How Could I Not Buy Them?

I was at a Goodwill store last week and did my usual survey of the books and "craft" area. No yarn - just as it's been for the last several months. Drats.

Then I glanced at an endcap as a I turned down an aisle some distance away. There were two bags of yarn! Hmmm, one contained skeins of pink yarn. I don't care much for pink. But I do knit for other people, and I sell some of my knitting. Maybe I should take a closer look. Balls of light blue yarn filled the other bag. Light blue is really not my thing. I prefer darker, deeper colors, but, then again, my caveat above still applied. I picked up both bags.

The first held five skeins of Debbie Bliss "baby cashmerino":  55% Merino wool, 33% microfiber, 12% cashmere! The price tag said $4.99. Eight balls of Louisa Harding "Grace - Silk & Wool" filled the other bag:  50% Merino wool, 50% silk. This bag was priced at $3.99.

It would have just been wrong to put those back on the shelf! It won't hurt me to knit with pink and light blue yarn. I'm sure I can make people happy with items made from these incredibly soft yarns. How could I not buy them?

This is the scarf I've started knitting with the blue yarn. Did I mention it's Merino wool and silk? It's amazing - the things I'll do for others.

Dierdre's New Bed

I sewed a bed for Dierdre last week. I stuffed it with old, worn-out clothes: Mark's clever idea. Mark and I think it's quite nice, but Dierdre won't use it. In fact, she won't even touch it unless we insist.

I guess she's never had a bed before.

I put it on the floor near our bed where she likes to sleep, and she laid in another spot that night. Mark wondered if she was avoiding it out of disinterest or out of courtesy. Maybe she thought it was ours, so she politely stayed off it.

Right now it's on the floor near my desk; so is Dierdre, about a foot from the dog bed. Oh, well.

We're gently encouraging her to use it, but if she really doesn't want to, we won't insist. Perhaps this winter she'll find it appealing.

Front and back of the new bed.

Well, That Was Unexpected

The president of the Mountain Spinners and Weavers Guild in Prescott called me Sunday morning and said the president-elect, who was supposed to be installed in August, can't take the office. She asked if I would consider being guild president for the coming year. I think my response was, "Huh," (a la Malcolm Reynolds for any Firefly fans out there).

I was first VP for two years a while back, and I've been the newsletter editor for about three years. I had given no thought to being president, though.

But, yikes, I said yes. We had an emergency online election, and, guess what, I'm going to be president of the MSWG next month!

Spiffed Up Website

I finally added a professional shopping cart to my website. Yay! It's going to take me a little while to get used to the new format, but I really like the features. It offers all sorts of shipping options to customers and actually calculates the shipping cost correctly all the time, unlike only occasionally as PayPal did. The "search" feature is cool, too. http://www.highcastlecrafts.com/

Sheep Depredation

Sheep love roses and rose bushes. Unfortunately. They destroyed one rose bush completely, but the one pictured below is holding its own with beautiful red roses above sheep level.

I picked up a broken juniper branch on the way home the other day. It was fresh and covered with needles. Mark set it aside with the intent of removing the greenery the next day and then cutting the branch into firewood-size pieces to season for next winter. The sheep saved him the trouble of stripping the needles.

Sheep Shearing Pen

Nine sheep sheared; eleven to go. I'm getting there. I think each of the experienced (sheared in previous years) sheep think "Wow, I'm glad I'm not on that shearing stand, but...hmmm, I sure would like to get this 15 pounds or so of wool off me."

Below are pictures of my make-shift shearing pen. The pictures aren't great; it was closer to twilight than I realized when I took them, but you can get the idea.

I attached a couple of large 6-foot gates to create two sides of the enclosure. The third side is one wall of the barn. The final side is composed of three 3-foot gates. It's not elegant, but it works. I have to keep the other sheep away while I'm shearing. Although each and every one of them doesn't want to be on the shearing stand, half of them want to be petted while some other sheep is on it being sheared. That situation is very inconvenient.

The metal shearing stand has a head stanchion with a chain the loops behind the sheep's head to keep it stationary. Since this device is not foolproof, I also put a collar or halter on the sheep and fasten it with a leash to the shearing stand to prevent a fast getaway, in case the sheep decides to bolt. Such rebellions have been known to happen, resulting (before the leash and collar) in me chasing a partially-sheared sheep around until I finally catch him or her to finish the job. I bought a sheep halter (it came in only one size), but it turned out adult Cotswold rams' heads are too big for it. I need to find out if super-size sheep halters are available or if one made for another species would work. If anyone has a suggestion, let me know.

The shearing stand has a hydraulic hand jack attached. I can raise and lower it (and the sheep) to a comfortable shearing height.

