Top Nine 2019

It's the time of the year to join the "Top Nine"...whatever you call it...thingy...where you "click the button" (my brain is mush) and it searches through your year of Instagram photos and assembles a collage of your nine most popular photos.  Mine is pretty cute this year :-).  

Two from Wovember, one of silly Mini Moose and the rest from Lamb Camp at Final Frontier and Tring Farms.  I kind of thought Frankie would show up somewhere, but as we all know, it's hard to compete with babies ;-D.

The card is painted and printed and hopefully going in the mail this afternoon.  Whew!  It was a real struggle this year and I'm not really sure why.  Now that's it's done and I'm almost 48 hours away from it, I'm pretty happy with it.  It's cute and sweet and I think everyone will enjoy it.

Here's a funny story...Saint Tim's superpower is making me laugh when there seems to be nothing to laugh at.  After several super late nights struggling (unsuccessfully) to paint the card, I got up (still too tired) the other morning to find Eli's tree ("the stairway to heaven") had fallen down after the latest 3" deluge of rain.

The tree was very old.  There were only a couple branches left on it and they were barely, but bravely hanging on.  Eli used it to climb up to the porch roof (his "office").  I framed pictures of the back of the farm through it's lacy leaves.  Momma birds raised babies in the hollow trunk.  It was a good old friend.  

I stood there staring at it...turned and walked back inside...stood in the kitchen...didn't pour myself a cup of coffee...finally went to tell Tim...and then the tears spilled.  Tim's not as sentimentally attached to trees as I am, but it was Eli's tree and it was special because of that.  

He listened to the tree story, the unhappiness with the card painting, the "I wish I'd stopped after last year like I'd said I was going to"...and "clicked the button" in his brain and said, "You should just download the Loony Tunes font and plaster "That's All Folks!" across the front...and all I could see was Maisie pasted in where Porky Pig usually is, saying "Th-th-th-that's all folks!" :-D

That's (probably) not all folks, but it was just what I needed.  

Keep laughing!

We Are All Just Walking Each Other Home

Eli

January 2003 - October 2019

It's almost midnight.  I've written two obituaries tonight.  This is the third.  Yesterday was a dumpster fire.  I'm exhausted and my eyes are almost swollen shut.  I really just need to go check the barn and go to bed.

I like to make one last barn check at night.  During the summer I'm usually still out at the barn at 10:30.  When the days get short though I have to walk back out.  I've never made that trek alone.  Of course Kate goes with me and the silly corgi, too, if I can wake her up, but my favorite walking buddy was Eli.

You expect your dogs to follow you around, but on a cold or rainy night it seems unlikely that a cat would leave his heated bed to follow you. During the Iknitarod when I'd stay out at the Wool House for an hour or two after dinner, I'd close up shop and Eli would bound down from the porch where he'd been huddled up waiting for me and he'd walk me home.

You know that old animals are not going to live forever or a sheep with an odd lump is probably not going to have a happy ending.  While it has always been one of our greatest fears, I never truly expected after 16 years of safely negotiating our country road...  What I wouldn't give for a 10th life.

Much of a farmer's (or anybody's) day is not "storybook", but if you look for them there are always bright spots in every day and that helps balance the scales.  Those nightly walks home were always bright spots.  I think they were special to Eli as well.  He never missed a night.

It will be okay...eventually.

Is It Fall Yet?

Even Eli is ready for fire pit weather.

Eli Didn't Make The Calendar This Year

The 2018 calendars have already "gone to print", but I think I'll save this picture for next year.  

weather.eli

The ground hog has emerged from his heated condo, so winter must be over.  

The Perfect Video...Well Almost

If I'd just thought to Turn The Camera Sideways...

I've been posting some Instagram pictures and videos of the new girls out in the yard over the last couple of days.  Yesterday I missed several opportunities to take Cat Sniffing pics of Eli (yes, surprisingly out of his condo), Comby, but did catch a picture of them chasing Betsy up onto the fence.

Cat sniffing is strong in these girls 😆. #nocatissafe #everyonegetsaturn #jacobsheep #sheepofinstagram #catsofinstagram #calicocatsofinstagram #calicocat

A photo posted by Sara Dunham (@thecrazysheeplady) on Jan 24, 2017 at 1:34pm PST

This morning I missed them checking out Claire Bear, Eli, and Comby, but did catch this with Betsy. Once it was done I realized I'd taken  "the perfect country and western sheep song video".  We've got cute sheep, Betsy, Eli, Cat Sniffing, sun, Kate, Kate working, Tilly, Tilly "helping", sunshine, sheep sproinging, did I mention the sun is shining?

It was a bit too long for Instagram, so here is a YouTube version.

