Yarn Along...Without The Actual Yarn, Just The Book

I don't have any knitting or spinning to talk about this week, but I've been dying (do any other fiber people have trouble spelling that word? Dying/dyeing...) to share my new favorite book, so I'm going to count yarn being grown for an upcoming Yarn Along - next year ;-).

I've been following Herdwick Shepherd on Twitter for a couple years now.  Twitter is fun and easy. Really!  If you haven't given it a try, Herwick Shepherd and Zwartbles Ireland alone are good enough reasons to do so.  I have learned so many interesting things and seen so many beautiful places with just a picture and 140 characters.

My own Twitter feed is like a miniature blog.  I post pictures of Liddy and sometimes other stuff like beautiful sunrises and sunsets, the cats working hard, the sheep out grazing and I'll also re-tweet anything I think someone else would be interested in, like beautiful sunrises and sunsets, cats actually working hard and sheep out grazing...in other countries. Sometimes it's just something that made me laugh, which is just as important :-D. 

Earlier this year...or maybe it was the end of last year...we started hearing about a book coming out by Herdwick Shepherd.  I've so enjoyed his gorgeous photographs of his sheep, dogs, countryside, lambs, rams, sheep shows...that I couldn't wait!  It was released over there (he's in northern England) months before it was to be released here.  Argh!  

Some copies started trickling in over here early and Auntie Reg grabbed one for me.  I was surprised to find it was a "written" book.  I was expecting more of a coffee table book full of pictures.  Still, his written Twitter posts are quite entertaining as well as informative, so I eagerly opened it up.  I was hooked on the first page.

I like my bottle lambs to have as normal a life as possible.  They stay with me throughout the day and we try spend a lot of time outside "grazing".  Some, like Liddy, love to curl up next to me and take long naps just like they would if they were with their real mom.  I grab a good book and go find a shady tree and let them be lambs.  

"Come on, Liddy.  Let's go read about raising sheep in a part of the world where sheep have been raised for thousands of years!"  The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks.

Here we're reading it for the first time.  Liddy (two weeks old) slept through most of it, but we're used to that by now ;-).

I enjoyed it so much that as soon as I finished it, I started it back over to catch what I'd missed the first time.  Liddy gave it another try, too, but once again...

Three weeks old.

If I hadn't loaned my copy to a friend, we could get a five week old picture, too :-D.  I could totally read it a third time.  

This is just a sweet picture I found while I was looking back from the book pictures.  I don't have many pictures of Liddy because other than a moment here and there when she's gone off to investigate something, she's always right by my side.  Such a sweet lambie.  A perfect reading companion.  I'm guessing she'd be good at knitting, too.  Now that the festival is over, maybe we'll find out for next week!

Joining in with Ginny...