It's Hug A Sheep Day!

We could not have had a more beautiful start to the day.  I was concerned about my timing of 8:30 for the flock walk because I was afraid everyone would be done grazing and ready to head back to the barn and it wouldn't be much of a walk ;-).  With the hard freeze last night everyone was slow getting started and the timing couldn't have been better. 

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Today is Hug a Sheep Day! 😍 Enjoy an early morning flock walk on a beautiful day. More to come throughout the day 😀. #hugasheepday #nationalhugasheepday #equinoxfarm #sheep #wool #kentuckyfarm #goodmorning

A post shared by Sara Dunham (@thecrazysheeplady) on Oct 31, 2020 at 5:49am PDT

It's A Party!

Our Hug a Sheep Day farm party will be a virtual party this year.  As long as I can get the tech stuff figured out, I think it's actually going to be pretty fun :-).  The sheep's schedule is grazing and socializing in the early morning, napping for the rest of the morning, a cookie party at 11:00, more napping, another cookie party at 2:00 and then hiding while Maisie has to gets to dress up in a Halloween costume at 3:00.

For the rest of us, there will also be a fleece "show and sell" at 1:00.  We still have several Punkin's Patch fleeces needing a good home before winter and I picked up the Rocky and Jared bred fleeces from Tring Farm the other day and there are some really pretty ones that would like to be adopted as well.  I thought it might be fun to set them all out on the porch and take a little peek :-).

Against even my own best judgement, we are going to dress Maisie in her costume live at 3:00.  We aren't going to do a test run ahead of time...mostly because I haven't even made it yet.  There is no telling what will happen, but I'm sure it will be hilarious, no matter which Maisie shows up this year.  We are probably tempting fate on this one.  I hope I don't need to add a trip to the ER to the schedule :-o.

Everything will be happening live on Instagram.  I think I'll be able to share a link to Facebook after each "event" is over, but if you want to watch it live, you'll have to use Instagram.  I'm hoping I can post them all over here as well, but I've got to get that all figured out.  

I'm estimating each event will last 10-30 minutes. Feel free to join in at any time and come and go as you please :-).

 

Hug A Sheep Day - 2020 Style

 

The only complaint I've ever received about our Hug A Sheep Day farm parties is that out of town folks can't join in.  This year?  Everyone gets to come to the party! :-D

National Hug a Sheep Day is this Saturday...which is also Halloween...wink, wink.  While we mostly aren't up to hugging Maisie, you know we are probably going to make her dress up ;-).  As far as hugging goes, we are going to try to do several fun live online events throughout the day.  There will not be an on farm party this year :-/.

The tentative schedule involves a couple of flock walks, a cookie party, a spinning demonstration, a fleece show/sale, a surprise in the Wool House...and Maisie's Halloween costume, which might be our most epic yet.  "There may be no survivors."  That book quote is not just a prediction, but also a clue.  Any guesses?

The live events will be hosted on Instagram.  I should be able to record them and post links over to Facebook and hopefully on the blog as well.  I'm not super tech savvy though, so the safest (and most likely funniest) thing would probably be to watch them live. 

I'll post the firmed up schedule on Thursday.  We'll be doing some live audiovisual tests on Friday, so there may some opportunities to give it a try ahead of time if you need/want to.  My best recommendation is find a kid somewhere that can help you get set up.

Stay tuned!  

By the way, 20 wanted me to assure everyone that he had absolutely nothing to do with 2020 and he hopes no one is holding it against him.

What The What?!?

 

I'm still working on the 2021 calendar, but there will be a calendar.  It's been tough going back through all the pictures.  I'm still skimming through the Early pictures and I have not watched any of his videos, but someday I will.  Hank and Comby have been hard as well, but I'll admit it was nice to see some pictures from before their last months.  So Velveteen Rabbit-ish.

Along with the struggle to pick out the pictures, there is also the deciding who gets in and who doesn't.  There are only 12 months. Do I put Hank in, but leave Salt out?  Lancelot, but no Frankie?  Eli's used to playing second fiddle to Comby each year and Betsy's on our last nerves right now for her terrorizing Possum, so it's not too hard to leave her out as well ;-).

