Give A Dog Her Due

When Iris was a young dog she was a great babysitter for our bottle lambs. I'd picked her up off the side of the highway on my way home from work one night, so we don't know her background, but I do know as soon as she saw our sheep she knew she was supposed to do something with them. She didn't know what, but she knew there was a connection.

Maybe she took such good care of PPPP and Ewen because she was just happy to be with sheep. By the time Lila and Blossom came around, she was pretty much over that ;-).  Maisie?  Forget it!  Instead of putting Iris IN the pen with the lambs so they weren't stressed if I had to run to the grocery, I started locking her OUT so I wasn't stressed about coming back to find a pinched nose or a black eye.

I'm not sure what is different about Baaxter.  She's always been very tolerant of him and his lambie shenanigans.  Might be because he's a boy?  Maybe easier to train?  Less cheeky (Cheeky?  Who Maisie? ;-).  Possibly because he's marked like a Border Collie?  I'm not sure, but I frequently look down or around and there they are.  You are a good dog, Iris.

Yesterday's skirting nap.

"Can you even see me behind all this wool?"

Baaxter has a big pen in front of the Wool House porch, so when he's not up there sleeping he can watch me from below.

And I can watch the sheep come and go and wonder what on earth is Maisie up to now?  That old tree has been a staple in the front field.  The cats used to be able to climb it, Aria liked to scratch on it, it's been the home to various bugs that have fed various birds and, I don't know, I've always liked it.  It's gotten so frail though I think it's probably time to push it down.  With our bare hands.  It's been a good tree.  Thank you.

I am SOO happy to report all the 2014 fleeces have been skirted and sorted, ready to move onto their next jobs - spindle roving, quilt batting, wreaths, felted sheep, wool balls...and the porch has returned to it's normal, non-messy, ain't gonna break your leg trying to get to the rocking chairs state.  

The two boards at the end are to try to keep slow up Baaxter from jumping off the end because it's obviously much more fun to jump off than to use the steps.  And the pen out front?  When he wants out of it he jumps up onto the porch...

*   *   *  State of the Raw Wool Stash Report  *   *   *

• I found one more Jacob fleece that I think someone would be interested in spinning (Annabelly).

• Blossom's huge fleece was the only non-Cotswold fleece that didn't sell at the festival.  I'm wondering if it was because is was such a daunting mound of wool and if I'd divided it into two smaller offerings...  It does have a little VM in it, but nothing that won't shake out and it's a fabulously sproingy white fleece.

• Cotswold!  Get your Cotswold!  I was hoping after Buddy, Woolliam and Rebecca Boone's cousins got such a nice shout out on the Yarn Harlot's blog a few weeks ago that maybe between that and how pretty Rebecca Boone's yarn turned out that some of the Cotswold stash might find new homes.  I'm afraid I'm going to have to dye it bright, bizarre (albeit beautiful ;-) colors (Hyperventilating! Breathe, breathe, breathe... ;-).