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Last days of February- winter in the morning, spring in the afternoon.
First time this year that I’ve hung out yarn to dry in the sunshine!

Probably a few weeks away from shearing, but the fleeces are looking very nice.

Chone-

Dottie-

Edgar-

The shy white boys Frank

and Felix

opted not to participate in the fashion show, but when I last had my hands on them for hoof-trimming their fleeces were in much better shape than last year. So fingers crossed that they are not all felted up again!

And here is a little spring chicken action- feathered friends are good company for garden work

The Man is researching motors, controller, and pulleys and such- so hopefully we’ll have parts soon to play with for the e-spinner project. Stay tuned! 🙂

Now that we’ve emerged from our recent bout of crazy winter weather, it kind of feels like it was just a bad dream.
We’ve snapped back to our usual cool raininess, so that’s a relief, and I was able to make good woolly use of the couple of snow days I got due to inclement weather closures at work!

This little woven piece was inspired by Donna Schoonover’s Cotswold Lock Rug.I started a couple of years ago, but I hadn’t been back to the loom for a while. The unexpected time off and general icky-ness outside provided just the right impetus to get-er-done.

The locks are from Griff, who I lost last spring, so the piece has kind of turned into a memorial of sorts. He had the most beautiful locks- long and crimpy with curly sunbleached tips. I think that I am going to turn it into a wall hanging, perhaps for my office.

I also got to work on spinning up some “Faux-berball”, my worsted-weight take on my favorite commercial yarn, Schoppel Wolle Zauberball Crazy. I haven’t done much dyeing recently, and so didn’t have a lot of crazy colors poised and ready to participate in this project, so I decided to go with indigo and naturals.

I tried to wind it into a cool little muffin like the original to show off the colors shifts, but couldn’t quite figure out how to do it by hand, so here is another shot to show the progression-

It’s probably a little bit underspun, but it’s really nice and lofty. Should be fun to knit with.

It’s still winter outside.

But inside, I’m thinking of Spring.

It won’t be long until we’re pruning fruit trees

Shearing sheep

And planning this year’s garden

(I sure hope April looks like that again this year!)

February is also prime spinning time.
I’m just about done working up blended batts into singles,

and I’m playing with the idea of a faux-Zauberball type yarn, but in a worsted or aran weight.
Because, wouldn’t that be awesome?!