I was searching for a good picture of Hank and Salt together when I stumbled on this gem.  "This one is cute.  Hank is still looking pretty good.  Wish the barn lights weren't doing whatever it's called with they do what they are doing with the green dots.  Too bad it's from the old cell phone and not very sharp.  Hey...wait a minute...they left Maisie in charge???" 

Priceless :-D

Sweet Babies

Hickory's mom, Paige, just had a sweet little baby and I wanted to knit her something special from the farm.  I have no clue what size to knit a baby sweater and I figured it would be outgrown in just a few weeks anyway, so I made a sweater for a sweet little stuffed lamb :-).

Since Paige was one of Liddy's aunties, I thought a Liddy sweater would be the most appropriate, so I spun a small skein of worsted weight yarn and pulled out a trusty Elizabeth Zimmermann book.  Most of it was knit on a couple of beautiful fall afternoons.

Of course it wouldn't be a sweater project if I didn't have to rip it all back at least once.

The lamb waited and waited...

And finally it was finished :-).

Before he left for New York, he took his sweater up to show Clay's Kentucky Great Aunt, Stella. He loved hearing stories about the trip he was going to take and what fun he was going to have with his new family.  He arrived safe and sound earlier this week...and I bet he's glad he has a warm wool sweater :-).  

Save For A Rainy Day

 

This sweet sun bathing lambie picture doesn't really work for the 2021 Lamb Camp calendar, but she might be just what we need on this dreary, drizzly afternoon :-).

Spring 2020

Final Frontier Farm, Paris, Kentucky

Blast From The Past

 

I was looking for an old photo the other day and stumbled on this Lamb Camp picture I took back in 2014.  I thought to myself that that momma's face looked mighty familiar. Wouldn't it be sweet if it was Cheeto?  I zoomed in...and sure enough...#186 :-).  I've apparently been in love with Cheeto for a long time :-).

A Word From Possum

 

"Did you hear about the cat who swallowed a ball of wool?"

"She had a litter of mittens!"

A Couple Of Calendar Questions

 

I'm (finally) working on the 2021 farm calendar. In past years I've chosen 12 of my favorite pictures from the previous 12 months.  This year has been a tough scroll back.  Lots of the top billed calendar stars are not heading into the new year with us.  I can't imagine making a calendar without Comby or Hank or the Titans...but it's hard to make one with them.

Do you want to see them one last year?  Would that be too sad and you'd rather not?

If I use photos I took for Instagram posts, there are many more scenes to choose from.  To use those pictures though would make the calendars a little taller because the pictures were taken to fit a square format rather than rectangle.  

Is that going to make anyone twitchy?   

Show And Tell

The prompt for today's Kentucky Wool Week photo challenge is Show and Tell, so I'm going to use this as an opportunity to show something I did over the summer and tell how I did it.  If I keep this up, I might eventually get the blog caught back up :-).

Instagram followers might remember taking a video tour of some fleeces getting ready to be shipped off to Stonehedge Fiber Mill and then seeing the following pictures a few weeks later.  The project in the works is a new Lamb Camp yarn that for now I'm calling The Bottle Lamb Edition.  It will be a blend of every single bottle lamb I've ever raised.

I should say the video tour showed at least a tiny bit of wool left from every lamb...except Punkin.  I really, really wanted to include Punkin, the lamb who started it all.  While I didn't have any wool left, I did have some leftover yarn from way back when I paid someone to spin for me before I learned that I liked doing things like that.  I wondered if it would be possible to un-spin some yarn.

In 25 words or less...yarn is really nothing more than fiber held together by twist.  You spin two singles and then you spin those two singles together to get a two ply yarn.  Without getting really complicated, that's all you really need to know to follow what I decided to try.

The first step was to un-twist the two plies.  I tried to do this as a whole skein, but it got way too messy and was headed for disaster, so I started cutting off a yard or so at a time.

I then tied it to the hook on a drop spindle and started twirling it to untwist the plies.

Then I pulled the two plies away from each other.

So far, so good.

Next I tied one of the singles to the drop spindle and twirled it to take out the spinning twist. 

After the twist was removed, I pulled the now unspun yarn apart into 4" pieces and lashed them all onto my hand cards and then brushed the pieces to make sure everything was loose and flowing.  The yarn had been sitting for 18 years so it was a bit compressed and felted.  This was a Huge Job.

Crossing that last and most special name off the board?  Worth every hour.