Unfortunately, Allena’s laptop died, which is why there haven’t been any blog posts in nearly a month.  We’ve finally ordered a replacement and we should have it next week, so look for more posting then!

Thanks for your patience.

Update - pictures now available (click on the picture of Julianna to go to the gallery on Beau’s site)

I did manage to find a little fiber talk to put up here…

I have sheared several of the sheep, and my fleeces are lovely.  Several of them are ruined this year.  I assume because we had a huge wet and windy weather mess this year.  Several of them have been cotted until most of the fleece is trashed.  Some is still usable though, and they were lovely, except that they got all matted up… a real bummer.

I still got a couple that weren’t cotted, and I didn’t loose any of my best fleeces!

I am always shocked by how little they look after shearing.  Here is Brietta in full wool.  She is a moorit Krunet purebred Shetland ewe.  Her wool is soft, and spins very very fast.  It is a gorgeous gray brown.  This is one that cotted, but there are large peices of it that are good.

She has a big ol wool coat here….

Puny little ewe….

So I have a few fleeces that are so indescribably lovely, I will undoubtedly keep them all for myself.  I didn’t loose any lamb fleeces thank God.  I got two that are just so nice that it’s amazing, both off ram lambs.  Beautiful, and creamy yummy white.  They have such a high shine on them, that they look like silk.

I am going to get them washed and I am thinking I may comb them or at least one of them.

I’ll post as soon as the baby comes.  I am 38 weeks and 2 days preggers.  I predict that the baby will be born on the 17, 18 or 19.

Put your guesses in, and we can have another contest!  LOL.  That would be fun.  I am due the 22, and I have a history of beginning labor at about midnight.  I usually take 12 - 19 hours total, with plenty of light early labor.  So take a guess, and win some raw fleece!

I have filled it up with the products of my labors.  I have a few of the hand carved spindles available, at this time only through the spindle and batt club.  The  club is actually quite a lot cheaper than purchasing individually, I may have to raise the price some.  The fiber you get with the spindle, although super nice isn’t the level of luxury that the batt club is though.  The spindle is actually made and glued together though, instead of using a grommet.

The grommets are nice, because you can assemble the spindles quickly, but the thing is that you always have a little wobble, and have to adjust the whorl quite often.  Still, is this batt not georgous?  I am loving the angelina and soysilk blended with wool in these “Bling” batts.  That is this months theme.  The subscriptions are coming in, and I only have a few left for the next three months, so I guess it is catching on and doing pretty good.

Another shot of a spindle for the club.  I am still working on putting wpi tools on the ends.  I will probably be doing some carving on the tops of the shafts too, but I’m starting small.

I have also been making some hand carved wooden spindles, not just using the stone beads.   Here is one I made with a horse on the whorl.  It wobbles a bit, but still spins very well.  I cut a little too much out of the face part.  I may try to take more off the other side to balance it out.  I don’t know if I can sell this one, as it wobbles so at the end.  Other than that it is fine, but it might bug some people, what do you guys think?

It is beautiful, and that counts for something, it is made to be more of a showpiece.  The battle between form and function is always a struggle when you are producing art that is used for something.  I dropped the function side on this one just  a bit than I normally would, but I like it all the same.  The wood is purple heart and this is the natural color of it.  It reacts to sunlight and turns this lovely color.  When you carve into it though, it is brown like mahogany or something.  Once it sits in sunlight for a few minutes though it turns purple.  It’s really cool to watch.

Two more wooden whorl spindles, one in maple and one in purple heart.  These are just plain flower motifs.  I am working on more designs.  My sister requested a cat.  I was thinking it would be fun to have people commision a spindle with their logo on it, or a special pet.  What fun! These are also destined for the spindle club.  I need to prefect the design and get them more consistent.

So I have been dying and carding too, in generall enjoying myself while waiting for the baby to come.  Seems like it will be forever before it is time.  I am seeing lots of pink coming out of the pot, mixed with purples and blues.  You would think I was 9 months pregnant and expecting a little girl baby with all this fiber…heh heh.