I was going to say leave a comment with your favorite part of this video and we'd have 20 draw a winner for one of the leftover calendars, but I've gotten several emails in the last 24 hours telling me that the comments aren't working right.  Not sure what is up with that.  Hoping just a temporary blogger issue as I don't have time to try to dig through that right now :-/.

So, TRY to leave a comment (and if it doesn't work, just shoot me an email, but try the comments option first).  If you already have a calendar, let me know and I'll find something else you might like :-).  If you don't win and don't have a 2017 calendar yet and you'd like one, they are half price.  There are three or four Lamb Camp calendars left, too.  First come, first serve.

There WILL be a Yarn Along post (with a surprising book recommendation) coming later today.  I hope.  Stay on me if you don't see it.

Enjoy the sunshine!

Speaking Of The Christmas Card

On the last day of Christmas...

I love, love, love to get comments on my blog posts.  Especially comments with questions.  And even comments questioning missing characters on the Christmas cards.  

From Cheryl... "I have to ask, where is Eli?"   Eli is sleeping winter away in his heated cat condo.  He would not be caught dead out playing in the snow ;-).

From Lorraine..."Did I miss PPPP?"  Un, (gulp) no...I missed PPPP :-o.  How could I leave out PPPP???? For crying out loud, she's one of my very favorite sheep and is even one of the "oldies" coming out to eat twice a day, the inspiration for the design!

I was sick about this.  Eli...I purposely left him out when I was getting too many characters on there. PPPP?  She had to be on there.  This may sound crazy, but the card was ruined to me without her on there.  

So now she is!  I tucked her in next to Keebs :-).

I haven't decided what to do with the first group of cards Tim has already printed.  I hate the thought of sending my [albeit not quite complete] family to the recycle bin.  Probably no one but me (and Lorraine ;-) would even notice they were slightly different.  Do I leave them in circulation?  Make it a game to see where they end up?  

And while we are talking about it, Tim printed extra calendars to make sure there were plenty of Comby and Betsy calendars to go around.  We only have a few Lamb Camp calendars left, but there is a good stack of Farm Calendars left over (!).  Would anyone be upset if I put them on sale to try to find them homes?  

Meanwhile, out in the cold snow...Comby says "No pain, no gain, Eli!"

I will give Eli some credit.  I'm getting ready to head out to the barn to check on everyone and throw out some more hay before I go to bed.  Eli will make the trek out with me.  Or at least I think he will. It's going down to 4 tonight.  Wonder if he'll bail?  I doubt it.  He goes with me every night.

In Case You Were Wondering...

...why Comby was all by himself way out in the field on the Christmas card.

Because Comby is frequently out there all by himself!  In fact, pretty much every day.  The weather has to be awfully awful for him to stay holed up in the condo.  Eli, on the other hand, hibernates all winter.  At least during the day.  

Actually, Eli hibernates all year now that I think about it ;-D.  And that's why he hasn't made the card in a few years ;-).  He does make almost every night trek out to the barn though, so I'll give him points for that.  Maybe I'll paint a night time card some year :-).

Cat Week

Fall has arrived!

Taken through the screen door.  

This is supposed to be a Yarn Along post.  Maybe later today.  Couldn't resist sharing Comby and Eli nestled all snug in their bed.  

We made it!  Fall has arrived!!!

That Darn Cat

So I mentioned picking out pictures for the 2017 calendar the other day.  I had quite a few good pictures to choose from, but I was sadly missing the yearly favorite....Comby.  Comby, the hardest working animal on our farm, who somehow always gets posted every year in the calendar sound asleep.

Argh!

I did have a nice picture of Eli though.  He doesn't get much press around here, so that might be nice.

And of course there's darling Betsy.  There were a couple Betsy shots I liked.  One with her and Bullwinkle in the driveway when he was a baby and another with her sitting out with the concrete sheep one evening.

We decided Betsy would be the most wanted (in more ways than one!) cat so Miss September she is!

Until I downloaded pictures yesterday and remembered that I took a picture of Comby sleeping in the greenhouse the other day.

Ah, there he is.  Sound asleep.  Order restored to the universe.

Yeah, right.

Just minutes (I am not kidding) after I booted Betsy from the calendar, my inbox started blowing up with retweets and likes and more retweets and likes and more retweets...for a picture of Betsy and Bullwinkle.

If the Cat Shepherd retweets you, you are going to get some attention.  

Which was apparently what Betsy was looking for.

Sigh...

Both cats both look pretty disapproving, don't they.  And how on earth did she pull that off?!?  Are cats like elephants and can communicate hundreds of miles?  Do I need to check to see if she has her own Twitter account?  Is she on Facebook, too?!?

I guess, as a democracy (not dictatorship like Betsy thinks ;-), we should vote on it.  The poll will be posted on the main blog.  Feel free to share that link with your friends if you'd like to try to stack the votes towards your favorite candidate.  

