No Green Kool-Aid

Well, I went to three different stores looking for lime kool-aid so I could dye some of my wool green.  Not one had it.  Rueben says maybe they took it off the market for some reason, like red dye number 3 (or whichever number it was).  I was almost stumped.  Then I remembered the old "yellow and blue make green."  I had planned on adding some orange to the green to get more of an olive green, so I thought I would try to mix blue (ice blue raspberry lemonade) with mango peach.  It turned out pretty nice.  After it dried, I was going to take a picture of it with the other colors.  Wouldn't you know it, the camera battery was dead.  As soon as it charges, I will take a picture and post it.  The green looks great with the other colors.  What do you think?  Kind of looks like a clown wig.

Busy Day

Today was a very busy day.  When I got up this morning, I fed the sheep (and the dog and cats) and then came into the house and started dyeing some Joy wool.  Last weekend I dyed some of her wool orange.  Between last night and today, I dyed some light blue, black cherry, and purple.  I dyed them all using Kool-aid.  It was very easy and the wool looks so yummy!  It smells yummy, too!  It was amazing to watch the water become clear as the kool-aid was soaked up by the wool.  Usually the orange would have been my favorite as it is one of my colors, but I think the purple turned out really cool.  I need to find the green kool-aid, though.  That will make it complete.  Then, I can blend the colors with a little firestar to give it some sparkle and then spin.

We also needed to clean out the sheep shed, so I took the opportunity to get some pictures of the ewes and lambs.

Joy - Telling me all her troubles.  It was her wool I dyed. 

Joy (in the back) and her Mom, Corina.  Notice the rainbow
on Joy's chest.  I didn't notice it until I saw the picture
on the computer.  It looks a bit like the dye job I did using
her wool.

This is four of our ewe lambs.  There is Bella (far left), Raina,
(brown in the back), Ewegenia (white), and Ewelanda
(light brown on the right).  Although they are all Romneys,
Raina is the only ewe lamb that is registered.   They wanted
to know what I was doing inside their shed since I wasn't feeding them.

Ewelanda is keeping cool in the shade.  She is one of our more skittish lambs.

Ewenice is keeping Bella company (or maybe the other way around
since Ewenice is another skittish lamb).  Ewenice is one of the twins that
Corina birthed this year.  Ewegenia (in the background) is also keeping
cool in the shade.

The lambs are getting so big.  They've grown so much since we got them in May and June.  We will not breed them this year.  They are all too young.  The oldest is only six months now.  So, we'll wait until next fall to breed them.  Just think, with Joy and Corina, we'll have seven ewes to breed.  That will be one (or two) happy rams!

We're Back!

It's been soooo long since I've posted anything here (more than a year) but now we have news to post. We have so many lambs this year. Corina had twins, Riblet (he's in the back paddock with the rams) and Ewenice (she's the smaller white lamb) (you can probably guess Riblet's ultimate purpose). Then, we purchased three Romney ewe lambs, Bella (the piglet eating from Rueben's bucket), Ewegenia (the larger white lamb), and Ewelanda (she's the light brown lamb further back). After that, we purchased another ewe lamb and a ram lamb. These are called Raina (furthest to the left) and Abraham (the small lamb you can barely see behind Bella) and are our registered lambs.

Rueben and I have been very busy since the lambs arrived.  We worked all one Saturday on building a feeder for the lamb's shed.  Then, we let them come in and eat.

Ewenice, Ewelanda, Bella, Ewegenia, Abraham, and Raina

I'll try to post more faithfully from now on.  I have a feeling we'll soon have lots more to share.

I spent this weekend with members of my spinning guild doing a dye study. We spent hours (days!) painting, steaming, and rinsing wool rovings. They turned out beautifully. The colors are awesome. Some, I didn't think I'd like too much (they weren't what I think of as my colors), but after rinsing and hanging, I don't think there's one I don't like. You can see most of them in the picture here. However, some are hiding behind others. I really enjoyed the study. Once the rovings are dry, I get to work on getting them spun up! Rueben helped rinse the rovings. He is so sweet and always so helpful. I don't know if I could have rinsed them all myself. It was a lot of hard work! Rueben said he thought they looked very "hippie" or much like what one would see at a Grateful Dead concert! I love them!

Birthday Gift from Levi and Seth

Early last week, we received our gift for our 50th birthdays from Levi and Seth. It is an awesome farmhouse table that they made. They told us they wanted to make the table for us and asked us (when we were visiting over the Mother's Day weekend) what style table we wanted. We looked at all the styles to choose from in the shop where Levi works and selected the style we wanted. They used recycled wood (from some building) that actually came from Washington. I guess the wood came home. The table is beautiful and will be an heirloom for Micaela and her children (or for the new little one to come).

Levi and Seth also carved into the underside of the table. A lasting tribute to when the table was made and who made it.

And, now that John and the girls are here (Micaela and April), here is the first mess on the new table!

