What I am Working on

Thinking grateful thoughts this memorial day as I keep myself busy this morning with wool.

washed Lyanna's fleece so I have something to demo flick carding and spinning from lock at CNY Fiber Festival in a couple weeks.

Lyanna's pretty crimpy locks.

Lyanna - fawn katmoget 2017 lamb

Elinor's fleece generated quite a lot of yarn, solid, gradient and sheep heid skeins in this blob.

Still have some of Elinor's darker locks to spin into a dark grey gradient, can't wait to see how it turns out.

Elinor, gee I think you're swell

Spinning shorter locks from Baxter, she didn't shear very well this year.

3 oz Longer locks to card into batts

Baxter, such a pretty rich black.

Baxter

Carding up black neck wool for batts

Carded black neck wool locks

And put the ewes and their lambs on a fresh pasture this morning.  Grass is growing fast!

Chores

The four of us picked up 200 bales of hay yesterday and got them stacked in the loft of the barn.  The guy we bought the hay from kept it in an old barn that I could have spent the entire day in it was so peaceful and smelled terrific.  Remember in Little House in the Big Woods when she writes about how they have all their food stored in the attic for the winter and how you felt so safe and cozy?  That's how I feel when the barns are full of hay.  200 more bales before the end of summer and we are there. 

Then Rich and I cleaned out the barn so my arms, shoulders and hands are pretty sore today.

Final Lambs

Kelli Kelli was the last one to lamb (she was last to go last year also).  X Oberyn - a black ram.

For some reason I neglected to post photos of Jane Eyre's (XNitro) fawn kat ewe and moorit ram.  So they are 6 days old in these photos.

I am now going to go to bed and sleep for about 3 days.

What I am working on

Carded batts from Mrs Hughes - this is the output from her fleece less a few oz for a gradient yarn I am working on and some curly bits that were so tightly coiled it wasn't worth trying to card them

Working on another simple hat from black fleece I bought last year at Wisconson

White hat from Elara complete

Today I spent a lot of time marking batts for sale at the Shepherd's market next weekend

Got a lot of yarn marked as well

Carding Elinor to spin

This is carded locks from Mrs. Hughes to make a gradient yarn

Start with the lighter colors and go dark

Lambs

Rosamunde (X Oberyn) had a sweet little grey kat ewe Friday

And Baxter (X Nitro) had a black ram at around the same time.

So just Kelly Kelly left to go - She was our last ewe last year and isn't really showing any signs of labor yet.  Happily munching on hay.

Lambs

Wednesday morning I got up to get a drink at around 4 am and O'Brien(x Nitro) had 2 moorit lambs, one ewe and one very small ram.  The smallest lamb I have ever seen.  But he is bouncing around as much as any of the others.

O'Briens sweet little ewe lamb

Set next to Elara's ram just to get a feel for how little he is.

Then Genoa (x Nitro) had a fawn kat ewe and a very nice moorit ram.

3 more ewes left to lamb as of Thursday night.

Lambing update

Treviso (x Nitro) had a ewe fawn katmoget on Sunday.

Later that night, Mrs Hughes delivered a moorit ewe lamb.

Both are doing well.  Rich and I are both struggling to remember any of the conditions of both of these, we are a little exhausted I guess.  They sure are cute though.