How to Catch a Sheep--At Least Sometimes

Raising sheep is such a quiet, bucolic past time. You feed them and make sure they have plenty of water. You sit back and enjoy watching them graze. Until you have to catch them--then sheep raising can turn into a circus, and you get to play the role of clown and lion-tamer simultaneously.

Sheep are mighty agile creatures, and, wow, are they fast. Mark has suggested we try to get a couple rams recruited as football half-backs. Both of us, along with some of our family and friends, have become exhausted and bruised catching sheep. I've taken a spectacular spill or two, as well.

 I have learned some sheep-catching techniques over the years, though I've not been successful with all of them. I tried one of the methods Ron Parker suggests in his book The Sheep Book (which is a great book, by the way, and is available free online). He says, "If sheep refuse to cooperate, grab them around the chest under the front legs. As they try to run away from you they will walk into an upright position on their rear legs. Then just sit them down. Don’t you lift them up—let them do it." (p. 42) Well, so far the only animal I've successfully used that technique on was Rousseau, our yellow Lab. He was certainly surprised at the result!

The best method I've found so far is to catch one of the sheep's back legs and pull it away from the ground. I can certainly understand how a good shepherd's crook would help to do this, since you have to get pretty close to the sheep to grab a leg, and sheep seem to be psychic when it comes to knowing which individual I'm after. I'm lucky if I can get within 10 feet of the sheep I need, although everyone else seems to be content to hang out with me.

Once I get hold of the back leg, I need to be careful to avoid being kicked. Even though the sheep is balancing on three hooves, it still has enough balance to kick out with the leg I'm grasping. At this point, if I need to do something quick, such as giving an injection, I grab the front leg on the same side of the sheep as the back leg I'm holding (this task is not as easy as that sentence makes it sound) and topple the sheep to the ground. I then lean and/or sit on it while giving the injection.

If I want to shear the sheep and therefore need to place it in the shearing stand, I keep hold of the captured back leg and back the sheep up into the shearing pen and onto the stand. The sheep is so intent on the process of hopping backwards on three legs, it doesn't fight me much, and I can usually get it to the shearing stand with little stress to it or me. Then I get to shear, but that's another story.

Ah, yes, the peaceful pastoral life of a shepherd.

Spinning 101

I taught a beginning spinning class yesterday. I was tired afterwards! Beginning classes are challenging for the teacher as well as the students, especially such a hands-on subject as spinning. Two of my students, a mother and her 12-year-old son, had never sat at a spinning wheel before. The third has tried to spin on and off over the years but has never mastered it.

The class was fun. The new spinners got to try Ashford, Louët, and Schacht wheels. We only worked with wool, but I gave them different colors of roving, so their yarns had color as well as extensive texture variation. I showed them samples of alpaca, angora, Cotswold wool, Merino wool, qiviut, hemp, cotton, naturally-colored cotton, and silk fiber and yarn.

At the end of the afternoon, they wound off their yarn and took home their first skein of handspun yarn.

Canine Psychology

I enjoy trying to figure out dog psychology. I'm sure dogs would laugh, if they understood my conclusions, but, hey, I try anyway.

I often compare Dierdre's actions with those of our previous two dogs, Rousseau and Dreamer, both Lab mixes.

Today Dierdre accompanied me to the gate to take out the mail (as usual). I realized as she stood there, inches from the open gate as I came back in from the mailbox, that I never worry about her trying to bolt. She doesn't ever try to escape, unlike the Labs who took pretty much every opportunity to sneak out any open portal.

That's not to say Dierdre doesn't go through the open gate sometimes, but when she does it is with calm deliberation. She saunters out, clearly implying she has every right to do so. She'll investigate nearby bushes, the trash barrels, etc. and sometimes ambles further afield than I would like, but it's always with the attitude that it's natural, that of course she should be doing this, with nothing furtive about it. And when she comes back in, usually at my insistance (we don't allow our dog to wander loose), again it's with an air of virtue because she's Dierdre, she's entitiled to do these things.

Wool Washing & Tomato Plants

I had quite an audience today while washing wool. With the wind, I thought it was on the chilly side, but my spectators (heavily furred and wooled as they are) hung out in the shade.

Dierdre watched attentively from her lookout under the deck. About a dozen sheep lounged under the cedar tree, most surveying me with interest, including Herbie, whose fleece I was washing.

While the wool soaked, I repaired part of the garden fence that came down over the winter. I wish Dierdre could have helped; I could have used an extra pair of hands, and Mark wasn't home. I'm sure she would have tried, but pulling on woven wire fence with her teeth seemed a bad idea to me.

I finally bought a couple tomato plants at the farmers' market yesterday: Silver Fir Tree, a Russian heirloom variety, and yellow pear. I haven't planted them yet, but I sure hope the weather continues to warm. It got down in the 30's for a night or two last week.

The wool I just washed is still drying, but the pictures below are from the same fleece.