Knitting Samples Poster

Boy, am I behind!  Here is the knitting samples poster I promised I'd put up awhile ago.  The black backing is sort of a foam board, very sturdy and light weight (and relatively cheap).  The samples are different knit stitches from garter, stockinette, k2p2 ribbing, Cat's Paw Lace (very simple lace knitting using yarn overs and decreasing), and a sample of increasing, and one of decreasing.  They are all very simple and perfect for beginners.  Underneath the swatch is the name of the stitch or what the swatch is, and the pattern (in the case of Cat's Paw lace).  It was a great project that earned not only a blue ribbon, but Best In Show!

An excellent teaching tool to learn some new techniques!

I think the poster created some bad feelings among some people as they didn't understand that someone so young could possibly DO such COMPLICATED work.  I'm not sure what has happened to good learning attitudes here in America, but so many people think the easiest things are too challenging for kids.  You have to work over and past those people.  If you look back in history, children were knitting much more challenging things than this, and doing so regularly and easily.  Somehow in our modern world, asking youth to learn things seems to have been lost.  This poster became a local symbol that youth CAN and DO learn at an amazing rate, and they can do more than you think they can!  It took three days for the Best In Show ribbon to be placed on the poster, as hard feelings seemed to be swirling around among some adults.  I don't think some of those adults ever 'healed' from their feelings.  The youth who made these swatches had no problem making them.  The hard part came in writing up the patterns perfectly! lol  But that, too, was excellent work in diligence, neatness, and proofreading...and was far from overwhelming.  The other hard part was centering the title.  Oops.  The rest of the yarn on this skein was made into scarves for dolls and sold at the market.  The whole project was a great experience and fun, too!

Knitting is an amazing thing.  There is so much you can do with it!  It connects modern youth to the generations of the past.  It prepares youth for more complicated thinking.  It encourages flexing problem-solving skills.  Knitting brings people together!  Knitting is very satisfying.  It gives the knitter a sense of accomplishment.  It gives you new clothes to wear.  It's a creative endeavor that will amuse for a lifetime, and so much more!  What's NOT to love about knitting?  

We hope you enjoy seeing this poster, and we encourage anyone out there to try it with your youth!  Pick something simple, or more challenging based on the skills of your knitter and see what comes of it!  This poster idea will also work with crochet, and would be equally fun, I'm sure!  

By the way, adults can make their own "Swatch Libraries" by simply starting with basic stitches, then moving up to more things.  Once you master garter stitch, stockinette, ribbing, increasing, and decreasing, then you can begin to explore other ways of casting on, increasing, decreasing, and yarn overs.  The combinations will keep you busy for a very long time.  In times past, these swatches were sewn together into long scarves to hang on walls or store in drawers as a sort of stitch dictionary to keep for future use.  How cool!  If you crochet, make swatches of single crochet, half double crochet, double crochet, triple crochet, and so on.  Fun!  It's a great study in gauge and how the different stitches work together. 

Or in crochet, make a poster of different ways to make granny squares, using color or technique!  What a great study of such a cool thing!  The fun is endless. 

We hope we've inspired you to try some swatch making for your own fun, and creating stitch dictionaries for yourself!  If you have any other great ideas, leave a comment and share!

Happy Swatching everyone!

How 'bout some color on a cold Jan. day?

 Daylilies in our garden

It's very cold here.  I believe it's colder here than anywhere else in the nation...perhaps even including Alaska!  The weather has been crazy and we are having many nights around twenty degrees below zero or much more.  Such cold is not normal around here for so many nights, so we are quite busy keeping up and keeping everyone as comfortable as possible.  The animals want to lay down to keep warm, which is good, but you have to stimulate them to get up and run around every little while.  Stock tanks have to be watched carefully every few hours because the tank heaters evaporate the water quickly.  If the water gets too low, the heaters will burn out.  Everyone needs higher fat feed to help maintain their weight and have energy during days of shivering.  Shivering is good.  Pens have been constricted so that stocking density is tighter.  This helps everyone sleep closer together and feed off each other's body heat.  Works really well.  Then when the sun comes out and the wind dies down, outside they go!  Last years ewe lambs get VERY leapy...gleeful to have some fun in the sun.  You'd think they would have outgrown lamb races by now, but on a day of release like that, the lambs are off once again.  It's so fun to watch!  That means, I'm outside for hours and hours in weather like this.  TG for WOOL!!!!!

What other problems does the cold create?  Doors don't work properly, metal snaps in two like twigs, bedding freezes tight which creates uneven surfaces, latches freeze tight to your mittens the instant you touch them, buckets crack and break just sitting there, mirrors crack in two, and salt for walkways doesn't work.

