Coffee-and-Camelids

Glad you asked. I have arrived at 'modern flax is Bullshit compared to what we had in historical textiles, the flax widely available for handspinning is basically the tow that would be discarded from textile creation and used with tar to caulk ships back in the day'

This naturally led me down a hole of 'why is the staple length of this stuff a bullshit 6 inches' and the answer is 'we have bred modern flax more for the oil than the fiber because cotton usurped the place of everyday textile thanks to slavery and the cotton gin'

Anyway, THIS led me to a rabbit hole that culminated in me finding flax seed bred for proper 30 inch tall plants for fiber, sold by some fellow minded nerds on a website that has not been updated since 1998 and you have to email them to buy anything.

"Bertas Story

Berta was a farmers girl from Austria who married in the 1940ies. As it was common, she got a huge trunk full of unspun flax and one full of linnen fabric as a dowry. Both trunks were treasured by her till her death but she never used any of it.

Llamas and alpacas handle cooler temperatures much better than heat, so please make sure you are regularly checking your animals and making sure they have access to:

Plenty of clean, cool drinking water (bonus points if clean, cool water with electrolytes like Gatorade is also on hand in addition to plain water).

Shade and shelter from the heat. If your shelters are insulated for winter and are hot inside, make sure you have other methods of providing shade that won't cook your animals.

If available, cooling fans in areas where animals can lounge (ideally in the shade).

Basically make sure there is as much ventilation everywhere as possible. Housing animals in stands of trees with the shade can be beneficial here.

Wading pools (kiddy pools work great) for animals to lounge in as needed (though monitor cria and pregnant females to avoid risk of drowning).

If you've ever wanted to make friends with your animals, now is the time by breaking out the garden hose and hosing down their legs and underbellies to the skin only. Hosing down other parts of the body (unless the animal is being housed in a cool environment until they are fully dry), especially in animals who have not been shorn, can create a "greenhouse effect" that traps humid heat against the skin and may exacerbate the heat.

Hose animals down as necessary (this may mean every couple of hours if you're in a hot zone).

Important signs of heat stress (in no particular order) to watch out for include:

Rapid breathing (especially anything over 40 breaths/minute)

Flared nostrils

Open mouth breathing

Increased recumbancy

Lethargy

Confusion

Excessive salivation

Poor appetite

Weakness

Muscle trembling

Scrotal swelling in intact males

Heart rate over 90bpm

Rectal temperature greater than 104 F

These are all signs that your animal needs to be cooled down, and potentially have the vet brought in for additional support.

Unshorn animals, the elderly, pregnant females, and cria (babies) are at highest risk of being negatively impacted by this heat.

Additionally, avoid putting excess stress on animals where possible. Now is not the time to be handling animals during the day (early morning or evening when it cools down can be acceptable), weaning babies, conducting breeding (unless it is again, early morning or late evening when the temperatures are more purgatory and less hellfire), moving animals, etc.

You can tell the animal is underweight by the prominence of the spine protruding, and it's hip bones. Now, bear in mind, alpacas usually trend towards lean, so it is entirely possible this animal is simply a yearling going through a growth spurt; or is an animal who has experienced compromised health due to factors like parasites or stress and is (hopefully) undergoing treatment-- but in any alpaca, regardless of age, this is a sign people should palpate for to assess body condition, and to help inform welfare decisions moving forward.

Some examples of body scoring systems used in camelids are linked below:

(Source)

(Source)

People- wool animals are not killed for their wool/hair. Yaks, angora rabbits, angora goats, sheep, alpacas, llamas etc… We SHEAR THEM. Not Flay. Shear. With clippers.

Or some people just gather what falls off the critter, or in the case of “chien” which is dog fluff, you brush that off them.

Healthy happy animals make good fiber. It is monetarily foolish and useless to abuse your animals because then their fiber is bad. You can debate points of husbandry and some parts of industries need change so fight about that.

it's plastic.

it's always plastic.

