Author: denisemor

Walk-ins Welcome

Scenes from the beautyshop

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Shearing Edgar is always fun.
I sit on a rock, and he casually saunters over.
I let him sniff the shears and ask him if he wants a little off the top.
I usually start right behind the ears, carefully opening up a pathway through his lovely lanolin-y wool.

Once I’ve got the back of his neck uncovered, I give him a little massage.
I think the massage is why he likes getting sheared so much- that and feeling the spring air on his skin for the first time in many months.

I slowly work my way back over his shoulders and down around his chest. (more massage)
He occasionally gets fidgety and needs to take a little break, so I try to not have too much wool hanging off of him at any point. I pull it off and collect it in my muck-bucket as I go.

We always and up doing the haircut in stages. Stage one is the Mullet.
Business in the front, Party in the back.
His nicest wool is on the front end, so I’m fine with letting him hang out for a while in Mullet Mode.

None of the other guys are quite so eager for me to take the shears to them, so they’ll need to be haltered.
But it’s always nice kick off shearing season with my buddy Edgar.

I also wanted to mention the the ChickieCam is back!
Chicks are just over a week old now and getting some of their big-girl feathers in. Super cute.

Spring Chickens

Are here!

5 Amerucanas and 5 Speckled Sussex came home Friday afternoon from our local farm store

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They are so cute and perky and cheep-y. I could sit and watch them for hours.
But I do have other stuff to get done, so I try to just keep it to 10-15 minutes or so at a time 🙂

Some of that other stuff is wool-related.
I’ve been working on clearing up my fleece processing backlog.

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I hope to dye this Felix/Frank yarn with madder sometime later this spring-
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And after much waffling, I’ve decided to move ahead with the Chone-Burr sweater project. With this skein I should have almost enough yardage to complete it!

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This weekend Edgar started casually inquiring about shearing dates. I think the recent balmy weather is making him anxious to get out of that heavy coat.
And the fleece looks really nice this year. I want to get it off him while it’s still in good shape!

Preppin’ for Spring

It’s mighty soggy outside.
But I’m taking the groundhog at his word.

Spring is right around the corner.

Mid February means a lot of things:
rosebush maintenance
fruit tree pruning
garden planning
baby chickens?

Things start moving fast.

and then it’s shearing time!

Probably within a month I’ll have five new fleeces!
So I thought I should probably get a handle on the remaining unwashed wool that I still had in the queue from last spring (yeah, I’m a little behind).

I washed up the last of Griff and Edgar on Friday.

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Did some spinning on Saturday

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And I got about a pound of wool carded today

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That’s a pretty good wool weekend!

I’ve really got an itch to do some dyeing, and I was putting together a plan to do a madder dyebath, but I’d have to do that outside, so I’ll have to wait until the weather is more cooperative.

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Mmmmm. Madder.