Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time there was a little lamb living in London, England.  Not out in the countryside, but right in the city!  They've never shared how they got rescued by Loved Before, but their adoption profile said their name was Merino and that...

"Despite being a sheep, they never grow fluffy wool and shiver in winter.  Once, they tried to warm up by snuggling with the cat, who was not amused.  Merino's charm lies in their endless quest for warmth and their knack for finding the sunniest spot."

I'm sure it's no surprise that I couldn't resist helping a little lamb.  Even stuffy sheep need to be rescued sometimes!

Merino arrived safe and sound, albeit a bit chilly because it was so long ago it was still winter.

I set the Iknitarod vest aside and started their sweater right away.

And to help Merino not feel too homesick, we watched eleventy episodes of  The Great British Baking Show.  

 

And then, like magic, a warm wool sweater.  Not really.  I've never managed to pull off a quickly knit sweater before, so why start now.  It's been long ago enough though that I don't really remember what my issues were except for general nit picking and needing to make the sleeves longer.

The best part was how both sheep made a new best friend and enjoyed all sorts of adventures together as we got back on the Iknitarod Trail.

And it turns out, Merino just hadn't found the right cat to snuggle up with.  Bullseye made a couple of new best friends as well :-).

The yarn for Merino's sweater was some Woody that I'd spun for the Tour de Fleece a couple of years ago.  Little sweaters like these are a fun way to use up sample skeins and practice new techniques...like knitting sweaters.  

And the 2025 Tour de Fleece starts in just over two weeks.  

WHAT!?! :-o

Meanwhile...Back In March

As the days passed at the beginning of March and I didn't get the Month End done and didn't get it done and didn't get it done...I could feel the spiral...and could. not. make. myself. fix. it.  I even gave up to the point that I turned all my calendars to April, which I don't let myself do until the compilation is finished.

I'm glad I finally got these caught up because A. there was a lot of March I'd forgotten about and B. there were a lot of Maisie and Short Round pictures in there.  Maisie and Short Round still getting up and into trouble.  Things are deteriorating with them and it was nice to know that not that long ago, everything was still fine.

Everything is still fine and whatever happens, when it happens, will be fine, but I am pretty sure if I didn't have these caught up, it would have been very, very hard to sit down and go through everything if everything wasn't still mostly fine.

A lot of these pictures made it to IG, but not all, and if they did they may not have been explained.  There's at least one picture that even I can't explain*.  I wish they'd all have been posted to the blog, but that obviously didn't happen, so here are some notes.

The month started with trying to trap a feral cat with a huge belly that I was sure, knowing my luck, was going to be a teenage mom.  That was Bullseye and he thankfully ended up just being a really wormy boy cat and your can watch his transformation from feral to friendly after he got trapped and vetted.  He's just as sweet as he looks.

The Iknitarod happened.  Yeah, remember that?  Noticed that I still haven't posted any finished pictures?  Yeah, I'm still working on it, but it's close to being finished even though all the snow in Alaska has probably melted.  I enjoyed "making time" to go sit and knit with a couple of the sheep in the yarn.

I hate how the pictures get cropped sometimes.  I have no control over that and the barn camera picture of Murphy standing all by himself in the barn lot with no one wanting to follow him out to the cold field is disappointing.  It's a funny shot in full.

*The fried chicken bone.  I have no idea.  It just appeared in the yard one day.  (!)

I love the light in the winter.

I remodeled Pinot's Patio with a new fence and built some big wooden planters to put my flowers in this year.  Big so they don't dry out so quickly and tall so Pinot doesn't eat them all.  Don't worry, I planted some stuff for Pinot.  I think that shows up next month.

I got a drum carder.  More to come on that...I promise.

The purple martin scouts showed up and then the rest moved in.  The video clip cut the sound off.  That unmistakable sound is the sound of spring.

It rained a lot.  

Frankie and Lancelot enjoyed doing all the stuff they've always done together - grazing, playing, taking turns watching while the other slept...best friends stuff.  I miss those days.  I don't regret taking Gato back.  He has earned a nice retirement and lots of old lesson horses don't get those, but I wish the herd dynamic hadn't gotten so skewed.  

I got a little stuffed sheep named Merino.  He came from Loved Before and he needs his own intro post.  Yes, I did knit him a warm wool sweater.  That needs a post too.  Since he came from across the pond, I thought he might enjoy watching The Great British Baking show so I added him to the Iknitarod team bag and brought him in for house knitting.  More about the baking to come.