50 years ago or so a cow died. It died in a slaughterhouse after a life on a cattle ranch. It was butchered in a meat packing plant, and it's body was sent off to a grocery store where it then became an overdone steak or a dry hamburger or maybe dog food. It was the 70s and people had only recently realized that you could put food in things that were not jello. Cut them some slack.

But its skin went to a tannery. And that skin was processed in the hide and then leather. That leather was bought by a clothing company who made jackets out of it, long leather dusters for working men and ranchhands. Cowboy shit.

The dead cow that is now a leather jacket is not technically waterproof because if you stand out in the rain for 6 hours water will eventually work its way through the seams at the shoulders. But its pretty damn waterproof. It keeps off the rain and the snow and the dust and the mud and the brambles and it doesn't melt if it catches a spark. So 50 years ago a man bought one and he wore it pretty much until he died and his wife shoved it in a closet. Decades of use, from the deserts in the southwest to the arctic, because it turns out that cowboys are wildly adaptable.

Anyway, I pulled grandad's jacket out of the closet a while back and there is nothing wrong with that coat. It does have some distinctly non-modern vibes, but more importantly it is cool as hell and looks almost new. I have seen faux distressed leather that looks worse.

It's probably also a saddle that another cowboy is still riding.

And several belts. Probably some wallets, several gloves, some riding tack.

Nobody who doesn't work with leather understands how much material you get from one cow. I have sides (like 1/4 of a cow) that I've been making things out of for years and there's still lots left in my materials stash.

Once that coat is too worn out to wear, there will still be lots of the leather that's still good. Someone who can't afford to buy hides will probably make smaller things from those pieces (that's how I started working with leather).

Even when every piece of that hide is completely unusable, it will decompose like it was originally going to, and shed no microplastic particles. A synthetic alternative lasts a fraction as long and sheds microplastics for its entire life.

You also can't use that synthetic leather for many of the things you'd use real leather for. It's not fire resistant, so welders can't use it to protect them from sparks. it doesn't have the tensile strength of real leather, so you can make equestrian tack out of it. It doesn't provide any abrasion resistance, so you can't make motorcycle leathers from it. It can't be used for protective equipment in sports like archery, because it would disintegrate under normal use.

Synthetic leather can only be used in place of real leather in fashion and upholstery applications, and it's not very good at either. It requires hundreds of times more material for the same applications due to its short lifespan, and it produces plastic pollution constantly.

There's literally no good argument for replacing real leather with synthetic alternatives. Even if you want to go the animal rights route, how many marine and aquatic ecosystems are you willing to sacrifice for the life of a few cows? Are you even saving cows, when we use them for so many other industries? Does a domesticated animal have more right to life than the wild species impacted by synthetic leather production?

so Pacific Knit Company sells what they call 'doodle' deck, which are full or half decks of cards with knitting patterns on them. Every motif is 24 stitches wide, and a variable amount of stitches tall. The cardstock is comparable to playing cards.

You can shuffle the cards to get a randomized pattern, you can pick out the patterns you think would make a neat hat or scarf (or socks or sweaters, if you're willing to do a bit more work), you can mix-and-match the decks.

New little webtoy. Never wonder again how you spread 14 increases evenly over 118 stitches. It's never been easier.

I've been messing around with google sheets for a while to do knitting math for me, but now i actually used a braincell to remember how javascript works and turned my current calculators into a website. So now you can have calculators too. And you don't even need to know javascript, lucky you!

find my calculators here: https://dunes-knitting-math.neocities.org/

Alligators are wild animals. Despite the idiotic claims of animal abusers like Jay Brewer, they cannot be domesticated, which means they are always going to react on the same natural instincts they've had for millions of years. Habituated, yes. Tamed, yes. Trained, definitely. Crocodilians can form bonds with people- they're social and quite intelligent. They can solve problems, use tools, and they're actually quite playful. Alligators are also really good at communicating how they're feeling, but to somebody who doesn't spend much time around them, their body language can be a bit mystifying. And it doesn't help when social media influencers are saying shit like this:

That is not what a happy gator looks like.