Fortunately, the sun is shining nearly every day and that has been a very good thing.  So despite the cold, the days are a bit of a reprieve.  Indoors, it doesn't take much to make the ol' farmhouse feel cozy!  All it takes is a little baking, or spinning, or planting of seeds for next summer's flowers and one can fool oneself into thinking winter is far away for just a bit.  I finished another pair of wool socks...again a Romney yarn I spun.  I spun it in it's natural whitish color, then dyed the yarn afterwards a beautiful bright mango color.  Fun on a cold winter day!!  With all the snow and ice, color is virtually gone from the natural landscape.  How nice it is to put such bright colors on my feet on these cold winter days!  

Some other pretty dyed colors on Wheely Wooly Farm yarns...perfect for whitewashed January days!

We surely hope all of you out there are also keeping warm and that your flocks (if you have one) are safe!

Not at Market Today! Roads too bad

Wheely Wooly Farm will not be at the market this morning due to blowing and drifting snow.  We headed out early this morning and only made it a few miles before white outs and big drifts forced us to turn around and head back to the farm.  We will miss being there!  Let's hope the weather will settle down soon and that next Saturday will be better!

My Daily Harp found out west...wool is Olympic Gold!

Read this!

http://www.acontinuouslean.com/2014/01/23/ralph-lauren-olympic-collection-conversation-jeanne-carver/

My Daily Harp has another voice, this one out west!  Very interesting article that the whole nation should read, and I hope that the reaction to the uniforms does not overshadow the fact that wool is a rightful Olympian itself in performance that is the best in the world, worthy of it's own gold medal!

Jeanne Carver and I could surely corrobrate for hours....

A Busy Week

We've been busy as a swift spinnin' round!

(But not going in circles!)

Isn't this a pretty picture?  I took it last spring as the warm spring sunlight was shining in the window and the pretty little African violet was blooming.  Thought you might enjoy a bit of warm color on these chilly winter days!  This yarn is Posie's Wacky Peachy Pink...a very soft two-ply of about sport weight.

This has been a very busy week for the Shepherdess.  Last weekend, I worked on my Flock Box, aka the sheep medicine chest.  Inside are things needed to get ewes through lambing and anyone else through whatever might come, as well as routine stuff for good flock health and identification. Plus, there was that terrible ice storm that made all surfaces super slick.  Then on Tuesday evening, one of our ewes whom we were expectantly watching lambed in a textbook perfect lambing!  She gave us two beautiful ram lambs that were very vigorous and exciting!  It was cold, so I was up most of the night making sure they had what they needed to succeed.  By three am, we were all in the house (the two lambs and I) dozing and getting warm.  By 4:30, they were back out nursing.  By 5:15, we were back in, dozing and warming up, to again go out at 7 for more good nursing.  The ewe was fantastic!  At 7 am, I knew the lambs would be fine and not chilled, and things have grown from there!  They are doing great!

The rest of the week was used to prepare for the market on Saturday, and another spinning demo we had been invited to give on Friday afternoon.  The spinning demo was fun and we got to know some new people better who inspired us as much as we hopefully inspired them!  Then this morning, we were off early to market!  Lots of people came out to shop so it was a pretty busy morning.  

One weird thing happened.  This morning as I was pulling out of the farm, I noticed weird tracks on the side of the road along the farm.  Since our road is quiet, I stopped and hopped out to take a better look and WOW!  Big tracks, running along side two sets of horse tracks.  The horses were moving at a trot to the west, the big tracks with toes moving to the east.  Very odd!!  So I hopped back in the vehicle, headed off down the road and called DH to investigate.  He did, and upon walking around our barns, discovered horses had been all around!  The evidence was clear.  Either someone rode past the vehicle and ran around the buildings (and through my fall raspberries...), or someone's horses were loose.  Later, we saw a neighbor walking along the road.  This made us chuckle...as it was a sight we've seen before!   I hope they find what they are looking for.  Last time, I saw their loose horses and began making the calls, then, I was there to catch them on the side of the road.  This time, I haven't seen them anywhere.

So it has been a busy week, and the last of our Customer Appreciation Sale.  We hope you all enjoy your new yarns!  And thanks to those who came back and showed us how your projects have turned out!  We love to see how things turn out!  Let's hope the weather stays decent so next week's market can be as much fun as this week was!

P.S.  I'll put up pictures for the demo group of that Sampler Poster and Poncho as soon as possible so stay tuned!

