And Then There Were None …

Ahhh … moving. The sheep left today and the chickens are going next week and we will be without livestock for the first time since we moved here. It seems quite barren and very quiet. JennietheDog seems lost without her sheep … she didn’t even perk up when I took her on a walk.
The move to Italy is still in limbo, date wise, and so in the interim I am having shoulder surgery. Major rebuilding they think although they will not know till they get in there and look around … not exactly what I wanted to hear. Nor that I will be unable to knit for several weeks.

Odd thing ... blog writer in Windows7 seems to publish my posts now ... maybe because there were no pictures yet ... not sure. This is a gratuitous lamb photo ... I miss the little guys.

The sound of the wind

In the forest behind me

A raven flies off.

Busy Times ...

We have been so busy here of late that I have been slow to get back with photos of the new lambs. They are growing at a rapid rate but are all still cute as buttons. This is Alice. She had a slight accident yesterday when someone stepped on her tail and it came off. But she has already moved on and is her happy-go-lucky self again.

She and her brothers run amok and have discovered the new baby chicks whom they love to try to sniff. The new mother hens are not so pleased and spend most of their time running around the babies with their wings held out trying to look as big and scary as possible. Hard to do when you are only about 6 inches tall.

The new calves are settling in nicely and the two older cows are eating me out of house and home. Bob stepped in a badger hole and wrenched a knee and now has developed quite the peg-legged walk so we have started call him Jack the Pirate. I think the name will stick.

I spent all of yesterday dyeing wool and getting technical help from my own personal tech goddess Dawn over at crochetcompulsive so by this afternoon all of the yarns will be up on the etsy site. Here is a group photo of the sock yarns.

Sometimes it seems like I dye the same 3 or 4 colours all the time but apparently I dye the same 26 colours all the time. LOL.

I love it though ... this is almost too much fun most days. And I keep having more and more ideas of colours to try.

Today we are going to try to get some of the garden in even though this morning it was only 36 degrees. So I am off to pitch in on that project now so I can dye the wooly silk later ...

Every blade of grass

Under it's burden of dew

In time - springs free.

And Then There Were Four

No sooner did I blog about poor Isabella than the next morning she went into labor. Which continued on for a while. I place a frantic call to the vet about the apparent size of the first lamb. He explained how I would have to check to make sure the lamb wasn't stuck due to a bad presentation and I went out to explain this to Izzy who looked at me with that "you plan to put your hand where?!" look and then proceeded to produce her giant sized lamb just to show me that the hand thing was never going to happen. He is aptly named "Andre" after the giant. A few minutes later he was followed by his very little sister who I named "Alice" after the Alice in the Twilight series. She is beautiful and very tiny and dances everywhere she goes. Andre is every bit as big as the lambs who were born a week earlier and they both are true daredevils when it comes to straw bale jumping and head butting ... no fear for any of them. The weather has been terrible but when I can I will try to get some good lamb pics up.

Other Big News! here is that a yarn store in Kenosha Wisconsin has begun carrying my yarn. Huge news for me!! The store is named Fiddlehead Yarns and if you should ever be in the neighborhood please drop in and see them. I may try to do that myself in my migration to Rhinebeck in October.

On my needles this week is a pair of socks in the Fields of Barley colourway in a wheat ear pattern. I am hoping I will get the first one done soon but I keep having to go out and pet the new lambs. Go figure.

Cold rain -

From the pond in my head

The sound of Basho's frog.

Hail! Hail! The gang's all here!

So, let's go back to October ... the friend of mine who had my sheep sells them back to me and offers to put them in with his ram as soon as they have been sheared. Ok ... sounds great! They are supposed to go in with the ram the 1st of November ... don't make it till the 7th ... OK, no problem ... no lambs then till after the 7th of April. I can do that. Fast forward to today ... the day my last ewe has her lambs and I can announce that my 2008 lambing is at an end. Yep! Divine intervention you say? Naw .... seems he had left a ram lamb in with all of the ewes on the assumption that he was too young to do anything of any consequence. And we all know what happens we "ass-u-me" something. So here they are ... my newest pack of wild woolies:

This is Jasper with his mother Gabrielle (Gabby).

She thinks he is pretty cool ... and he is very bored being the only baby and so drove everyone crazy wanting them to keep him amused until ...

Lilly and James arrived. They are a week old here and their mom, Mattie, already lets them run with their friends. Lilly was very small when she arrived but is doing great now. James thinks that he should be in charge of everyone. Then just when I thought it might be going to slow down ...

Buelah decided to have twins also. However one of them was lost to us.This little beauty is Rory. One of the things that makes Rory so special is that he is white. All of my sheep are coloured and have been for generations so he is a bit of a throwback.

Agnes, not to be outdone, had twins also. This is Sean and Seamus. They are very tiny but very active and driving their mother crazy by refusing to anything she wants them to do. Today was their first day out in the pasture and they started out a bit surprised by how big the world was outside their pen but they are busy exploring all of it now.

And this morning Isabelle decided she was tired of doing all of the waddling ... and so she had Curly. The name may not stick ... we shall have to see.

So, I am all finished. As are "the Girls". And I shall be even happier in a few days when I know that they are all going to be ok. Life is full of surprises ...

By the lilly pond

The flash of goldfish - lost

In the falling rain.