Here are a few batts I made for pictures in the Luxury batt club -  Purples!  and Pinks!  I can’t seem to help myself, I am hopelessly trapped in a downward spiral of girlie colors.

But OOOHhhh so lusious anyway, this stuff is something else!  It’s half 16 micron merino and 1/2 Optim!!!  To say it is soft, is just an understatement.  It feels like nothing you can even imagine…I love it.  But I can’t spin it right now, I have to wait 

Oh look, more purple and pink!

well, I may have it out of my system, excepting of course the angora, optim and 16 micron merino laying on the table that his hot pink, dark purple and pale purple….I think that is going to do it for my pink fix.  I hope.  Anyhow, this is the stuff I am making theluxury batts for that club out of.  It is going to be SO hard to ship it off, that’s all I can say.

I also got my hands on some BABY suri alpaca fleece, a whole POUND of it!  I dyed some purple of course lol.  Like most locky type of fleece it dyed all sorts of colors, and I will be very excited to see how it actually looks carded.  The natural color was silvery gray.  It feels like kid mohair to me, but nicer and softer.

Finally I dyed two skeins of yarn that Heidi my friend in Norway sent me.  These are just beutifully spun and so soft.  Of course I had to dye them baby colors.

They still turned out beautiful, and will make something very very nice for a baby.  I will probably use the blue for a lace scarf, it is subtle, periwinkle color with some slightly more purple places.  It is a little more gray than it looks, so it will make something really nice for a grown up.  The other will be made into something for the baby or one of the girls I imagine.  I may spin more to match for a sweater or something.

Beaus sweater is coming along, he has started the sleeves now, but I haven’t any pictures.  I am really likeing how the handyed fair isle looks.  It is a EZ yoke sweater, and I have ordered a pattern he liked from School house press for the neck.  I’ll get a pic soon - here is one of my sample sleeve.  If you recall I started this sweater and he took it away from me in the hospital when our daughter was having her belly button closed.  Bye bye beautiful sweater….

He’s been slow at finishing it, but he has picked it back up and is working on it.  I’ll get some pics of his version, as this was just my test swatch for the sweater.

My point is, that the pink handspun looks fantastic for the fair isle and the gray is just some plain yarn I bought in a huge hank.  It makes for a really nice looking effect, shows off the handspun, but is a much smaller spinning committment.  You still get all the satisfaction of the handspun look though.

Speaking of fair isle, I want to encourage all of you to learn how to knit with the other hand.  I knit contenental normally, but with patience I have also learned to knit very well american style and now fair isle is so easy and quick too.  It really is worth the time to learn to knit both ways.  Just spend a few minutes a day, maybe 5 or 10 on an “other handed project” something simple like a hat knit in the round or something.  I think you will be surprised how quick you can pick it up!  Good luck!

I don’t know when you’ll hear from me again, but I will pick a contest winner before next post.  Thanks for hanging in there with me!

I don’t know when the next issue will publish, it lookes like sometime between now, and July.  Not very exact eh?  With my hands bothering me and other issues I am just not up to it.  Everyone has been just great about it and I thank all of you for understanding.

I am doing fine, and so is everyone else.  We are getting used to the new additions, of angora rabbits and goats.  We made goat milk ice cream the other day and it was wonderful!  The milk is quite sweet and very good, if it is handled properly and you take care of your animals well.

I go to a fiber festival tomorrow and I have also set up an Etsy shop.  I am going to offer a luxury batt club, and a spindle club with my stone whorl spindles.  I am also making some other kinds that will be offered there too, I can give you the address when I have more to offer.  I am in the process of organizing and arranging things.

I finally got silk and 16 micron merino ordered, and it shipped yesterday so I should be getting it soon.  I also got optium, and Eco Spun(made from walmart bags and such) firestar and lots of fun fun stuff to blend into batts.  I will be excited to try the new fibers and start making the batts for the club.  I am hoping to offer them at a reasonable price, as some batts I am seeing are as high as $`15 an ounce, and I just think that is ridiculous.  Mine will be about one third of that, or less depending, so very reasonable.

