The [Sheep] Days Of Summer

The Dog Days of Summer - dictionary.com

1. The sultry part of the summer, supposed to occur during the period that Sirius, the Dog Star, rises at the same time as the sun: now often reckoned from July 3 to August 11. 

2. A period marked by lethargy, inactivity, or indolence.

The Sheep Days of Summer (or Fall or Winter or Spring) - Equinox Farm

1.  Every day.

It has been super hot and humid this summer.  Every day.  More days in the 90s than not. I hate summer.  At least we've had decent rain up to this point, but I think we are headed for a hot, dry spell  :-(.  I really hate that.  I've been trying to keep everything rolling, but I'm about to embrace my inner sheep and just hibernate until fall.

Daniel

Annabelly always looks sleepy.  Heidi is just scratching her face on the mineral box.  The Jacobs can handle the heat better than the others.

Nobody naps like Baba (Blossom).  

Miss Allie, Elizabeth's daughter.

Rebecca Boone

Liddy and Maisie, both using the ole gate pillow.

Petunia, using the ole straw pillow.

And waking up with bed head ;-).

Saturday Spinning

I left my Tour de Fleece goals pretty loosey goosey.  While spinning every day would have been ideal, I figured that getting anything done was better than what had been getting done.  I've washed several fleeces, wove the Daniel scarf, prepped some lamb fleece, spun a couple of small skeins.  Today I wanted to clock some mileage.  

I'm not sure why I grabbed Henri, but I'm glad I did.  I love spinning Jacob fiber and hers has always been a fun spin.  She had an almost silky fleece that practically spun itself.  I recently got Kate Davies' Book of Haps and decided Henri would make a nice hap.  Of course, half the fun is deciding which one...and spinning the yarn.

I don't remember when I did this, but found one ball of singles already finished.  Can't beat that. Now to look back through the blog to see if there's a note about when I spun that.  Surely not last year's Tour de Fleece...right?  Oh, good grief, it was :-/.

Pretty Henri

This was her last fleece (2015) and it has some quite a bit of VM (vegetable matter) mixed in. Too much to think about selling it...and I doubt I would have anyway.  She was a favorite sheep and much missed.  I'll love having a cozy memento.

Henri had gotten too feeble to make the trek in and out of the Del Boca Vista annex this summer and this has not been a summer you could weather out in the little shed.  Yeesh, it's been hot!

*      *       *       *      *

Bullwinkle got himself in all sorts of trouble today and now the Unit is in danger of being called the BRS (Bullwinkle Retrieval System).  Pictures on Instagram, but also shared to Twitter and FB...in case you aren't already following his adventures.

The Things We Do For Our Kids

One of the many things we love about our farm is actually not on our farm. Well, not all the time at least ;-).  Some of the traffic going up and down the lane is folks going to town.  Most of the traffic going up and down the lane is neighbors.

Neighbors checking on neighbors, stopping in to help neighbors, picking on neighbors...and at the end of the day, just riding around visiting.  The vehicle of choice is what has become affectionately known around here as a "Unit".

Need to take that bale of nasty, moldy hay that had wintered in the baler over to the neighbor to see how she likes her hay?  You take your Unit.  Haha, very funny ;-).  Note Bullwinkle up front. 

Stopping by at the end of the day.  Bullwinkle jumps right in.  No pictures of the John Deere gator though because that neighbor won't let Bullwinkle near it!  Oh, the inhumanity ;-o.

Bullwinkle took one ride and now he is a Unit Junkie.

So Saint Tim finally caved and got him his very own Unit.  This picture is from a friend who happened to see Tim driving home from the big city last night.  What are the odds!

Bullwinkle jumped right in and off to the neighbors we go!

I think this picture is funny not only because of the expression on BW's face, but the angle of the house (?) and Hank trotting by making his rounds, working while we go out to play.  He would not think riding around in the Unit was at all fun.

I think this picture is a scream.  Headed down the road with your sheep.  As you do.  Tilly loves the Unit!