I kept all of Dug's kids from the previous year.  I just couldn't bring myself to eat them so they lived on the counter in the kitchen all fall and winter and just as they started to look like they might not make it until spring, they did, and out they went to the garden and are doing Dug proud.

The picture of Maisie standing at the feed room door is a great story.  As crazy as she's always been, Maisie is extremely polite while waiting for breakfast and dinner.  She stands there waiting patiently...and because of that usually gets a little something extra :-).  

Like the purple martins, the redbuds are another great mark of spring.  Always beautiful.

Enjoy!

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aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Spring Has Sprung

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Well, that (springtime in Kentucky) escalated quickly!  Like it always does.  

Most people look forward to spring.  I'm more a of fall person, looking forward to the quiet of winter.  I haven't finished my Iknitarod vest yet, but I'm still working on it.  I stopped to knit a small sweater for a chilly new sheep friend (not at bottle lamb...sorry) who I'll introduce maybe tomorrow.  I have garden news to share.  An exciting new fiber tool.  Plans for the summer.

Just not enough hours in the day, even though the days are getting longer.

Sigh...

 

Post Card From The Trail

Quick Iknitarod check in.  It's late and I'm tired which is never a good combo for blogging, but the last few days have been crazy busy.  More about all that later.

I'm still mushing along and I'm so happy to have a new dog team to follow as I knit and that's made the race fun again.  Justin Olnes of Rerun Kennel is racing a team made up of 75% rescued dogs.  This is a great story and if you're interested, check him out.

On the Iknitarod Trail, I've finished the back of the vest (minus the bind off at the bottom) and am ready to pick up the stitches at the top edge to start down the front.  I was hoping to get that started tonight, but I had other duties and now I'm tired and headed for "one of my 8s" (mandatory eight hour rests ;-).

Mushing on!

The I-64 Spring Fiber Fling

I don't travel much.  It's hard to leave a farm full of animals that count on Things Being Done Like They Always Are.  Having the barn cameras now may help at least my peace of mind if I decide to go somewhere, but taking care of animals, especially lots of older animals can be a challenge.

Some nights Maisie likes to eat her hay on the steps.  Some nights she wants to eat from a bucket.  Some nights she'd like a pile of hay placed in front of her in bed.  Sometimes a young sheep gets mud stuck between their toes that dries into a hard stabby rock and you have to pick it out and at the same time grab the thorny rose branch that they got stuck in their wool...Big Moose!

That being said, I do like when people come to see me.  We don't have the fanciest place and I'm never going to fix you a gourmet farm to table meal, but the farm is peaceful and fun and the sheep, horses, cats, Bea and Pinot are good characters and if you are here around lunchtime, I'd be happy to make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I also have lots of wool in all stages of "production" - raw fleeces, washed fleeces, roving, batts, handspun yarn, small batch mill spun  farm yarns, learn to spin kits, felting supplies, quilt batting, punch needle ideas, ideas in general...so many ideas...

I also have some fiber processing equipment, a couple of spinning wheels, a loaner weaving loom and a whole bag full of knitting and crochet needles.  Want to give something a try?  Come on out.  And while I'm not an expert, I'm happy to teach you what I've learned along the way.  

We've dabbled with participating in more agritourism ventures, but are just far enough off the main road that it would take a little more effort and experience than I really have time for right now.  Did I follow my "schedule" and spin yesterday?  Nope.  I spent my time wrangling with a feral kitten/cat that you can meet on my Instagram feed because I haven't had time to share all that over here because I'm trying to write a blog post about the I-64 Spring Fiber Fling because someone else has done the agritourism prep work for me and I'm pretty excited to be given the opportunity to participate.  (inhale...exhale)

20 and his friends are pretty excited about this "yarn crawl" as well.

I'm going to send you to the I-64 Fiber Fling website for all the details on how to join, who you can visit, what each store or farm is offering, prizes you can win...  I'll also do another post over here next Thursday or Friday telling what I have planned for our stop.  It's going to be fun!

In the meantime, I'm headed out to make a quick barn check and then to the house to make my peanut butter sandwich.  The feral cat escaped from the greenhouse so I don't have that to contend with today...unfortunately.  Maybe I'll get some Iknitarod knitting done this afternoon.  I am working my way down the trail, just not as quickly as I'd hoped.

Whew!