I hope all of you are doing well, and I’m sorry not to write much lately,  only 5 more weeks to go!

ttfn!

The little lamb by the way seems to be doing great, he is in with the flock now and keeping up fine so he should be good.  Two weeks with splints on corrected his pasterns, and I am hoping time will correct his shoulder.  I guess I should have taken him into the vet, but for one, I didn’t see what they could do and also they said that if it was broken or dislocated that he wouldn’t be able to walk.

I am starting to doubt that, but too late now.  Hind sight is always 20 - 20.  So, he runs around fine and is getting bigger and stronger so I suppose it will work out fine anyway regardless.  Now we are just choosing the few lambs that will be registered, and their names…

I am still working on pictures for taking a batt and pulling it into roving.  I am seriously considering trying to do an online video (gasp).  I didn’t get this put in last issue because of time or laziness which ever you want to think… So now I can put it in this issue.  I have a bunch of great angora fiber given to me by Heidi, and Jordan.  Heidi is from Norway and Jordan is from Missouri.  So I want to make some lovely blends with it.  I prefer to blend it with some nice lambs wool or something than use it straight.

Speaking of angoras, in the next week or two I will own some.  Dominic is doing rabbits for 4H, and so instead of a meat type rabbit, why not fiber I says?  Well, he says “Fuzza-buns….CUTE!”  so we will be getting 4 show quality breeding rabbits for him.  I wanted one, but found someone who wanted to trade for lambs, so Clare and Star will be going to live with Jeanette, and four fuzza-buns will be living here.

Pictures when I get them home.  I still have to make cages, although I now have all the supplies so Dominic and I can start working on that soon.  (heh heh, does anyone see an article here?)  Angora rabbits: The fiber pet for ANYONE!

Can’t wait!

My kids are all in 4H and Elizabeth and Teresa are in Clover Kids, which is for the 5 and upers.  Teresa is only 4, but they let her come anyhow.  We taught all the clover kids to spin this month at  the meeting.  It was really great. 8 kids ages 4 - 8 were able to learn how to spin on a drop spindle.

There were boys, and girls, 8 in all who learned and everyone had a fantastic time, despite the leaders all being wound on backwards by some assemblist I employ.  Ahem (Beau)  will learn someday which way to wind it on…  Anyhow all the kids had a blast and I have to say it was the fastest meeting ever and a huge sucess.

All the kids picked it up pretty fast, and the parents were nice enough to let me post their pictures on my blog.

Well, I took a bad picture, this one would be me!  Still she’s cute even blinking!

It was kind of hectic teaching 8 littler kids all at once, and the meeting only lasts about an hour, thats  not much time, but we made it count well.  They all left with yarn, that’s what counts, and they spun it themselves.  William took the extra spindles and unspun it… He’s a real out of the box kind of spinner…little stinker.

Heh heh, as you can see, amny of these little kids can do better than most adults lol.  They learn it so fast it’s amazing.  I am always so impressed with how well they do.  Look at that little boogers yarn!  Better than mine was for a few hundred yards….but maybe I’m just a fantastic, amazing and wonderful teacher….probably not.

I think that is all of the kids, except the last two.  Can you believe I forgot to take a photo of my own kids spinning?  What a horrible Mother I am…

On a rather depressing note, Mist finally lambed on Monday and it wasn’t pretty.  I managed to save her and the lamb, but lets just say poor Dominic had to hold her down, and I came away covered in gore head to toe.  Mom is doing great after a pretty aggressive round of antibiotics and anti inflammatorys, and baby is improving, but I suspect he is irrepairably damaged.

I thought I had taken pictures of him but I guess I forgot as they aren’t here on the camera.  I’ll post some in a few days.  He was huge, almost 10 pounds, which in Shetlands 7 pounds is a big boy….  He had one leg back as well, so the leg that was presented got pulled and yanked to the point that his shoulder is all out of wack.  It seems to be improving, there isn’t much to be done about it except hope and give it time.  He would get up and put weight on it from the start, so he has a good chance.  He also had some sort of tendon issue, and walked on his wrists instead of his hooves in front.  Imagine if you walked on the back of your hands instead of on your palms while crawling… I made him some little splints and I am happy to say his left foot is now normal, but the right one (that I pulled on) is still pretty floppy.  So he has to keep wearing his blue shoe on that foot.

