think that there is less care, everything becomes dreary and automatic…and you lose interest until the next best thing comes along and then the whole scenario starts again. I’ve seen it happen to a lot of people in a lot of different scenarios. Safe to say, I have no problem at all with under estimating anything and doubt is a major part of my daily existence. It has been for a long time.

As an outsider from the moment I arrived, I never had the luxury to feel part of a group, be popular or was able to identify with a club. I was never part of a club at school or at University. As Groucho Marx once said “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member”…I never had to refuse but it sounds good…lol Anyway, I digress.
What I am trying to say as an “intro” to this weeks update is, that a bit of doubt is good to make decisions and find your way.; A lot of doubt is not. Recently I have had a lot of doubt. Not necessarily because of what I do, but because of the , let’s just call it “rewards”, meaning the wage I earn. As a craft business/artist/designer/whatever , it may come as a big surprise to you, but the pay is lousy. The reward dealing with people can be amazing though and doing what you want to do is out of this world. However, bills need to be paid and , believe it or not, creating everything and trying to sell it , is not earning me a big “wage”. Paul and I have not had a holiday for over 13 years (unless you count 2 days away in Gippsland twice)..lol I do not indulge in buying anything much at all and we are trying to be as self sustainable as possible. In short, we do not spend a lot. Which makes it easy when sales are slow and you have to survive on half the minimum wage or less. The work load has not diminished though. It has increased lots. Part of it is that I am putting myself under a lot of pressure and not having price increases since I started. (I am so not a smart business person LOL) . Trying to get new fibre blends together, new rare sheep breeds together and new yarn line collaborations up and running takes a lot of investment and a lot of time. I have fun doing that but with every decision comes that doubt creeping in “Will people want it? What colours do people want? How do I compete with the gazillion of others out there? It is a tough world no matter what business you are in. The main problem I have had in the last few years is that I started to look at it in a business kind of way. Meaning, market studies, seeing what others were doing, comparing, social media,…honestly it was doing my head in. I was getting tired. Very tired. IAnd even now, I am often on the brink of exhaustion. If I wasn;’t that stubborn, I probably would have stopped My attitude had to change so start of this year I changed my perspective. Until this year. I have stopped comparing. I felt it was putting so much pressure and even more doubt into my actions than was necessary. I started what I was doing because I was passionate about it. I loved dyeing and painting. My enthusiasm and creativity were boundless. Comparisons are useless. All these market studies that I am seeing on social media, all those people trying to look for information out there to make sure they are making the right decision are in themselves fabulous in a micro sense of a way but in the end you have to be led by one thing and one thing alone: Being yourself ! That means that you will have a unique product: You. It means that it will have your way of looking and creating on it, your stamp so to speak. Being creative does not mean that you have to compare yourself to others. Being creative means you are different. And being different means that you are not someone else or can be compared to anybody else. You can doubt your decisions or, to say it differently, be critical about what you do, but that is an action that is internal: it is between you and yourself, not you and others. So, what I am trying to say I guess is : Be creative, Have fun and do it your way.



I have been dyeing up a storm again, and I started to see my yarns (because I am preparing for te handknitters guild day in May) as a canvas and started to layer colours on my yarns as if I was working with water colours. It takes a LOT of work but I so like the look of it. More on that in next weeks blog


For tonight’s update there are Cashmere fling tops on offer ! A super soft blend that spins like butter I always say and has a drape that is out of this world! Have fun snaffling up some of tonight’s offers and remember: Every time you buy from a small business or a farm you are not only getting something unique and hand made but you are supporting so much more !


IxCHeL Cashmere Fling Tops

100 grams AU$23

Cashmere, Bamboo, nylon glitz, tencel








Autumn in a twist






Gothic Cherry Blossom









Berry Pink







Heather






Indigo Shibori




Indigo Velvet




Lichen on a Tin Roof





Love and Cuddles




Pastel Petals




Purple People Eater






Sage and Savvy









Unicorn Milk







Peacock






Pink Panther




Pink Rebel




Velvet





Water Dragon




Winter Garden




Zen




Please don't hesitate to contact me at any time if you have any questions okay? Always happy to enable. All my contact details are also to be found at the end of this week’s blog entry.



Have a Creative and Fun week!

All my contact details are here:



How To Order:
1. You can email me on ixchel at rabbit dot com dot au or ixchelbunny at yahoo dot com dot au
2. Message me on facebook or 
3. Message me on www.ravelry.com  where I am ixchelbunny.
4. message me on Instagram where I am @ixchelbunny

I will email you right back with all your order details and payment methods.


Any questions? Any custom orders for yarn or dyeing fibre? : Please don’t hesitate to ask! Always happy to enable.



Dates to put in your Calendar

SUNDAY MAY 13TH 10AM – 3PM 

HANDKNITTERS GUILD OF VICTORIA YARN AND FIBRE SHOW
COBURG TOWN HALL
BELL STREET , COBURG, 3058
 A fabulous day filled with lots of yarn and fibre goodies and spindles, bowls and lots more !
An amazing day out !
Hope to see you there !
You can find the IxCHeL Stall and wall of colourful yarns and fibre at stall nr 1 and 2 at the front entrance. You can’t miss us !

Friday July 20th to Sunday July 22nd ;

Australian Sheep and Wool Show, Bendigo.
Go to http://www.sheepshow.com to see what is happening and book your tickets. The Bendigo Sheep and Wool show is the biggest wool show in Australia ! with an amazing amount of woolcraft, indie dyers, a huge amount of tops, yarn, craft, felt and spindles, spinning wheels and anything you need for your knitting,crocheting and crafting.
 I will be there with an amazing amount of new exclusive wool blends and yarns, batts, felt and landscape and botanical natural dyes and so much more !!!
I will also have spindles by the amazing Bearded Dragon and lots of fibre tools as well from darning mushrooms to noste pinne and needle cases to distaffs. And, there will also be Turkish spindles from my friend Scott Snyder of offer again !

Get ready for a fabulous weekend filled with lots of craft and fun !!!








 RABBIT ON !
((hugs))
Charly
qrcode