barn notes : meet donkey

Happy New Year everyone!

I'm spending the weekend with my parents, and while I've been sitting near the window spinning (what seems like) miles and miles of yarn, my mother has been calculating the due dates for her tiny flock of sheep which she bred in mid October.

By her calculations, we should have lambs frolicking in the barn by mid March.

This is a busy time on the farm. A time for preparing lambing jugs (i.e. a tiny wooden pen filled with fresh straw where the mama ewe and her new lamb can bond away from the flock), scheduling our sheep's yearly shearing, and preparing ourselves mentally for the long nights ahead.

For the record, it's my mother who has to prepare herself mentally for the long nights ahead. I will be starting school again soon.

Not only do we have sheep expecting lambs, our angora goats are expecting their kids in April. And, sometime after that, no one knows exactly when, because we bought her bred, our donkey - the newest member to our barn yard - will also be giving birth. That's her picture above. My dad named her Betty. My grandma Lolly added Lou to her name. So we have a new Betty Lou.

Our grand plans placed Betty Lou as a guard donkey in our barn yard. But so far, Betty Lou is afraid of the sheep and the sheep are afraid of Betty Lou. If Betty Lou is in the barn, you can bet the sheep are out in the yard. They switch back and forth several times a day.

We're hoping they have things sorted out come spring.

Perhaps a baby donkey will serve as a peace offering between the two parties. By the way, I don't even know the correct term for a baby donkey. Guess I'd better figure that out.

For now the major question is: when is Betty Lou due?

puzzled

The holiday fun got pretty intense yesterday morning (that would have been Christmas) when we (me, my cousin, and my sister-in-law) sat down to put together a half-finished puzzle.

• 9:00 a.m. Things were still friendly. Chatting ensued as we sipped coffee with eggnog.
• 9:03 a.m. The subject of the puzzle: a dog in front of a Christmas tree. Several key pieces were discovered in short order and put in their place.
  
• 9:07 a.m. I poured myself another cup of coffee. (Ash and Traci put in several pieces behind my back.)
• 9:08 a.m. Half the puzzle is now complete. Suspect that people are hoarding pieces to put in last.
• 9:10 a.m. The Christmas tree is more challenging than we all thought, it is decorated with infuriating ornaments in the shape of dog bones.
  
• 9:15 a.m. Still trying to put together the tree.
• 9:21 a.m. 7 pieces left. Trying to act like a lady, but really want to "win" the puzzle.
• 9:21 a.m. Ponder when puzzles became a competitive event.
  
• 9:22 a.m. Suddenly all the pieces are getting shoved into place. Three openings left.
• 9:22 a.m. But only two puzzle pieces left. Three openings. Two pieces...
• 9:23 a.m. One piece missing. A mad scramble ensues as all of us dive to the floor to search for the missing piece. Nowhere to be found.
  
• 9:24 a.m. Traci finds the missing piece sitting on the puzzle edge "blending into its surroundings." Puts it in place.

If you're snowed in (like we are) consider competitive puzzles as a way to end the monotony. Setting up the edges can be a bit frustrating, but the excitement only builds after that.

Featured with the puzzle pieces above is some of my own hand-spun. The leftovers from the stocking in my last post. Made from pot-dyed CVM romeldale top.

make merry

The thing about the holidays : spending time with family, good food, wine, friendly arguments over past tiffs with siblings.

Posing for pictures after too much wine, presents that don't fit, presents that do fit (but you wished hadn't), sugar-crazed, greedy kids getting tangled up in the Christmas tree.

Gift cards to cheesy stores, games of pictionary, trivial pursuit and twister --all of these things are heightened when a winter snow storm looms on the horizon.

You had better make sure you have enough eggnog and wine and Christmas bread, especially when there is the very real possibility that all of your family (extended and immediate) could get snowed in with you for the holiday.

You'd better make sure the animals are tucked in for the night down at the barn: fresh hay, straw and water (with some apples saved from autumn tucked in their feeders as an early morning surprise.)

And so, in a time of big snow, I'd like to preview the ginormous stocking I made for this season. The pattern comes from Melanie Falick's Handknit Holidays; Sandy Cushman's "Funky Stockings." (May it not be filled with coal after everyone reads this post.)

I'm hoping someone takes the initiative to stuff it full of yarn and good books.

Make merry everyone! I'm happy to be back for the holidays.

barn notes : it's a love shack

Barn Notes have fallen to the wayside these past two months, so I thought I'd take the time this morning to describe some of the recent events on our farm.

My mom put the rams in with the ewes about three weeks ago, which means none of us can go in with them. Our two rams, Hopps and Dutch, are extremely territorial.

