Author: denisemor

In Loving Memory of Chone

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I lost my little black sheep today. He was almost 9 years old.

Though I hadn’t mentioned anything here, Chone had been having a bit of a hard time for the last month or so.
I first noticed that he had lost a tooth back in mid-November.

By early December when I last did hoof trims, he seemed to be too skinny, and his hooves were a mess.
I’d started supplementing his normal diet (just pasture and grass hay) with alfalfa pellets and some oats and a bit of other grain, and also giving him some B-complex and probiotic oral gel.
He ate just a bit of that each morning and evening. And had actually seemed to have perked up over the last couple of weeks, and was even up to snacking on the Christmas tree yesterday. But today I could tell that he was uncomfortable, though he was still on his feet and hanging with the gang.

I made an appointment to take him in to see the vet today at 1pm, and was getting ready to get him haltered for the trip when I found him in the pasture- apparently having just passed. My poor little guy.

So it’s been a hard day.
And I enter 2019 with a heavy heart and a diminished flock.
He was a special sheep- both sweet and feisty- and a good friend.

The Eating of the Tree

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Today I took our little tree out to the pasture to share with the sheeps, as is our tradition.

Esther found it lip-smackin’ good-

But man, she really needs a trim on those bangs!
Poor messy, soggy girl.

Everything here is pretty soggy- but at least it’s not frozen.

Another year-end tradition of mine is to do sweater (and other knitwear) maintenance.

I’ve gotten a start with mending a worn-through elbow on an old (pre-blog) sweater that has seen a lot of use over the years

and washing and de-pilling The Man’s favorite hat-

My go-to tool for de-pilling is something I got from my mom a few years back. One of those things I never would have thought to buy for myself, but as it turns out, is really handy- the Gleener

So tomorrow I’ll see what all else in the cedar chest requires some upkeep.
Washing, de-pilling, mending- or maybe just a quick steaming, to keep the knits looking their best!

Merry Merry Merry

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Hope everyone is having a lovely Christmas!

I’ve been meaning to blog for a couple of days now but we’ve had power and internet outages that kept me offline for a while.

Power issues started Thursday, with the arrival of a big wind storm.
We had a fairly large tree come down at the front of our property-

Our neighbor across the street had already started chopping it up before The Man got home- in order to get the road cleared.

It wasn’t too tall, but big enough to do some damage to the power and telephone lines on the other side of the street.

With the help of some other folks down the road we got most of it hauled away by the time it got really dark (and started raining).

But there were an awful lot of other trees on power lines and such throughout the area, and we didn’t get power back until late Friday night.

Then internet went out on Sunday afternoon (right before the Hawks v. Chiefs!!!) Geez.
So we listened on the radio. Which was actually kind of nice- and provided me some good spinning time

We watched the condensed game later, once internet was restored. I think I even enjoyed it more the second time, seeing as how I already knew we were going to win 😉

Also wanted to share the progress I’ve made on the new vest I started in Florida (“Cut, Flip and Carry On”)

I’m about 5 inches in now, and no further drama, thank goodness.
Really like how it’s coming along.

Wishing you all Fleece on Earth, and Good Wool to Men!