At The Start

After last year's musher and dog issues I was no longer looking forward to the next two weeks as my favorite two weeks of the year...but I had a new project ready to start so I've decided to give it one more go.  I miss the old mushers and the more historical feel the race used to have, but maybe the kids will do them proud.  For the 2025 Iknitarod...

Yes, this is the same Lamb Camp Bottle Lamb yarn from last year and the same general project (vest) that I did not finish last year, but I've switched to a different pattern.  This is the Lulu Slipover from Petite Knits, the same designer as the Jared sweater.  We cast on this afternoon!

The ravatar is still basically the same, but I've lost my red hat (!) so I changed that out to a new hat made from the same Lamb Camp yarn...for good luck.  My Iknitarider (I almost forgot to pick someone :-o) is a nameless (!) little gray faced lambie wearing a Jacob sweater that I knit maybe as a pattern for a sweater I knit for a friend.  

I think I might call the lamb Punkin because as I was dusting off my ravatar from last year and looking at all the sheep, I couldn't for the life of me think who was standing next to me. Most of the sheep are pretty obvious, at least to me, but I was completely stumped by...Punkin :-o.

Maybe I'll find my brain when I dust off my Red Lantern and my sled!

Weekend Wrap Up

I'm going to try something new.  I've actually been thinking about doing this for a couple of years, but apparently needed the FB debacle to push me to actually do it.  

The Plan - even if I do some blog posts throughout the week (the ideal situation), I'm going to try to do a Weekend Wrap Up post that picks some important IG posts and shares them over here and on FB.

I hate that there are so many good (frequently really good) memories stored over on IG that never make this searchable blog.  While I don't care much at all about FB, I do care about the people who follow me over there and who are now missing all the daily posts.

At some point maybe I'll figure out a way to fix the FB issue, but at this point, a few posts are hopefully better than no posts.

And while there is much of this past week that I'd like to forget, that's not how life and farming works, so without further ado...the first Weekend Wrap Up.

* * * * * 

I'd like to start off by saying thank you for all the kind comments, messages and notes about Blossom.  I knew that was going to hit a lot of us really hard.  I still can't believe she's gone, but I hope she's out grazing along the creek with Hank and dancing in the moonlight. 

If you'd have asked me last Saturday, I'd have said shearing went great.  It did, as far as shearing goes.  Once again, after weeks of really nice weather, we got hit with a horrible cold snap and honestly I think it was worse than last year because it was still blasting us with a miserable cold wind today, eight days later.

I am definitely not going to forget any of that because it's going to dictate how I schedule things next year.  In the meantime, let's remember everyone out grazing that afternoon, the last warm day, and enjoy seeing Biscuit and Muffin still grazing side by side just as they have done since they were lambs :-).

Here's a short flock walk from Monday evening:

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While I don't like the story behind this picture, I do like the picture.

Jared was miserably cold.  On Wednesday, he finally felt well enough to leave the barn and sneak out to get his special second breakfast.  I nearly cried.  He started improving every day after that and was almost back to normal this afternoon.

On a happier note, I heard the first Purple Martins chirruping Friday afternoon.  They'd have been happier a week or two ago when it was warm and there were bugs everywhere, but they'll be happy tomorrow when it warms back up.  

This was a screen capture using the Merlin Bird app.  If you aren't already familiar with that, check it out.  Big fun!

While it might appear that I've just been wandering around lost in the Alaskan wilderness, I am still working on my Iknitarod project.  We'll get there eventually.

* * * * *

Okay, this wasn't too hard and on a better week, might actually be pretty fun to put together and hopefully I'll do more than just hit the high spots.  There were more pictures on IG and some pictures that never even got shared over there, so maybe I'll do a couple of catch (further) up posts.

On to the new week!

Who Am I?

I like this little cartoon.  I really didn't think I'd be able to successfully put that many friends into a small square, but it works :-).

I didn't do my Muffin sweater right.  It's now a yoke sweater with Mrs. Pepperpot's white showing.  Much better.  I fed Muffin a lot of bottles, but she never lived in my kitchen so I hadn't included her in the yarn mix...but she fits perfectly in this scenario.

I don't have a stuffed sheep Iknitarider this year.  I stewed on that a bit and finally decided Bea was obviously my rider this year.  Duh.

I've finally cast on and have a few rows knitted.  I really struggled with what to knit this year and had it narrowed down to two choices, neither of which I was super thrilled with.  One I will do eventually.  The other...maybe with some different yarn.  I ended up going with a back burner third choice.

More to come!

Wait! I'm Here! I'm Here!