Breeding season means our rams are fitted with a harness that holds a block of colored wax, this tells us which ram has bred which ewe and when. My dad was out fixing a fence over the weekend. He didn't watch his back and our chocolate-colored ram, Dutch, caught him off guard. A nice way of describing this is that my dad ended up covered in red wax. Dutch hadn't mistaken him for a ewe, rather he wanted my father out of his territory.

We all chuckled about this, because my dad wasn't injured, but it reminded me that not everything about sheep is fluffy and soft.

These are real animals and sometimes we have to take caution. A ram has the potential to cause injury, so I always try to be mindful about which fence I'm jumping over and what season it is.

Breeding season is not a good time to wander into the wrong paddock.


These mittens come from a batch of yarn that I got from Sandy of Winterwind Farm. As many of you know, Sandy also raises CVM romeldale sheep. Her yarn is wonderful. My design for these mittens was an attempt to understand how cables can weave together across the top of a mitten.

I especially like the cuffs. I bet you all will recognize the cable pattern. It seems to be a favorite of mine as of late.

and then there were cables

I played hooky today and skipped class, but I think my critics should deal with me lightly. Anyone who stayed indoors today, on such a gloriously fall day, at least in my neck of the woods, would have to be labeled an idiot.

Blue skies and falling leaves. This may be our last mild day before winter. The last day when the color is still in the leaves on the trees and not down in the gutter or being swept away by a cold November wind. We've already had snow this season in Minnesota, so my irresponsible behavior can only be called sanity.

And I don't think its strange at all that I took my camera and my half-way finished pair of socks with me on my wanderings. I kept finding similarities between the color on the trees and the color in the sky with the happy stripes in my socks. One red stripe in particular at the ankle matched perfectly the hue of one fallen leaf that skittered across my path. And another stripe, this one a golden-amber color, matched perfectly the flaming bough of a friendly maple tree. All these stripes set against a background of blue-gray-green that reminds me of the sky today.

The warm autumn sky before winter.

I chose to end these socks with a cabled rib. Something about this technique reminds me of the braided trunks of the maples and oaks, or maybe the twining stems of the ivy that climbs the brick walls of the buildings that march along the side of the path where I walk. Or perhaps the bobbing seed heads of the fancy grasses that also line this path. Have you ever studied one up close? The seeds fit against the stalk in a staggered pattern that calls to mind a braid.


Any description will work I guess.

I gathered a bouquet of dried grasses and slipped the stems into the jar that holds my pencils and brushes on my desk at studio.

groggy

This morning I shuffled out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen to grope around at the coffee pot only to reach up and open the cupboard door directly into my face. My nose actually. I'd misjudged the distance between the door swing and my face, and well, there you have it: I didn't need half a pot of coffee to wake up this morning.

Right there, in that moment, I tried to remind myself to slow down and watch what I'm doing. My life has been pretty busy as of late, and it's been difficult to find the time to do the things that used to be 'everyday events.'

But I have rallied, as you can see. My spinning wheel hasn't been allowed to get dusty. The fiber above comes from my mother's sheep. I pot-dyed it about a month ago, and found the time to spin up three ounces in the evenings this past week.

This should be enough for exactly one and a half socks.

I'm gonna label that progress.

dreaming osmosis

I woke up to snow today, but the fragile accumulation of wet flakes on my bike seat is nothing compared to the pile of work teetering precariously on my desk at the studio. This change in the weather (wasn't it a week ago that I was sweating in my flip flops?) also calls for a change in my wardrobe.

What knitter isn't secretly pleased to pull out her woolens after a summer of lightweight cottons, even if it is at the threat of a hard frost or a blizzard?

Today I'm wearing my Koolhaas cap and I can't help but remember two years ago when I gritted my teeth over this lovely design. I had to have it, but each time I cast on and finished the ribbing something went wonky with the way I was working the stitches. Those of you Brooklyn Tweed enthusiasts (and who isn't?) will know that the pattern is based on the Seattle Public Library, designed by the architect Rem Koolhaas.

We're studying Koolhaas at school right now. Reading his essays and drooling over his work. The fact that I have knitted a half dozen Koolhass hats doesn't seem to give me an edge. And I think it should.

Some of you may wonder what cured my initial confusion over this pattern. I was enlightened by a more experienced knitter who took one look at my twisted first cap and asked me what direction I was reading the pattern from. I then realized that I was reading the pattern backwards, the way you would read a book, not a knitting chart.

Knit and learn, I guess.

As far as my Koolhaas cap goes, maybe I'll have to start wearing it to bed. Osmosis may be my only chance.