That's a terrified, furious gator who isn't attacking because the ogre handling her has her in a chokehold. She's doing everything she can to express her displeasure, and he's lying about it because he knows his audience doesn't even know how to think critically about what he's doing. He knows that because his audience doesn't know anything about these animals, he can get away with it. This I think is why I hate him so much- he deliberately miseducates his audience. He knows what he's doing is factually inaccurate, he just doesn't care because attention means more to him than anything else in the world.

Let's change that! Here are two really important lessons for understanding alligator body language on social media.

Lesson 1: Alligators Don't Smile (in fact, most animals don't)

So what's going on in this video? Jay Brewer is aggressively choking his white alligator Coconut while scrubbing algae off of her with a toothbrush. And make no mistake, he is digging into the creature's throat while she is visibly distressed. He claims she's happy- but she's not. He is willfully misrepresenting what this animal is feeling. That's a problem, because people... well, we actually kind of suck at reading other species' body language. The reason for this is that we tend to overlay our own responses on their physical cues, and that's a problem. For example, let's look at an animal with a really similar face to ours, the chimpanzee. Check out Ama's toothy grin!

Wait, no. That's not a happy smile. That's a threat display. When a chimpanzee "smiles," it's either terrified and doing a fear grimace, or it's showing you its teeth because it intends on using them in your face.

How about a dog? Look at my smiling, happy puppy!

Oh wait no, this is a picture of Ryder when he was super overwhelmed by noise and people during a holiday party. He'd hopped up in my sister's lap to get away from stuff that was happening on the floor and was panting quite heavily. See the tension in the corners of his mouth and his eyes? A lot of the time when a dog "smiles," the smile isn't happy. It's stress! Why Animals Do The Thing has a nice writeup about that, but the point is, our body language is not the same as other species. And for reptiles, body language is wildly different.

For instance, look at these two alligators. Pretty cute, right? Look at 'em, they're posing for a Christmas card or something! How do you think they're feeling?

Well, I'll tell you how the normal one is feeling. He's annoyed! Why is he annoyed? Because the albino just rolled up, pushed another gator off the platform, and is trying to push this guy, too. I know this because I actually saw it happen. It was pretty funny, not gonna lie. He's not gaping all the way, but he was hissing- you can actually see him getting annoyed in the sequence I took right before this shot. Look at him in this first shot here- he's just relaxing, and you can see he isn't gaping even a little bit.

By the end, he's expressing displeasure, but not enough to actually do anything about it. He's annoyed, but he's comfy and that's where one of the best basking areas is, so he'll put up with it.

Reptiles open their mouths wide for a lot of reasons, but never because they are actively enjoying a sensation. Unless they're eating. No reptile smiles- they can't. They don't even have moveable lips. If a reptile is gaping, it's doing so because:

It is doing a threat display.

It is making certain vocalizations, all of which are threats. Alligators are one of the rare reptiles that do regularly vocalize, but most of their calls aren't made with a wide open mouth.

It is about to bite something delicious or somebody stupid. Check out this video- virtually all of the gaping here is anticipatory because these trained gators know darn well that the bowl is full of delicious snacks. (I have some issues with Florida's Wildest, but the man knows how to train a gator AND he is honest about explaining what they're doing and why, and all of his animals are healthy and well-cared for, and he doesn't put the public or his staff at risk- just himself.)

It's too hot and it has opened its mouth to vent some of that heat and thermoregulate. This is the main reason why alligators will often have their mouths part of the way open, but sometimes they'll open all the way for thermoregulation. This is what a thermoregulatory gape looks like- usually it's not all the way open, kinda more like < rather than V, but you can't say that 100% of the time. Additionally, a thermoregulatory gape... typically happens when it's hot out. If they're inside, maybe they've been under their basking light for too long. Heat's the dominant factor, is what I'm getting at.

There is another reason that a captive crocodilian might be gaping, and that's because it's doing so on command. Some places have their gators trained to gape on cue, like St. Augustine Alligator Farm and other good zoos. They have the animals do this in presentations that are genuinely educational. They ask the animals to open their mouths so that they can show off their teeth and demonstrate how their tongues seal off the back of their mouth. They'll also do it as part of routine healthcare, because looking at their teeth is important.