A New Arrival at Villa de Micaela

On Sunday evening at about 6:30 PM, when I fed the horses, I had a hard time getting Ranger to come eat his grain. He kept wanting to go down the hill toward the fence between the horses and the sheep. I didn't want Beau to eat his grain and Ranger's, too, so I waited until Ranger finally came into the run-in shed before I dumped his grain on his hay.

Then, I went down the hill to feed the sheep and the llamas. Corina was making sounds more like grunting than baas. Once I got in and fed the sheep, I saw Corina was ready to lamb. I ran back up the hill and told Rueben to grab the camera, that Corina was lambing. He quickly got off the phone with his mom and came down the hill with the camera.

When Rueben got down the hill, I had him watch Corina (she'd gone into the sheep-shed by this time) while I fed the llamas. When I came back to the sheep shed, I found that he had placed a plywood board against the opening, keeping Corina inside and the other sheep outside. Then, we watched while Corina lay in the corner. It didn't look like anything was happening, but after a few minutes, Corina got up, and there was a little lamb in the corner, wrapped in a placenta. We had a new arrival to Villa de Micaela.

I got lots of video of Corina cleaning up the lamb. I finally pulled the last off of the lamb so it could try to stand up without being tangled up in the placenta. Finally, it was able to stand and I was able to tell it was a ram lamb. I got several pictures and video clips of him trying to stand.

Yesterday, we moved Corina and the lamb up the hill to the pen inside of the shop that we had ready for them. When I bent to pick up the little lamb, after I had Corina on the lead, he just stood still. He didn't even squirm when I picked him up. Rueben carried him up the hill while I led Corina. Before we placed the little lamb in the pen, Rueben weighed him on a baby scale we have for weighing feed. He was about 12 pounds. We'll weigh him again in a day or two. He's growing so fast.

Rueben picked him up again this morning. He's nothing like Joy was last year. He doesn't really run and hide behind his mama like Joy did. He just stands pretty still and looks up until Rueben picks him up. This evening, he was a little more skittish when I bent to pet him, but he never really tried to get away.

We called Micaela last night to tell her about the new lamb and to ask her opinion on what we should name him. First, she asked what color he is. I told her he is white. She said we should call him Whitey. I asked her to think more of a people name. She suggested Eli, Jayden, and Whitherspoon; all names of people she knows. Then she started talking about one of her teachers named Ms. Lambert. I told Rueben and we thought and thought about the name. Rueben said Lambert was one of his favorite cartoons when he was little. I remembered it, too and also really loved it. You can find the cartoon (about 8 minutes) on Youtube if you search on Lambert the Sheepish Lion. We decided to name him Lambert.

Michelle's Jacket, April's Placemats, Experiments

In the last month, I've completed two projects, started another, and have been experimenting with a fourth.




First, I completed Michelle's jacket for her birthday. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of it after I put the clasp on it. Anyway, I really enjoyed creating the jacket. I think I may also have inadvertantly created a monster along the way. Once Michelle received the jacket, she made one for herself without any pattern or instructions and has now borrowed my cd on creating other jackets out of sweatshirts.

I also finished April Vargas' mini placemats for her tea set for her birthday at the end of March. I personalized the placemats with her name, as well. The picture shows the front on the top and the back below. For my first design, my first project using the paper-piecing method, and my first attempt at actual quilting, I think they came out pretty good, if I do say so myself. I really enjoyed making these and I just started making a set for Micaela's birthday, too. Hers will be with the same fabrics (in a different order), except for the back with a lavendar binding. I will post pictures of Micaela's placemats once I complete them.

I've also been experimenting. I got Mom's felting machine from Michelle and I've been playing around with it. At first, it worked really well and I was getting addicted. It was really fun. Scraps of felt and wool couldn't satisfy me for long. Then, I started breaking needles. It got a bit frustrating when the needles started bending and breaking. Then, I discovered that forgetting to lower the cloth foot (presser foot) was the problem. Once I discovered the problem and remembered to lower the cloth foot, I stopped breaking the needles. Next, I cut out a pattern of a sheep from brown felt and appliqued it to some olive green felt. Then, I started experimenting with felting wool from Bella that had been washed, but not carded, to the applique. I was using wool locks. I started breaking needles again. After lots of frustration and seven broken needles in one sitting (a pricey endevor since needles are about $4 each), I realized that the needles were probably too long. They hang lower than the cloth foot when it is in the down position. As I was moving the fabric and wool around, the wool would catch on the needles and bend them. Then, as the needles lowered, they broke.

Anyway, the Bella that I tried to make looks okay when looking at the picture. Actually, better than I thought the night I was working on her. She still needs some defining embroidery such as the eyes, nose, and mouth. I'll need to felt some 3-D ears as well. Maybe next, I will try a baby Corina with Bella. I'll have to try some more, using Mom's suggestions. She suggested I use some wash away stabilizer over the wool as I am felting it. That way, the wool shouldn't catch on the needles and break them. Then, I can wet the stabilizer and dissolve it. I'll try again and see if I can get the machine to work without breaking so many needles.