Miss Ewenice
During the 2022 Tour de Fleece I spun quite a few samples of some of my oldest and dearest sheep. The inspiration for that challenge came from finding a bit of PPPP's roving just before the Tour began and enjoying hanging out with her once again.
After spinning her skein I decided it would be fun to make another Maggie Rabbit, but this time turn the rabbit into a sheep. And instead of a sweet little cape, I'd make her a nice wool sweater with some cables or lace and change her paddock boots into wellies. I'd use PPPP's yarn and it could be a tribute to one of my favorite sheep.
I finally got around to getting the project started this past week, but when I went looking for doll sized sweater patterns I found most called for yarn that was heavier than I'd spun. Note to self, find a pattern and then spin the yarn.
Not to worry though. I can spin a new skein...but now I think I may have used the last of her roving :-(. I don't remember finishing out the bag, but I can't find it if I didn't. I did find some Miss Ewenice roving though. She'd make a fun Maggie Rabbit/Sheep, too!
I pulled out some roving, gave it a quick run through the drum carder to freshen it up a bit and then put it on Instagram with a little teaser, asking for guesses as to who I was getting ready to spin. Turns out this is not the first time Ewenice was shared as a "guess who" post.
She didn't immediately take to our flock of mostly feral Jacobs and a couple of crazy Border Cheviots so she spent a good deal of time hanging out around the house with us. She was polite and well behaved and I don't remember her ever getting into any sort of trouble.
I know she took care of Ewen McTeagle when he was still pretty young and maybe that's how she integrated into the flock. She babysat several bottle babies over the years, but she's most famous for taking the very best care of Renny.
There are numerous Ewenice and Renny posts and I'm not going to link them all here. If you don't know Renny's story, it starts out pretty horrible (heads up if you go looking back), but has a happy ending. Miss Ewenice played a huge part in that happy ending. Her ending, while heartbreaking, had a bit of a happy ending as well.
Interestingly/sadly, last night I didn't have the baby gate secured well enough and Rocky wandered out of the barn in the the middle of the night. I found him just before dawn, thankfully okay, standing right under that same tree. Salt loved that tree as well. Hopefully those good girls were keeping him company and I'd like to think they told him to stay put.
2 comments:
You have the best sheep stories. And the most interesting farm animals that have stories.
Love the sheep stories, have fun knitting:)
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