In this case, the animals aren't gaping because they're stressed, they're gaping because they know they're gonna get a piece of chicken or fish if they do it. And what's more, they're doing it on cue. They have a specific command or signal that tells them to open wide. It's not an instinctive response to a situation. It's trained. If the animal provides the behavior after a cue, the situation is much less likely to be negatively impactful.

It's also important to remember that there's a difference between a partially open mouth and a gape! As discussed above, alligators will often have their mouths a little bit open just to maintain temperature homeostasis. It helps them stay comfy, temperature-wise. These guys are all doing thermoregulatory open-mouthed behavior- that slight open and relaxed body posture is a dead giveaway. (That and it's the hottest spot in the enclosure.)

Lesson 2: A Happy Gator Is A Chill Gator

So if alligators don't smile or have facial expressions other than the :V that typically signifies distress, how else can you tell how they're feeling? One way is stillness. See, alligators subscribe to the philosophy of if it sucks... hit da bricks.

Basically, if they hate it, they'll leave. Unless, y'know, somebody has their meaty claws digging into their throat or is otherwise restraining them. (Restraint isn't always bad, btw. Sometimes the animal is going through a medical thing or needs to be restrained for their safety- which a responsible educator will explain.)

Let's look at a very similar scenario, in which a captive alligator is getting his back scrubbed.

As you can see, it's quite different. First, he's not being restrained at all. Second, look at how relaxed he is! He's just chilling there vibing! He could simply get up and leave if he wanted to, because he's not being held. Towards the end of the video, as he lifts his head, you can see that his respiratory rate is very even as his throat flutters a bit. I'm not sure what this facility is, so I can't comment on care/general ethics, but like. In this specific case, this is an alligator enjoying being scrubbed! And you can tell because he's not doing anything. A happy gator is content to be doing what they're doing.

Why Should I Listen To You?

Now, you should ask yourself, why should you listen to me? Why should you trust me, who does not own an alligator, versus Jay Brewer, who owns several?

Well, first off, there's no profit for me in telling you that what you're seeing on social media is in fact not what you're being told you're seeing. I'm not getting paid to do this. That's the thing with people who make social media content. The big names aren't doing it just for fun. They're doing it for money. Whether that's profit through partnerships or sponsorships, or getting more people to visit their facilities, or ad revenue, you can't ignore the factor of money. And this is NOT a bad thing, because it allows educators to do what they're passionate about! People deserve to be paid for the work that they do!

But the problem starts when you chase the algorithm instead of actually educating. A "smiling" alligator gets the views, and if people don't know enough to know better, it keeps getting the views. People love unconventional animal stories and they want those animals to be happy- but the inability to even know where to start with critically evaluating these posts really hinders the ability to spread real information. Like, this post will probably get a couple hundred notes, but that video of Coconut being scrubbed had almost 400,000 likes when I took that screenshot. Think about how many eyeballs that's reached by now. What I'm saying here is that it's just... really important to think critically about who you're getting your information from. What do dissenters say in the comments? What do other professionals say? You won't find a single herpetologist that has anything good to say about Prehistoric Pets, I can tell you that right now.

Another reason you can trust me is that my sources are not "just trust me bro," or "years of experience pretending my pet shop where animals come to die is a real zoo." Instead, here are my primary sources for my information on alligator behavior:

Dragon Songs: Love and Adventure among Crocodiles, Alligators, and Other Dinosaur Relations- Vladimir Dinets

The Secret Social Lives of Reptiles- J. Sean Doody, Vladimir Dinets, Gordon M. Burghardt

Social Behavior Deficiencies in Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Z Walsh, H Olson, M Clendening, A Rycyk

Social Displays of the American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis)- Kent Vliet

Social Signals and Behaviors of Adult Alligators and Crocodiles- Leslie Garrick, Jeffery Lang

Never smile at a crocodile: Gaping behaviour in the Nile crocodile at Ndumo Game Reserve, South Africa- Cormac Price, Mohamed Ezat, Céline Hanzen, Colleen Downs (this one's Nile crocs, not American alligators, but it's really useful for modeling an understanding of gape behaviors and proximity)

Thermoregulatory Behavior of Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Cheryl S. Asa, Gary D. London, Ronald R. Goellner, Norman Haskell, Glenn Roberts, Crispen Wilson

Unprovoked Mouth Gaping Behavior in Extant Crocodylia- Noah J. Carl, Heather A. Stewart, Jenny S. Paul

Thank you for reading! Here's a very happy wild alligator from Sanibel for your trouble.