It was really too hot for the dogs to be with us, especially in the back, but Kate was not going to let us leave her behind.  She loves the Unit, too.

As does Stella.  We went back to check on her grandkids (the five new calves).  We got a tiny bit of mud on the new (to us) Unit and were having a laugh about what Tim would have to say. Not to worry, we got a big storm last night and there's not a spec of mud left on it.  But several tree limbs are down and will need cleaned up today.  

Good thing we got a Unit ;-D.

Yarn Along - The Daniel Scarf

When my mother passed away this winter I inherited her weaving loom, a (now) vintage Leclerc table loom and floor stand.  I don't remember her weaving with it, but she had a good collection of weaving books and some leftover yarn, so she must have made a good run at it at some point.

Daniel's 2015 fleece went to A Yarn Well Spun last year (and 2016 this year) and she had a run of yarn spun from it.  I picked up a couple lovely undyed skeins at the Kentucky Sheep and Fiber Festival in May and as the Tour rolled around, I decided to combine it with the loom and put both to good use.

The finished scarf.

Before fulling/blocking - you know, my favorite part ;-).  

Notice how you can see each individual strand?  How almost rough it looks?  Woven cloth is not finished until it's been "fulled".  Fulling is done (at least here) in the washing machine and involves hot(tish) water, soap and a few seconds (30 this time) of machine agitation.

Notice how much softer and fuzzier and comfy it looks now?  The yarn all melded together?  You should be able to click to biggify.  Isn't that fun?

I used a fairly simple diamond twill pattern that you can only see from certain angles. Interestingly, from some angles the fabric looks like light brown and white, not just light brown.  I love that because Daniel has a few faint stripes of white mixed into his brown body, too :-).

Some mandatory blocking (where you size it and even out any uneven spots) pictures.  I used the house porch this time, but I'm going to move back to the Wool House porch next time because the table height (an actual table ;-) is more comfortable up there.  

And yes, it's a simple, straight, rectangular woven scarf (as opposed to, say, a fancy, curvy knitted lace shawl), but any time I put wool and a measuring stick together, you know there are going to be pins involved. Lots of pins.  An insane amount of pins.  I LOVE to block :-).

The cats are all pretty much self blocking these days.  No pins required.

My latest favorite spider, doing a little spinning and weaving above the red bench.  You'll need to biggify to see her.  She's quite pretty.

After several (!) disappointing book downloads, I was luckily reminded that you can never go wrong with a No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency book, so enjoyed my weaving listening to the latest from Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi and Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni.  

I had a pleasant surprise in the mailbox over the weekend, too. Shepherds and Shepherding by Jonathon Brown.  It's packed full of historical shepherding information and pictures and I'm thoroughly enjoying that as well.

Joining in with Ginny...

Weekend Wrap Up

Whew!  It's been a bit of a whirlwind.  We had friends in camped out in the house and Wool House and one night had 13 people here for dinner.  Luckily the weather cooled off a bit and the porch was pleasant and everyone was comfortable, even crabby me ;-).

We had a small, but great group for the yarn swap and spin in on Saturday.  I actually sat down and spun some and enjoyed visiting with everyone :-).  There was a bit of selling and a bit of swapping.  I gave a short spindle lesson and a very short weaving lesson and there was a lot of knitting help given all around.  Fiber folks are just the best.

The Tour de Fleece rides on.  I'm still working on my woven scarf, pushing to finish today.  Now that things are hopefully settling back down for a bit, I plan to really clock some "mileage".  The rest of the group has been inspiring as usual.

The Young Eagle - well, I hope all is well.  He came down to eat breakfast on Sunday and that was the last 'for sure' sighting :-/.  I think the timing was normal for "moving on", but it seems odd/worrisome to break it off that abruptly.

There has been no sign of a tragic ending though and the yard is so full of similar aged fledglings that maybe he just assimilated back into bird world.  I'm trying to not be too sad.  It's hard.  I really loved that silly bird.  He/she was a gift.

Thanks for the video, Robin.