Vote early and vote often ;-).

Yarn Along - The Daniel Scarf

When my mother passed away this winter I inherited her weaving loom, a (now) vintage Leclerc table loom and floor stand.  I don't remember her weaving with it, but she had a good collection of weaving books and some leftover yarn, so she must have made a good run at it at some point.

Daniel's 2015 fleece went to A Yarn Well Spun last year and she had a run of yarn spun from it.  I picked up a couple undyed skeins at the Kentucky Sheep and Fiber Festival in May and as the Tour rolled around, I decided to combine it with the loom and put both to good use.

The finished scarf.

Before fulling/blocking - you know, my favorite part ;-).  

Notice how you can see each individual strand?  How almost rough it looks?  Woven cloth is not finished until it's been "fulled".  Fulling is done (at least here) in the washing machine and involves hot(tish) water, soap and a few seconds of machine agitation.

Notice how much softer and fuzzier and comfy it looks now?  The yarn all melded together?  You should be able to click to biggify.  Isn't that fun?

Some mandatory blocking (where you size it and even out any uneven spots) pictures.  I used the house porch this time, but I'm going to move back to the Wool House porch next time because the table height is more comfortable up there.  

And yes, it's a simple, straight, rectangular woven scarf (as opposed to,say, a fancy, curvy lace shawl), but any time I put wool and a measuring stick together, you know there are going to be pins involved. Lots of pins.  An insane amount of pins.  I LOVE to block :-).

The cats are all pretty much self blocking these days.  No pins required.

My latest favorite spider, doing a little spinning and weaving above the red bench.  You'll need to biggify to see her.  She's quite pretty.

After several (!) disappointing book downloads, I was luckily reminded that you can never go wrong with a No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency book, so enjoyed my weaving listening to the latest from Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi and Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni.  

I had a pleasant surprise in the mailbox over the weekend, too. Shepherds and Shepherding by Jonathon Brown.  It's packed full of historical shepherding information and pictures and I'm thoroughly enjoying that as well.

Joining in with Ginny...

B&B

Betsy & Bullwinkle, sharing a hay bed.  As always, more bed than breakfast ;-).

Yes, Bullwinkle's still on the porch.  I'm having trouble talking myself into booting him out to the barn.  He's really no trouble and I enjoy eating breakfast with him on the front steps.  The sunrises here are beautiful and it's nice to sit out in the heavy dew and be a part of the sun breaking over the front field rather than just watching from the kitchen.  

I know I could still go out and eat on the steps even if he moves to the barn...but it would be a little lonelier.  Except for Comby and Eli and Tilly and Kate and anyone else who wants to "wash" my cereal bowl ;-).

Milk Mouth And Other Porch Happenings

Between the milk foam around his mouth and that big, fat tummy, I think he's going to find it difficult to get much baba sympathy ;-).

The peaceful porch.  I bought that $18 bale of fancy chopped hay so he'd have some fresh plastic to chew on.

And jump on.

Kids...

Yarn Along - I Thought You Finished That Sweater Months Ago

 The Maisie sweater is finally really done. It's been missing buttons for almost a year.  

I felt like it needed some wooden buttons, but couldn't find exactly what I wanted.  I tried painting three buttons - one with Hank, one with Maisie and one with a heart.  They were super cute, but didn't look right on the sweater.  

And then I won a beautiful wooden carved tree necklace.  WoolyMossRoots was sponsoring a giveaway on Ginny's blog - a delightful read every day, not just for the Yarn Along - and I won :-D. 

Possibly it was fate or maybe I just got lucky.  Regardless, in finding their website, I found the perfect buttons for Maisie's sweater.  

I love how the intricately carved Celtic knot so closely mirrors the cables down the sleeve.  And it's wood.  And handmade.  Perfect!

And then, like in all good knitting photo shoots around here, someone has to volunteer to help.   Eli.

And then when they realize they are actually being helpful...they leave ;-).  Eli...

Sewing buttons on a knitted sweater is as close to knitting as I've come so far this week.  I am listening to a nice story, An Irish Country Christmas by Patrick Taylor.  Some of the voices are a little irritating, but the story is good - might be better on paper ;-).  A short story I thoroughly enjoyed was The Tree Nobody Wanted by Tom McCann.  

I love reading/listening to Christmas stories.  Any suggestions?

Joining in with Ginny...

If You Really Want To See...

I took these pictures this morning thinking that most of the demolition was done.

Poor Betsy.  Comby and Eli have hunkered down under the porch and Claire Bear is hiding at the barn.  She's pretty comfortable with that arrangement as that's her normal hide out, but after hours and hours of rain yesterday, she was politicking to move into the Wool House last night.