His back legs also have something wrong with them.  Poor little guy is floppy in the opposite way back there.  He walks on his pasterns instead of his hooves.  Imagine a cat walking flat footed if you know what I mean.   Anyhow he nurses and gets around well enough to take care of himself.

Mom worrys about him, and I can tell that she wants me to make it ok, and resents that I am not.  Poor girl, I am desperatly trying to save him, so that at least she has a baby to take care of after all that pain.  He is improving and I hope to have him out with the others in a another week.  If I can get that right front leg to working better I think he can manage.  He has a really strong will to go on.  Anyhow, kind of a depressing way to finish off lambing season, and thus why I have been so late to post about him.

So, new contest starts, same rules as always, comment and enter to win!  Every comment is entered into a drawing that will take place around the 15th of next month.

Congratulations Michelle, good guessing.

Brietta lambed two twin ram lambs on April 3, at about 3:50. We have bought breeding stock to breed for spotted sheep and Jerome (the ram we used) was chosen to bring this into the flock. You can read more about that here. Well, so in short, I expected this year to get what I got from Ashlin and the others. Mostly plain sheep, with a little white on them. My poor preggo self almost had an accident when Breitta presented me with this:

In Shetland speak, this is a moorit yuglet flecket ram. That means mostly white, with brown patches of color on the body, and brown eye patches. I wasn’t expecting this at all, but this is exactly my breeding goal…

I put her in the jug and went in to use the bathroom and when I came back out, she was grunting again when I got back, and low and behold another one had been born. I did expect another lamb, but not another yuglet flecket! What a surprise. With pounding heart I did the butt check, another ram…oh well.

What a cutie though! They really are so much cuter when they are all spottie! This one was born at about 4:10 pm.

So all that was left was Lucy, who we thought may have not settled after all and Mist. We caught Lucy and checked out her udder, and she was bagged up, so we knew that she would be lambing after all. Friday night Beau went out to feed the sheep and Lucy ran up as normal and ate with the rest of them. He thought nothing of this. A few minutes later as he was feeding the horses, he heard a lamb bleating, so he went to look and found this cute little booger:

So he was born about 9 pm on Friday, but that’s sorta a guess lol. So the lambing saga continues.

Mist has still done nothing, and I am beginning to suspect that she will lamb on about the 14th instead. Sometimes even though they breed, they don’t take or settle. So that would mean she will lamb on the next cycle, although no other breeding activity was seen. Mist however did not deny us some excitement. As Beau had found the lamb on Friday night, he forgot the scoops (empty) on the ground out in the yard. The sheep run on the yard so we don’t have to mow. But, watch where you step, if you please. Saturday morning I was called out of bed to witness how Mist’s tendancy to stick her head into things finally backfired.

moar funny pictures
So you might go over and vote for it and help make me famous. I would really like to see it get published.

But what about Maria? Maria is Mist’s daughter from last year. She is one year old at the end of this month and she has been in the past quite the burr under my blanket. If you need a good laugh, read this. I only share this stuff to keep from going crazy, and also because if I can laugh at myself, well then it isn’t so bad when everyone else does too. Besides, it was really funny.

Mist and Maria are houdinis, and they drive me insane. I have thought about selling them, because they are too smart for any fencing system. Maria is not supposed to be exposed to a ram, and out of the blue, Elizabeth our 5 year old daughter came in to tell us that Maria was lambing. Say what????

Maria had this georgeous Ag flecket ewe lamb at about 2:50 this afternoon. We plan on naming it oopsie.

So, all that is left is Mist. I am too tired to look back and see what anyone guessed right now. But just to spice things up, here is one last one. Justina was dumped here on us by some animal lover who thought she would be happier living in the wild no doubt. Many people have the misconception that they can just set cats and dogs “free”. Well she was half starved and beat up, and now she is expecting anytime. Lucky for us, unless she has a huge litter we already have excellent homes for them all.

