Thursdays Are For Spinning

A friend picked up some leftover fleeces from the North American wool show last fall and I claimed a Romney fleece.  I think that breed is exceptionally pretty (and cute) and by looks felt like the wool would be a Sara fleece (aka Not Merino), but wanted to find out for sure.  I washed my fleece a few weeks ago and yesterday pulled out a big handful to process and spin.

There was no wind and the sun was shining so even with the snow on the ground, it was too pretty to sit inside.  I carried my wheel outside and thought this picture was kind of funny with my muddy barn boots contrasting with the pretty wheel.  I ended up using them to hold my waiting to be spun bundles :-).

Pretty (and cute :-).

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sara Dunham (@thecrazysheeplady)

As the afternoon cooled, I moved back inside for the last bundle.

I wound my bobbin off into a center pull ball and wrapped it around a plying ball.  This is my favorite way to ply samples.  Putting the two ends together around the plying ball keeps the two strands tidy and well behaved.

Ready for a soak.

And after.

I've called some of my Cotswold/Texel crosses "fake Romneys" and now I can say for sure that I was pretty correct.  Not too soft, but not too coarse.  A nice bit of halo and a good bounce.  Definitely a yarn I'll enjoy using ;-).  

Tuesdays Are For Knitting

Some signs of spring!  Melting snow, a baby chick and an open door :-).

Pinot being outside is not a sign of spring because he's been going out all winter, but his muddy feet could be a clue :-).

I couldn't resist making my Emotional Support Chicken her own baby chick.  These are fun little projects and a great way to use up small amounts of leftover yarn.  Here's a link to the patterns.

The Spinning Olympics

There used to be a fun knitting challenge during the Winter Olympics, but I haven't heard anything about it lately, so maybe it's become obsolete...like so many things I like.  That's okay, I am pretty good at playing quietly by myself.

I am really trying to get focused back to more fiber art work so I decided my Olympic challenge this time would be spinning every night.  Actually, I'm trying to be more mindful of several things I love to do, but let get buried by daily home and farm chores...and too much phone time...so I created a weekly schedule that I'm trying to follow.

Mondays are for prep work (for what I want to play with during the week, not hoarding toilet paper ;-), Tuesdays are for knitting, Wednesdays are for painting, Thursdays are for spinning and Fridays are for learning.  I am trying to spend one hour each day doing something I love. 

I did reasonably well last week and I'm excited to continue on this week.  The picture at the top is from the last two Thursdays.  The little dark skein is actually from a few weeks ago, but I threw it in the mix too because it's Muuuuffin :-).  The medium dark is some vintage Jared from 2016, just before he moved to Kentucky and the light gray is Mini Moose.  Three of my all time favorite sheep :-).

Are you watching the Olympics?  Are you doing any knitting...or spinning?

In A Surprising Turn Of Events

 The "Murphy Murder Cam" has exonerated our favorite villain fearless leader! 

Murphy has long been the pokey piece of hay in my sock regarding Every Gate on our farm.  Over the years he has caused So Much Trouble letting himself and everyone else in the flock into Any Area he thinks there might be food stored.   

He knows how to manipulate several different types of latches, to the point I have added bailing twine around gates to double secure them at times.  If you want to walk in and out of a gate carrying hay, for example, you have to twist around while balancing a stack of hay to securely latch a gate for the 15 seconds it will take you to drop the flakes and return for another arm full.

You might get lucky leaving a gate unlatched while you are standing there taking pictures...after all the feeding is done, but don't think for a minute he's not watching you out of the corner of his eye for one moment of distraction.  

Getting into the hay storage area in the barn is his first goal, but busting into one of the Easy Breezy pens is a close second, to the point I have jokingly (sort of) said I should change the name of the Winter Breezy camera to the Murphy Murder Cam because some day I am going to snap.

The other morning I walked into the barn to find half the flock pillaging the Winter Breezy pen.  My first thought was that I'd left the gate unlatched when I'd given everyone some extra hay at the first check because it was so cold.  Then I noticed that the latch was broken.

MURPHY!

I wondered how long they'd been in there so I opened up the app to check the camera footage.  Hmmm...at 10:14 the gate was still latched...and at 10:15 it wasn't...but...wait a minute...that's a white sheep!

I'm not sure if it's because of the cold or if there's a glitch in that camera, but I couldn't pull up the recorded footage to watch exactly how it happened, but I have to own up to the fact that for once in his life, it wasn't Murphy.

It was Biscuit!

Murphy probably loosened the latch up trying to bust his way in too many times, but at 10:15 he was no where in sight.

The 74 Days Of January

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sara Dunham (@thecrazysheeplady)

It wasn't really that bad, but it does seem like a long time ago since we had green grass!