Shetland Shawl - Jen

I wrote about this shawl last spring, I was in the final stages of completion and couldn't resist a premature blog entry. I was quite desperate at the time - thank you to all for your support. Now its done and blocked, and I am totally over it. Sort of like how after you have the baby you forget about how painful the delivery was?

I spun the wool from two different ewes, and knit it in the round. I got the pattern from Fiddlesticks, its called "Garden Flowers".

Funny story, I have been killing myself over this thing. Took with me on every sheep delivery/pickup Rich and I made for 5 years. Had it sprawled on our bed for an entire day during blocking. Blogged about it. It's been my albatross, right? So I finish it, and put it on and show it to Rich one day while he was reading a book about sheep parasites or something. He goes (I swear I'm not kidding), "Hey, that's really nice! Where did you get that?"

By the way, there is no way in heck this thing will fit through a wedding ring.

Ewe A Day - Pyrenee's Morn

This is a good looking ewe in my book. Pyrenne's Morn is a grey katmoget and an F2 Greyling. She has an excellent conformation, and a very dense and crimpy five inch (ish) fleece. She's also very uniform from front to back. Very wide and level!

Pyrenee had two very nice ram lambs this year. Her dark brown was featured in a recent post, and her other ram (Merlin) lives with Penelope in CT. We're amazed at how friendly she has become. She was our wildest sheep a year ago. I think Stephen trains them that way (LOL).

Her two year old micron test was very respectable (AFD: 29.2, CV: 19.0). I like to keep the CV's less than 20.0%. That's what I like about this ewe. I'd like to shave a few microns off of her fleece, but it has everything else. I have an excellent ram for her this year who might accomplish that. He also has a very low CV, and has the darkest blue fleece I've ever seen in person. Hers is actually quite dark as well. I hope to get some fleece shots of some sheep very soon.

Rams For Sale

Here are some late additions to our for sale list this year. It's never a good idea to offer rams this late in the season, but these guys are fantastic! We should proably be using these guys, but my breeding groups are 90% set, and it doesn't make sense to hold these rams over for a year. I'll probably end up doing just that because of the timing, but I wanted to see if anyone has a need for a high quality ram this fall.

The first one is out of Pyrenee's Morn and UTS Clover. He was born black, but is now dark brown. I'm not well versed in the dark brown coloration, but his brown goes right down to the skin (nearly). His father was mioget. I expected that he might turn shaela, but that's clearly not the case. I didn't expect dark brown. We kept him because is a knockout! He won't be extra fine, but he has great density and structure!


























This guy is out of Cor de Nuit and Cihat. He is a half-poll. He has a wonderfully dense, single-coated fleece that is very uniform. It won't be extra fine (which is why we are selling him), but it is just a beautiful spotted fleece. His structure is out of this world! Just a phenomenal conformation! I'd love to find a way to use him this year, but it's not going to happen. Very square and gentle. His brother was even nicer, but developed fatal horns.

The last ram is a Leyland son out of Bluebell. He looks mioget in this picture, but his fleece is actually fawn. His mother is mioget. This guy is also awesome. He's probably the best all around ram of the three, even though his conformation isn't quite up to the other two guys. It's still a very very good conformation, however. The other rams are at the top of the charts for that.

His fall micron test was a very respectable 25.2/4.8/19.2. Again, not extra fine, but very uniform from front to back. This finds me again asking, "why wasn't he a ewe?". All of our best lambs were rams this year. We had some really nice ewes as well, but the rams were the winners in terms of overall quality.

Ewe A Day - Violet

Pike Hill Violet is another ewe that has risen up my grading chart over the past year. She has an intermediate fleece, excellent conformation, and striking katmoget markings. She didn’t lamb this spring, so we’ll see how things go this year. We’re fortunate she didn’t sell when we had her up for sale last year. Still, we do have too many grey kats. It seems like all the best sheep are grey katmogets doesn’t it? Darn you Greyling and Minder!

Violet’s fleece is a hand spinner’s dream. Nice density! Overall, she rates well!

Ewe A Day - Cosmos

This is Onyx Velour’s daughter out of Cihat. She’s a yuglet socket smirslet gulmoget. She carries many of the nice traits of her parents, but I wouldn’t grade her quite as highly as them at this point. Of course, that’s not really much of a knock, since her parents were both very very nice! She's also very nice as well.

Right now, she has an intermediate fleece that has the uniformity that we’re breeding for. She’s just a good, solid, uniformly fleeced foundation ewe who I think can help us improve. I’m very interested in how this one turns out! I haven't decided who we'll breed her to. We've never had ewe lambs grow like they have this year.

Ewe A Day - Krokus

This is Tiara’s ewe Krokus. I really wanted a mioget gulmoget ewe this past spring, and we ended up with two of them (although one was technically fawn). She looks like she’s going to be quite nice. Overall, I’d grade her higher than her full sister Bluebell, even though her fleece isn’t as fine. She’s one of the few ewes we decided to keep just on structure, color, and pattern. Sometimes, you just like something so much, you just have to keep it. I think it’s dangerous to breed exclusively for color and pattern, which is why that will be a secondary consideration for us after conformation and fleece. Of course, that probably means we’ll have all grey katmoget lambs.

Ewe A Day - Onyx Velour

Sheltering Pines Onyx Velour (Sheltering Pines Byzantium x Underhill Thelonius Monk) is a spectacular two year old, smirslet socket gulmoget who remains one of my favorites. She’s just a gorgeous ewe with a nice handling intermediate fleece. She’s 56.25% UK (Dillon and Bartok)! I have very few gripes about this ewe. If I were design my perfect gulmoget ewe, she would look much like Onyx.