Category: Blog

Sheep are happy because the grass is growing.

Pups are happy because we made a field trip to Marymoor Park on Saturday.

Trees are blooming.

Peonies are popping up.

I should really take pictures of some of those things, eh?

But the days keep rushing along, and the blog keeps getting sidelined.

Sorry blog.

I have been doing some knitting,

And also some more quick fix dyeing-

Griff sure does make food color look good, doesn’t he?
Think I’m going to try and spin something zauberball-esque with these.

Maybe by next week I’ll have a plan.

Whew! It’s been a long time, and a lot of duplicate stitching, but I’ve just finished the yoke colorwork done on Tuin-

And so it’s back on the needles to finish body and sleeves.
Somehow over the last 4 or 5 weeks since I took it off the needles I managed to misplace my size 5 24 inch circulars, so that’s a bit of a setback, but I think the rest of the sweater will come together pretty quickly once the y either reappear or are replaced.

Still trying to decide about sleeve length and if I’ll do any additional color work around the cuffs and/or hem.

It was a beautiful sunny weekend here, and I was glad to be able to get some fleece washing done. Going to do a little carding and spinning demo this week for some young 4Hers, so wanted to have some fresh fleece from the guys for show and tell.

And I’m really excited that I’ve made plans to go down to Blacksheep Gathering in Eugene this June.
A friend and I are going to drive down together. Already signed up for three workshops- Locker Hooking, Steeking, and Shearing on your Own.

Woo Hoo!

is a “Motorized by The Man” carder.

It’s been in the works for a while (birthday was back in Jan), and we were really close to a solution a couple of weeks ago.
The first try was with a belt sander, coupled to the drum axle with a chuck from a drill.
Only problem- it rotated counterclockwise.

Plan B involved the sacrifice of an old White sewing machine that we found on craigslist.
Here it is after already having donated all the necessary internals-

And here is my old carder hooked up to it’s new power source-

which is controlled by the footpedal from the sewing machine-

I’ve been playing with it a bit today, and it is really cool. The foot pedal leaves my hands free for picking and feeding in the fiber, and when the motor is not running I can manually turn the drum backwards to remove the batt without having to undo anything.

And I can always remove the pulley and put the handle back on if I need/want to go back to arm power.
Will try to shoot a little video sometime this week of the newly energized machine in action!

And in case you’re wondering what ever happened to my Tuin sweater- it is finally starting to look like something!

Don’t know that I would ever sign on for this much duplicate stitch ever again (millions of ends), but I think it’s turning out pretty neat. 🙂

Felix-

Griff, who is normally very gentlemanly once you lay hands on him, was a total bugger. Really didn’t want to give up the winter coat.
But in the end we prevailed.

and Frank.
Sorry, didn’t get any pictures of Frank.
Frank and Felix were both pretty felted, but somehow on Frank’s back there was a lot of dirt and grit. Like someone had poured a bunch of builders sand on him. Trying hard to imagine how it got there.

We also did CDT vaccines, dewormer, and hoof trimming. So it was a pretty busy morning.

And when it was all over, we played ball-

Ah, the pups do love a little fetch.

Oh hey- and Friday I was over at Schoonover Farm for their spring shearing.
It was a great time, as usual, and I came away from it with a lovely fleece from Rueben, a 15 year old wether.
Check it out:

Lookin’ pretty good for an older gentleman, eh?