A Luxurious Flock Box!

This Shepherdess is so excited!  Check out this luxurious Flock Box!  After years with a cheapy delight, I knew I'd need to get a new box for flock supplies to take out to the barn after a latch on my old box broke last year.  I continued to use it through the rest of the season, risking the whole works breaking open and shattering the contents inside.  It created a bit of anxiety, so I carried it under my arm instead of by the handle, with the thought I'd get a new one when I had time.   Plus, my old box was a dark blue, and just over a foot tall.  That's VERY hazardous when the Shepherdess is deprived of sleep, and stumbling around in the barn with little lambs in her arms!  On more than one occasion the thing was dumped when someone stumbled over it...so hard to see on the ground in the dark of lambing.  The last key problem with the old box was that it being soooo short, I wore out my pants going over the fence time and again to fetch something!

 This one's a dandy!!

This new box fixes many problems!  First, it has a lot more room for everything a Shepherd needs in the dark and cold of lambing.  The bottom space is a huge compartment that opens by the orange handle there in the middle.  It's perfect for paper towels and things for drying off lambs or cleaning up hands!  Kept clean and organized, I'll never have to worry about things rolling out onto the straw again!  The top part can be separated from the bottom by the orange latches on the middle sides.  The top is nice and deep, deep enough for the 8 inch bottles that have to sit in there.  There is also a tray inside for the drench tool, ear tag applicators, thermometer, note pad, and other little things.  The lid has little compartments perfect for ear tags, 20 gauge needles, bands, and other little things.  I'm now so organized, I can hardly wait for lambing to begin!  Even more, the whole works sits up high enough to be placed outside the fence, outside the zone where curious sheep could reach it, yet still reachable for me without having to crawl over the fence time and time again.  Because the top separates and carries separately, I can take it inside with me so nothing can freeze, but the bottom can stay out, ready for use.  Last, the whole works sits on wheels and there is a pop-up handle so that the whole thing can be pulled across the ground like a suitcase.  Handy!

So my old box has been retired to some other, less important use.  I'm happy I waited because that delay is what lead me to this wonderful set-up!  Do you have your lambing stuff ready to go?  I can hardly believe it's that time again already!

Shetland/Mohair blend on my wheel last week

The yarn just off my wheel last week is Maewyn's natural moorit yarn (beginning to fade lighter) blended in a ratio of 80/20 with natural colored mohair that was given to me free years ago.  January is clean-up time in the wool room, during which time I discovered this forgotten little bag of mohair.  So I carded them together and spun it up.  Glossy!  Mohair does bring more of a sheen to the yarn.  After washing and a bit of wearing, this yarn should bloom out a bit and look more appealing for a mohair yarn.

Looking back at the weekend, the ice was so bad all day Saturday, we could not get out.  By Sunday, with some work, we were finally able to get out and do some things.  The main roads were fine, but the less traveled roads were still quite hazardous!  Today is balmy and in the thirties, but we are under a storm watch, possibly being upgraded to a warning for tomorrow.  Several inches of snow are headed our way!

Ice!

Update:  We are not at the market this morning due to ice build-up on roads, and on the farm.  Last night, a rain storm gently moved in with warm air that was above freezing.  This would normally melt any snow or ice on the roads, but since we had such severe cold earlier in the week, the ground is very, very cold.  As the warm air moved in, moisture hovered in a light fog.  The fog began settling on the ground in some places, creating black ice and lots of accidents before the rain even started!  As the rain came down later, the cold, cold ground caused the wetness to freeze right away.  When I walked out the door to do the last chores of the day, I was shocked at the nearly one inch layer of glaze ice on everything I needed to walk on!  The trees and things higher up were spared, as they could warm up in the warmer air, but the ground, being soooo cold, froze everything.

It was decided that loading the truck would be very hazardous if not nearly impossible with this sheet of ice on everything.  The other realization was that we don't think we'd be able to drive out of the driveway with all that ice!  Very few vehicles are on the road this morning out here and for good reason.  DH was on the road coming home last night and said it was the worst he's ever experienced.  He topped less than 20 mph and was still afraid he'd slide into the ditch. He had little traction, and was frequently slipping around.  This rain has been deceptive, as normally, the warmth would bring people out.  It's the cold ground that is the fooler this time.

We will extend our Customer Appreciation Days to the next market we attend!  Our sale of 20% off everything except the sheepskins is to show our appreciation for all of you who support small family sheep farms and keep the economy going!  We apologize for missing today, but we'll be back!

Hope all of you are doing well in this week of demanding weather!