Twitter Critter

Was thinking recently about all the pictures I take of the farm and the critters that never see the light of day -- despite my best of blogging intentions.

Enter Twitter. 

I think I've got it worked out so that I can post photos straight from my iPhone to Twitter, with the Twitter feed coming simultaneously to Tyche's Run. I'm generally a pretty late adopter of fancy technology, so this is exciting.

Doesn't Bingley looked excited? 

I set up Twitter under my farm name -- Blue Sheep Fiber Farm. It's a bit confusing, but I'm trying to force myself to use that name more consistently. 

Does Bingley look confused?

Not crazy about the way it looks on my blog page, but still -- here's hoping it helps me keep up! 

Not that Bingley cares. 

Little boy lambs

So, I've got a lot of animal updates to get through.

Pause.

Right.

I've decided the random approach may be best.

I'm trying to avoid overthinking things these days. Too many thoughts. Too little time.

[Shaking head]

So, in no particular order, I'm going to start with the ram lambs, mostly cause Colum got his picture taken this morning.

Icelandic-Mountain lamb that he is, Colum likes to climb. That's his twin brother Dougal on the left.

Colum: Yes, can I help you?

Colum and Dougal are the sons of Emily (one of the crazy Icelandics) and Jerry Lee (one of the Black Welsh Mountain rams and owner of the best BWM fleece on the property; really nice by any standard).

Colum: Yum, honey locust pods. 

These two butterballs have the funny personalities and shapely round figures of Icelandics. Their spectacular fleeces are a hybrid of their two parents - no real tog like a purebred Icelandic would have, just long and fluffy and jet black. I had both sheared last week since I don't trust my ability to keep them clean over the winter. Very nice.

Emily, to her crazy-ass credit, was a great mom. Very devoted and protective and tolerant of her little boys. When I eventually weaned all the lambs, Emily took it hardest. On the upside, separating them from her allowed them to develop personalities that don't include the principle, "Run like hell when you see a human coming." (Smile. Emily and Devon bring out the truck driver in my own personality. ) 

Here, in front of Colum are Fortissimo and Jamie. 

Jamie, bless his little bottle baby heart, is the son of .... um wait, I'm having trouble remembering who his mom was....looking it up now. Ah yes, Jezibel, the mother of Jethro, and Jerry Lee. Jezibel wanted absolutely nothing to do with Jamie from the moment he hit the ground. Which is why I couldn't remember who he came from. She was adamant about it, so he was a bottle baby from the start. This surprised me since she was a pretty devoted mother to Jethro. I had two bottle babies (Clara was the other), both raised in the barn with everybody else. Jamie was, and still is, pretty small, even for a Black Welsh lamb. He's survived two serious bouts with barber pole, but is doing pretty well now. Knock on wood. My strategy these days is simply to feed feed feed the lambs, and in general keep them off the grass until they are much older, or the pastures are improved...or both. This strategy seems to be working. It was hard won. 

I think Fortissimo was one of the last I wrote about during lambing in the spring. He's Lucinda's and Jerry Lee's baby. Lucinda was a pretty good mom and Fortissimo has been easy to care for. His only problem is a tendency to butt people. He's done this since he was only a couple of weeks old. I discourage this (and yes I mean I yell at him and sometimes smack him hard when he does it) and it has lessened over time, but it does mean that when I get around to having some (or all) of the rams castrated, he'll be one of the first on the list. His fleece is pretty standard Black Welsh. Nothing fancy. Jamie's fleece is much nicer than Fortissimo's. Longer, softer, and fluffier.

Behind the homegrown Black Welsh ram lambs are two newcomers. Darcy and Bingley. These two little guys are Cormos. They came from a nearby breeder who didn't want to feed them over the winter. The breeder's flock routinely tests under 20 microns, so how could I refuse? These two were also sheered last week. Their lamb fleeces are like butter. Short, but swee-eeeeet. Their personalities are also sweet, and shy despite having been here for a good while now. I suspect they'll come around eventually -- and grow quite a bit too. Cormos are not known as small sheep. Bingley, the white one, has the most beautiful face. 

Handsome boys.

 You can see how much bigger they are than Jamie, whose head is poking out around the post. And there, in the far back, stretching her little head up to see around one of the other lambs is...um...Tiny Tim.

Tiny Tim, Bingley, and Darcy.

Who's still very tiny. 

And very clearly a she. 

Whoops. 

I'll have to give her back story when I update about the ewe lambs. 

Like a dog with a bone

Mama P's gorgeous tail.

Mama P: Could you pass the hay please?

So, let's talk horsehair.

Thought I'd given it up, didn't you?

Nope. Not when there are so many of these little guys around, eating me out of house and home. 

Retired ponies don't have a lot to offer in return for all that hay they inhale. 

Except maybe their hair. 

And so I stumble on. Obsessed with horsehair.

I didn't post the last couple or ten iterations of horsehair creations, because, well, they were failures, one and all. And really, where's the joy in writing about failures unless there's also a success to wrap them all up in?

A stunning, breathtaking, jaw-dropping, heart-stopping success.

Haha, no, not there yet either.

But I do think I'm making progress.

I've learned a ton about weaving in the process. I even made myself a new wallet along the way,  while I was trying to work out the details of how to weave a tube. The wallet's made of jute, silk, and cotton. No horsehair, cause it turned out weaving a tube was really the least of my problems, but at least I have a working wallet now.

Most of what I've learned, I couldn't even begin to explain without boring the non-weavers out there to tears. I will say though that I have a much greater appreciation now for the subtleties involved in mixing fat threads with skinny threads. It's just not as straightforward as it might seem. Who knew? Well, expert weavers probably, but, really, how many of those are there these days? I rest my case.

My latest attempts were inspired by a workshop I took from Lisa Hill a few weekends ago. (To the two weavers out there, if you ever get a chance to take a workshop from her, don't ask questions. Just. Do. It. She is a fantastic, inspirational teacher.) The workshop was on a technique called deflected doubleweave. I wasn't going to go at first, cause I thought it was a little out of my league, but a friend twisted my arm and there I was one Saturday morning ready to see what it was all about.

If I ever finish the piece I started at the workshop, I'll post it, but really the most important things I learned weren't about deflected doubleweave at all, they were about me and horsehair.

First, the things I know about weaving wouldn't even fill a thimble, while the things to be known about weaving would fill all the seas and still overflow. So much to learn.

Second, floats. My horsehair solution is floats.

Floats are threads that, um, well, float on top of the fabric, across two or more threads, rather than interweaving over and under every other thread. Sometimes, as with beginners, floats are just mistakes (who me?), but they can also be used deliberately, to create texture and pattern.

I already knew about floats of course. But I didn't know about floats.

So, without further adieu, here's the latest iteration of horsehair weaving, en route, to the next wallet/pouch/bag, or whatever, now designed around a tube, using floats to highlight the hair. Not finished yet, but I'm too excited not to show it. The warp is a maroon cotton, the other weft is black linen. The hair came from Jesse's shiny, black mane. (And if ever there was a pony who needed to give something back...)

Ta da!

What obsession?

Thank you, Lisa, for the inspiration. 

Eh hem, testing, testing, 1, 2, 3

Um, hello. 

My name is Tiny Tim. I'm pretty new here. I don't really know how things work in blogland, but I gather we've been away awhile. 

So, I have a message. 

We're back. 

Can I have a cookie please?