I think it's interesting that the kitchen's original long ago color was light green, much like the "old" kitchen.  I had already planned to keep the same light green and cream color scheme, but it makes me happy that it's an "historical" color.  Not that the green is still there now.  Yep, they decided they needed to just go ahead and completely gut everything this morning.

The laundry room and bathroom were added to the house by closing in a porch - I'm guessing in the 50s.  It appears that a major remodel was done then as our old furnace (serial number 9) was installed in 1953 and that would have been when they dropped the 10' ceilings to 8' to accommodate the duct work.  How exciting it must have been to get a fuel oil furnace and indoor plumbing!

Interestingly, the porch way back then was gray and white, just like it still is today.  I now don't feel so bad about not being able to come up with any significant ideas for color changes.  I like it as it was probably because that's the way the house liked it.  I hope it likes the updated new old colors.

The house used to be a creamy yellow plank.  We know that because when they removed the drywall here in the bathroom to move all the old plumbing into the walls, the old siding was still there.  Yep, more demolition :-/.

The contractor and I were talking yesterday morning about using wool insulation.  If I'd known we were going to end up taking all the ceilings out and that the outside walls really didn't have much insulation, I'd have looked into ordering wool house insulation.  Wouldn't that have been cozy?

Turns out there was some "wool" insulation in the bathroom already.  It isn't sheep wool, but a mineral based product.  Still, seeing the words "long" and "wool" and "Spintex" brightened my afternoon a little :-).

It does look pretty woolly.  At least it wasn't asbestos :-o.

The porch.  Sigh.  Do you see why I'm having trouble embracing all this?  At least we do have a refrigerator plugged in and usable.  And yes, that is our toilet over to the left.  Throw in that case of Mt. Dew and KFC bucket (not ours ;-) and we are a stereotype for sure.

20 and I moved out to the camper!  What a treat it is to have somewhere quiet and clean to hang out.  And with indoor plumbing!  Thank you thank you thank you!!!

A little bathroom humor for you...  We decided someone should really stay in the house at night so the dogs and cats would be more comfortable and we weren't leaving the house wide open if someone figured out we'd moved out to the barn.  Tim "volunteered".  As he stepped out the door last night to pee off the porch he said "It's raining in my bathroom!"  When he came back in he said "And there's a possum in my bathroom (under the bird feeder)!" ;-D

Here are a couple pictures to clean your visual palate.  I took these Monday afternoon before the deluge of rain.  The bees have really been busy this fall.  I hope there are still some blooms left after it dries out tomorrow.  The lavender got pretty toasted by the frost last week, but there are still a few purple blooms.  I covered these blanket flowers and the porch and mailbox flowers.  I wish I could cover everything.

Speaking of the forecast, the weekend looks okay.  If it's sunny tomorrow and Friday we should be okay for parking by Saturday afternoon.  Looking forward to seeing some handknits!

I've had quite a few folks email for directions, which is exciting.  We're going to be sort of lost without kbdoolin and debky (Ravelry names) this year, but sounds like we're going to make some new friends - silver and gold :-).

Are you ready to come out and hug some sheeps?  

Yarn Along - Long Sleeves Needed

Not much knitting going on because my focus needs to be finishing up stuff for the Kentucky Wool Festival the first weekend of October.  I am working on one small project I've had in the queue for a year though.  Just in time for cooler weather, I've decided to change my 3/4 length sleeves on the Marcel sweater to full length sleeves.

One down, one to go.

Since the yarn used in the sweater has seen all sorts of sunlight and might not still be exactly the same color as the leftover yarn from my stash, I am alternating a few rows of old and new yarn to ease the color transition.

I didn't make any notes (yeesh) about what needle size I used so I had to guess on that.  I know my knitting has changed significantly since then (I knit tighter now) so I had to try and figure that in as well.  I test blocked the first sleeve and it's pretty darn close.  I can see some slight differences, but anyone else would have to look really close...and that would be really weird...so I'm not too worried ;-).

When the single beds turn to double beds...yep, time to be thinking about long sleeves.  Comby and Eli aren't thrilled.  I'm jumping for joy :-D.

And another beautiful officially first day of fall morning.  Half the sheep have already headed back in.  I think Hank would like to as well, but he's got some making another pass through the breakfast bar on the hill, so he's splitting the difference.

We are often asked why our farm is named Equinox Farm.  It's because that's the day we closed on it back in the fall of 2003.  A very happy anniversary :-)

My book for the week was Don't Let Me Go by Catherine Ryan Hyde.  It was cute and a fun listen.

Joining in with Ginny...

It's An Epidemic!

Or maybe it's just cats ;-).

Raise your hand if you'd like to run out there and give him a tummy rub :-).

Miss B came over and we dyed half of the rest of Renny's light gray fleece yesterday.  In between laughing at silly Eli.

"It's not nice to laugh at cats."