Like, did you read it orrrrr?

Bees do not suffer when beekeepers take their honey, because experienced beekeepers do not take all of their honey, in fact, they leave plenty of honey left for the bees to consume over the winter. If we do not collect their honey, 1 of two things will happen.

1. they will leave for a bigger home. Which at first seems fine until you remember that bees are dying very quickly out in the wild.

or

2. They will start using the areas that they reserve for their young as a place to make more honey. This is bad because if no more young are being produced, then the hive will start to die out because no new workers are coming into the world, and the average live only 150 days, so it would also mean the loss of more bees.

- Wool. Sheep need to be sheared or their wool will get excessively large, matted and gross. Its legit just a haircut. Calm down and use wool instead of whatever fake acrylic microplastic shit they have in stores now. Wool is super warm, insulating, and guess what! It grows back! Its a renewable resource and all the sheep want in return is some good pasture and protection from predators.

- Eggs. I’m not talking about storebought eggs. Go to your local farmer’s market. Find someone around with chickens/ducks. These birds produce eggs literally every day and will not stop unless they are molting, brooding, or kept in the dark for most of the day. Like I am not joking when I say you can very easily find someone with poultry and they will beg you to take some eggs. Theres so many. Please. Take some duck eggs. I dont want them. I had 8 laying ducks last year. Thats 8 eggs every day. Thats 2 dozen eggs every THREE DAYS. Thats SO MANY EGGS PLEASE TAKE SOME EGGS

Specialization in sheep farming helped Neolithic communities in the Adriatic expand throughout the Mediterranean: Study

A study suggests specialization in sheep farming in the early Neolithic populations of Dalmatia, Croatia, may have been related to the rapid expansion of these communities and the spread of agriculture throughout the central and western Mediterranean.

The Tour de Fleece is a world wide, decentralised, annual, online spin-along, happening parallel to the Tour de France bike race. It first popped up in 2012 when spinners would watch the Tour de France while sitting at their own wheels! Since then, it spread around the globe. There are no official groups or rules and everybody interprets it a bit differently, the only guideline being "spin during the Tour de France".

Some people spin every single day, some people match the rest days (and don't spin on those days), some people match the very challenging mountain days (and spin something that's a challenge to them on these days). Some people set a specific goal like "spin this whole fleece", or reach a certain yardage, some just try to spin at all. Some groups award prizes!

What is this blog?

This is not a group that awards prizes.

This is a shared space for everyone who wants to do the Tour de Fleece and wants to talk about it. We will encourage and cheer each other on and offer advice, but the main focus should be having fun. Everyone sets their own goals, challenges, and pace, and if anybody drops out halfway through? Then that's awesome, because they have spun a lot of fibre but also recognised and respected their own limits!

Submissions and asks are open and encouraged, and I will track these tags:

tour de fleece, tdf, tour de fleece 2023, tdf 2023

You can also simply tag @a-tour-de-fleece for a reblog!

Edit: ...let's not clog up the other, less popular wheel-based race by using the "tdf" tag. :3

Why A TdF, not The TdF?

Because there are no official groups or authorities on the TdF, and this is basically just me, my fibre arts mutuals, and anyone on tumblr who wants to join. There a certainly more spinners who are on tumblr and do the TdF but unaffiliated with this blog, so I didn't want to claim any status as the tumblr TdF.

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This year's dates:

July 1 - July 23, 2023

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Disclaimer: this blog is run by @swords-n-spindles who is, occasionally, at war with their executive functions, so will sometimes drop the ball. Apologies in advance, and gentle reminders are welcome when I forget stuff!