I feel rotten about this, because although many people breed their ewe lambs, I hadn’t meant to, and she really wasn’t big enough in my opinion. There was a time when she escaped into the breeding group, but I could have sworn she cycled after that, so we thought she wasn’t bred. She did have some trouble, as it was another big ol single. We got two of them this year. Lucy’s was a good normal size, but Ashlin and poor little Maria had big babies. Poor thing. She seems to be happy as a clam now though.

Whew, what a week! Only one more to go!

This little guy had a rough start.  His Mama was SO spooky that when we walked outside she got so excited apparently her labor stopped.  We didn’t even go within 50 feet of her…But once I started walking towards her she did go into the catch pen.  And once she tried to run through the fence I caught her and stuffed her into a jug with the babies head and feet hanging out.  It had been a nose and two feet for over an hour, so time to intervene before baby gets overly stressed.  So with just a bit of help he was born and even though she was a real pain in the patootie, she is a great Mama.  Everyone is doing fine so far…

I am breeding for spots so, I got some at least, I wish he had been a girl lamb, but that’s the breaks.

Mary L guessed someone would lamb today between 9 and 10. one of each, so she got a 50%, Michelle is still in the lead.  Must be becuase her husband is a vet….  Mary and Lesley, you can guess again if you want.

Anyone else is also welcome to reguess, Mist and Brietta are left to lamb, Mist was due on Sunday, and Brietta was due today.  Mist is a second year lamber and Brietta is a firstimer.

Here is a picture of Mandy’s kids that were born Sunday morning - I haven’t had much luck getting a good photo of them yet.  I’m tired from being up and all.  Soon…

This morning, Mandy had triplets!  Two girls and one boy from 9 - 9:45 am.  I don’t think anyone made a guess that was accurate on her either.  To say the least I was afraid she would kid all night, so I had to check her every few hours.  I don’t have a picture yet, I will put some up soon.  They all look like Mandy.  One girl will stay here with us, and one will go back to the Lady I bought them from.  That was part of the deal.  The buckling is free to a good home.  I have two people who would like to have him.

I don’t need any pet wethers, so I am just giving him away.  On names, (I forget if I explained this yet) I was going to choose Saint names again, but I was informed by the children that they wanted something more fun this year.  They decided to name the lambs after children’s rhymes, songs and stories.  So the first two lambs were renamed Star and Twinkle, and these two cute little black boogers are Peter and Piper.  The one baby girl we are keeping from Mandy will be named Mercy, as today was divine Mercy Sunday.    Yeah well so it’s outside of the theme, shoot me.

I have a lambing jug that I have made out of an old campershell.  The sheep and goats love these because they have windows, and they can see out.  I have been wearing a pair of overalls around for lambing and stuff, because skirts just don’t do well, and none of my pants will go over my huge, fat, lard- butt, cow body  Rubanesque, voluptuous pregnant figure.  Anyhow, I like to make sure the bedding is nice and fluffy-comfy, and I forgot to put some around the edges to block any drafts.  So I managed to crawl in there and Beau took this picture of me, beached testing the jug for comfort.

My children have taken to calling me “Farmer Preggo” since I have been wearing the “preg-alls” that are also Beau’s.  What he uses for height, I use for width.  well, it all works out, usually I wear some jeans or something when working with the sheep or something, but as I said, I don’t have any that fit any more.  The overalls are really more comfortable anyway.

The bedding was very deep and cushy.  I was quite comfortable in there and seriously considered taking a nap.   I was very comfie and besides I would never be able to hear the kids screaming and fighting  playing from all the way out here.  Then I discovered that the sheep needed it more than me, what with having just given birth.  Stupid sheep, sigh.

Of course when I had hauled and wiggled my rear in there, I didn’t really think about getting back out again.  Beau took this picture of me laying there thinking on it.  Well, there is another jug, I could just insist that Beau put her in the other jug, and stay in there until it was time to go to the hospital.  Well, ok maybe just until I have to pee so bad that I can’t wait any longer.