Friday, February 17, 2023

Rare sheep and climate change

North Ronaldsay lamb smiling at the camera

A cute, smiling north Ronaldsay lamb 

Busy doesn’t even start to describe this week! Lol I was glad, on a personal level, to have the time to wash my hair (dyeing and cutting it into shape will have to wait a few days …lol)  and take a relaxing bath but that was about it…rofl The rest of the time was taken up with prepping, dyeing, spinning orders, negotiating with mills and AQIS (the Australian quarantine system known to be so strict in order to keep our ecosystem safe and rightfully so) not even mentioning getting my taxes done finally AND most importantly: getting all the February art journey clubs ready, packed and shipped ! Please have a look on my Instagram feed where you can find me as @ixchelbunny : there’s a sneak peek video of the batts. I will be posting more photos of the batt, yarn and fibre clubs later this month. I don’t want to give too much away and spoil the surprise of all the club members!

Which reminds me! Club sign ups for the clubs starting in April is open now! Click here to learn more : https://ixchel.com.au/collections/clubs


It has only been a week or so that I thought summer would never get here and boom! All of a sudden we get hit by a 41degree Celsius heatwave for a day…lol. Mind you, now it is thunder and lightning and heavy rain so who knows what tomorrow will bring. The weather sure keeps us on our toes!

Whether you can blame el niṉo or la niṉa, one thing is certain: the weather is erratic and dramatic at the moment. Climate change has a big hand in this I believe, and we should have listened to science in the 1970s but instead we got yuppies, Wall Street “greed is good” and economic growth banks/governments, forgetting that to grow and flourish, we need the planet we live on to be cared for and the animals (and people!) to be able to provide themselves with shelter and food and what they need to survive. 
I’m very much a positive, half glass full kinda person, and I do believe that science is always the answer. Case in point is the fact (you probably thought I’d never get to the point did you🤣) that science has found that feeding live stock seaweed, lowers the harmful methane production (eg burps and farts from cattle)…. Well, one of the rare sheep breeds I focus on this week in Rare sheep month,  is The North Ronaldsay, seaweed eating sheep ! A marvel of super awesome sheep, who eat seaweed most of the time and are only ever on a grass paddock when they are delivering their lambs.

North Ronaldsay lambs eating meadow grass in spring

And here they are, all grown up, out on the north Ronaldsay shore eating seaweed



I have written several blog posts about these amazing sheep before, so please click on this link here (  https://ixchelbunny.blogspot.com/2021/07/dinna-fash-and-spin.html ) if you would like to read more about their history, the properties of their fleece and see videos about them as well ! 

This north Ronaldsay blend together with silver infused seaweed and cashmere is an absolute dream to spin and is good for the environment plus good for your skin. You don’t have to take my word for it: try it yourself! There are a few new colourways to discover this week as well ♥️

You can find all the new goodies in the “what’s new” section here : https://ixchel.com.au/collections/whats-new

Have a fantastic week  and thank you so, so much for your awesome support ! 

big hugs

Charly

No comments: