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There could be a lot of reasons why your does were having trouble with their litters. Sometimes the nest box isn't right, they didn't get it in time, they don't like the nesting material or it's their first time and they don't know what to do yet. It could be some outside thing like noisy neighbor k...

I just borrowed a DVD from a friend titled "How I Spin" by Rita Buchanan. It's a brilliant DVD, very informative and lots of fun, too. She even covers how to wash wool and it is an enjoyable DVD.

I think a lot of stove paint might be wax mixed with soot. Otherwise, you could oil it to keep the rust at bay. Peanut oil is a pretty high heat oil, that might be a good choice, but I'm just guessing here.

Well, you'll end up with a lot of little sheep. Did you want your herd to increase?

The amount of cream you'll get from a liter of milk depends on the breed of cow who produced the milk. Some give a lot more cream than others. If it is raw cow's milk, you probably don't even really need a separator. Just skim the cream off the top after it's set for a bit. Goat's milk is naturally ...

If you got two or three bantam Silky hens you could tell the neighbors they were "Peruvian Ground Parrots" and they'd probably never know. Silkies don't look very much like chooks at all.

Oh, good that the bunnies are adjusting to summer. Meat rabbit types usually have fairly short hair, don't they? Although someone told me angoras were bred into the New Zealand line to give them a denser pelt. I don't know if that is true but every once in awhile a New Zealand will be born with an a...

Thanks Chickenchargrill, That's a useful site. Linen is a LOT of work! Isn't it part of "linsey woolly", though? Sort of half wool, half linen? Would cotton be easier than linen? That has seeds to pull out of the fiber, but no "scutching" or "retting". Finer clothes see...

Aloha Fiona, Sheep's fleece is a good fiber to start working with. It usually likes to become yarn. Too many twists could be from treadling a bit too fast or not getting enough fiber out there into the draw fast enough. Treadle as slow as possible at first. Also the brake tension on the bobbin might...

What fiber are you spinning? It's pretty easy to use a wheel if you've spun a bit with a drop spindle and kind of have a feel for how fiber wants to spin together. But it's okay to start directly on a wheel, too. Set up your wheel to be used. Put the drive band from the big wheel to the largest whor...

We have a fellow with a portable bread oven who sells bread at the local farmer's market. He makes one or two batches of bread while at the farmer's market but the majority of the bread he sells was made before he got to the market. I'm suspecting it was made in a more traditional oven as well, but ...

So the small leaved vine sort of flax plant is the one for cloth? The one which grew from edible flax seeds? Oh dear, my friend isn't going to be very pleased about that, he's been crowing about how his flax plant is more proper than my flax plant. He does like basket weaving, though so he will stil...

Yup, rubbing oil into the sticky stuff works. On this side of the pond there is "WD40" which is an aerosol lubricating/drying spray. It takes off sticky pretty well. But, rubbing oil on it works just about as well.

A friend of mine is working on growing flax although there seems to be two plants of the same name that look hugely different. He has one which is reddish brown and has huge spear like leaves. The whole thing is a meter tall or more. I planted some flax seeds from some edible flax type seeds and the...

Don't forget to join the Selfsufficientish group on Ravelry too! There's Ish groups everywhere now... oo are there ?where? I've avoided ravellry, you can just have too many forums/ groups sometimes, I'm already on four spinning/weaving/dyeing yahoo groups Are the yahoo groups any good? Spinning is ...