back to the business of life and wool

i love how Flash poses so prettily for the camera.

although i think it's actually for cookies.

the twins have grown so much.

this change of season is just what i've needed, it's second only to spring on the joy-meter.

thank you, deanna!

finally found scrim not at the close-by Hancock's 

(that was one of the places i visited the other day and had no luck), 

but at the one across town, they had it, and half price!

so i bought enough to last me a good while.

unless i get scrim-happy.

also found some perle cotton, milliner's needles and cotton tape!

thank you for the tip, dear Deanna!

flash(dance) and heat wave

yesterday i went to pick up another sheepie.  this is flash, short for flashdance, who keeps getting bred at a friend's farm despite her advanced age of nine... so she offered her to me.. she's a beautiful shetland and her colour is known as musket, a light almost apricot...  and i love her spotted face.  and she's friendly!!  much more so than my other sheepies, especially the first three who have always been sketchy.

she loves chin scratches, especially when they come with cookies.  but she's still getting her bearings in her new homestead, poor girl.  i do like taking in retirement fiber critters though, it works out well for all of us.

going to meet her new tribe, all waiting and curious..

we are struggling to keep it going in this heat wave.  it's scary for the critters and not great for us either with no AC..  lots of time spent in the pool for the birds and the dogs, although still waiting for the hubs to get our pool ready...  

and btw it's my birthday weekend!  i'll be 44 on monday.  which seems almost as bad as this 115 heat index...  but there are fun plans for spinning and rabbit care today, then visiting my friend sarah at her new place in greensboro tomorrow - i can't wait to see what it looks like since it's a renovated barn!  we're going to explore, let the dogs run, picnic and swim in the pond near her place. and then monday, i want to swim here at home with the hub (the pool had better be ready by then!), grill, have some brews and a northern exposure marathon while stitching some alabama chanin t-shirts.  that's my perfect day.

the boys i mean are not refined

yesterday's round of shearing was a little less idyllic.. i thought it was too early to shear the twins since they were just born in august, but i'm told it's best to go ahead so they'll be on a spring schedule. the fleece is long enough too, and lamb-soft.








there were some mishaps... we had a lot of trouble getting them to relax. it was their first time after all. lovey bleeehhhh'd the entire time and made me a nervous wreck. pokey poked me in the eye with his horn, and he also lost his fourth horn which was barely hanging on. i cut myself and bled all over part of a fleece. still, they are frisky, scampering around and happy, and i'm so relieved that there's a whole year before the next shear. off to wash some fleece!

Gretta's haircut

i'm still loving shearing. the other day we finally got ahold of Ms. Gretta, the trickiest of the four-leggeds around here. hands were in use, so no photos of us, but i continued to bliss out with it, and i think i'm already improving. here's her fleece laid out for skirting and i've labeled it so you can see where the parts came from...

unreal that all that came off one little sheepie, isn't it?!

she has long, primitive Shetland locks. i love spinning this sort of wool.


and here is the clean and beautiful cut side... almost no second cuts!


her wool is a gorgeous gingery colour, called mioget in Shetland parlance.


for my master spinner's certificate, one of the projects is to spin and knit up a swatch from each part of the sheep!! so i sorted it into these piles to be washed and prepped. should be mega-interesting!

there's also belly wool and that's another category, but there wasn't a whole lot of that and it's outside the frame...

new calling

now that it's in the 80s(!), we can't put off shearing any longer. yesterday i sheared georgie, and it was the first time i've done it by myself. it went well! and i loved doing it! and today, i sheared gabbie, our black sheep. only one to go, greta (the lambs won't be sheared till next year)... and she knows we're coming for her.

i've been wanting to learn to shear, since, you know, i'm all about the dying arts.. and we only have such a few sheepies. plus it's nice to not be so dependent on having a shearer come to us. the few that are left are so busy this time of year. last year, after he drove an hour (in june no less, the first opening he had) to get here, we couldn't catch the little buggers. it was a total sheep debacle.. they are really crafty. i'm not sure why people think sheep are stupid.. at least ours have outsmarted us many times.

i've tried electric shears, but they are so heavy and noisy. a shepherdess friend suggested hand shears, and also said that sometimes she even uses fiskars - which seemed right up my alley since i use a small pair to clip the rabbits... and this was a good excuse for a beautiful pair.. and especially with a 40% off coupon at michael's, a much better deal than electric shears... and they work great, at least for our little shetlands.




the only other issue is my sheep are so messy. i'm afraid i'll be picking hay out of this fleece until next year .. but still, like grace, i think i may have found my métier (besides watching downton): i want to become a shearer!

ain't the roses sweet

i traveled to asheville over the weekend for SAFF, the biggest fiber fair in the southeast u.s. i met my old friend janet. i hadn't seen her in years. we went to this festival together in the early 2000's, both wishing we could spend all our time crafting. i was full of memories of that weekend and all that's changed in the interim.

we stayed up almost all night each night gabbing, ate lots of pasta (janet's favorite). i took a heritage crochet class with rita de maintenon. fell in love with a ram named ty. janet said i needed to see the grove park inn, and she was so right. brought home some new books, tools, fleece... and talked to a number of lovely vendors. saw wild turkeys in someone's yard. SAFF has to be a annual event for me, it has to!

the boys..

the lamb twins were born in august to parsley, a ewe who also birthed twins in the spring at the 'ripe' age of 11.

so they were a 'whoops' and their mama didn't have enough milk.

so the shepherdess bottle-raised them and looked for a home and found me.

they are jacob sheep, known for their spots and their horns.

little basil has four horns and oregano, his brother, has two.

i love their names but i've taken to calling them lovey..

and pokey... nicknames are good too.

they are crazy about their bottles.

and settling in really well.

they are very special.

for anyone who's doing instagram, mine has turned into instalamb.

woolgathering

wool·gath·er·ing   [wool-gath-er-ing]
noun
1. indulgence in idle fancies and in daydreaming; absentmindedness: His woolgathering was a handicap in school.
2. gathering of the tufts of wool shed by sheep and caught on bushes.

thank you, freedom


cassandra


emma


and flirta.


all gorgeous shetland sheep from rare find farm. and thanks to lynn, their sweet shepherd mama. this is the farm where my own sheepies came from, but my sheep are grey, brown and black, and i needed these pretty whites, creams and silver-greys. i especially love cassandra's fleece - she is a fawn katmoget ewe, which means she's marked like my georgie with a darker underside, but she's white on top and fawn underneath. GORjuss.

3. basking in clouds of comfort and safety
4. smelling the smell of distant rain, feeling the damp earth
5. bliss

tailspun yarn

i've been working on making tailspun yarn from georgie's gorgeous fleece. i'm imagining a sleeveless (or cap-sleeved) sweater with locks hanging out all over to channel my inner sheep.