I'm off to a late start, but we are finally ready to hit the trail.  I'm still not 100% certain of what I'm making, but I'm going to be using the Lamb Camp Bottle Lamb yarn so I put everyone on the Ravatar with me.  I'll start knitting tomorrow.

When you aren't competitive and are mostly in the race for the experience, it's called a "camping trip".  That's going to be my plan for this year.  I'm going to enjoy spending time with some of my very best friends and hopefully have a vest to show for it at the end.

Can you identify all the sheep above?  A couple are a little vague, but the "characters" should be easily recognized :-).

2023 Tour De Fleece Wrap Up

I didn't spin quite as much yarn as last year, but I'm not too far off.  I did spin at least 15 minutes every day, taking the Tour's two rest days when I needed them, and ended up with well over five hours of spinning in total.  I wish I could commit to 15 a day all year.  Or not "commit" to it, but just enjoy doing it without needing the structure.  

I ended up with a whole basket of yarn I really like. 

The red is the yarn from Blaze, my friend's sheep.  The dark gray is Tessa.  The creamy white is Ellie.

I love when the yarn looks just like the sheep.  Ellie is definitely round, soft and cuddly.

Murphy is quite a "sheep with too much character" most of the time, but he grows some beautiful wool.  This light gray skein is especially soft and I would bet most people would pick it as their favorite.

The beautiful medium gray is Mini Moose.  I spun a sample from him last year and it was one of my favorite yarns I've ever spun.  This skein did not let me down.

Another sheep who never lets me down is Muffin.  She's finally starting to get some gray hairs, but I actually like that better than her solid black lamb fleece.  I think it gives her yarn some depth. Can you believe she and Biscuit are six (!).  

I was going to link to the finished black and white sweater, but as I scrolled through the March posts looking for the best post, I decided 20 catching up with us on the trail might be my favorite.  Lots of reminders of what was going on and now that's over and I love my finished sweater, I have to admit it was all pretty fun :-).

I didn't get a great shot of Big Moose (the little dark gray skein), but it's too hot to go back out and try for a new one.  I took some "in process" shots while I was combing it, so he'll (hopefully) get some more attention in a day or so.

We are continuing on spinning this week in support of the women's race.  I decided I'd only spin ewes so I've spun a little bit of Emily and Annebelly for old times sake and am now working on a bobbin of Cheeto so Big Moose could bring his mom along for the ride :-).

March

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I took out as many pictures as I could and it's still a long one.  I left a bunch of weaving pictures in because there were so many steps for that project that I wanted to remember.  There are a lot of Archie and Possum pictures, too.  And Maisie in her puffy coat.  We can never have too any pictures of that :-).  

The Jared Sweater

If you disregard the fact that I started this very simple raglan sleeve sweater with basically only one technical element all the way back in September, it appears as if I've been very productive lately.  Alas...

I really don't know what to say about why it took so long to get this one right.  It truly should not have been a difficult journey.  I wanted a bulky sweater that looked like bulky Jared, knit from a big squishy yarn spun to resemble big squishy Jared.  Both the heavier weight yarn and the basic design should have equaled a fairly quick knit.

I picked the pattern mostly because I liked the zipper, hence the name Zipper Sweater.  The folded over collar was also interesting and although I didn't know it at the time, the Italian bind off around the cuffs and the bottom has become a new favorite.

I know I posted several IG updates as I knit (and unknit and knit and unknit...), but I just don't have it in me to scroll back through nearly five months of posts to pick them out.  I will share two near the end though.  One because it shows said zipper (with, of course, a mistake I needed to take out and reknit) and the other because of the option to make whatever size yarn you want/need if you spin it yourself.

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The zipper is sewn in by hand.  I'm not a great hand stitcher, but I felt that would give me the best control over exact placement and also between the very close color match of the thread to the yarn and the texture of the yarn, it would be hard for anyone to even see any of the wonky stitches.

I used double sided basting tape instead of straight pins or sewn basting stitches and that was very helpful.  I was a little intimidated at the start of the zipper installation, but would now willingly do a zipper again.  

I was hoping to recreate my Ravatar artwork, but they were both too focused on the cookies to settle down and pose exactly the same.  Still, I love them standing side by side.  Such good buddies.  Both are 13 this spring and I'm glad Tim got this picture.

This is the best view of sweater.

And here I just look like a crazy old woman who never combs her hair, but I love Jared looking at me...or probably just smelling my mouth to see if I have cookie breath.