librarysarie

Working on the re-entry

Aaaaand I'm back!  Did you miss me?  We got back yesterday from our annual (does doing something two years in a row make it annual?) trip to Martha's Vineyard.  I intended to blog while I was away, but I am pleased to report that, while I did check in on twitter and read the news every day, I did NOT spend a lot of time online.  It was like a real vacation!  ;-)

We had a marvelous time.  I'll blog about the trip more later when I have pictures ready to go (I've gotten as far as getting them off the camera, but haven't culled/edited/uploaded yet), but suffice to say we actually had some SUN.  Not for the whole week, but enough where we were actually able to go to the beach and do other outdoorsy things, and I actually have a suntan despite the liberal application of SPF 30.  (But it's a tan and not a burn, and that's the important thing.  Right?)  And I have a fun knitting project to share too.

But for now, I have a mountain of laundry to fold and some unpacking still to get through.  Why can't these things do themselves???

Life Cycle

I thought that those of you who are non-spinners might like a little peek at the life cycle of a spinning project.   I missed some steps (since it didn't occur to me to do this post in this format until I was uploading the pics to Flickr), but on some future spinning project I'll do a better job at documenting each step along the way.  For now, though, here are the major bits.

Roving:

(Missing step: Unbraided, split, and pre-drafted roving)

Singles on the bobbin:

Singles wound into a center-pull ball (my preferred method for making two-ply yarn from a smallish amount of singles, because it doesn't waste any):

Plied yarn on the bobbin:

(Missing steps: Yarn on the niddy-noddy; yarn soaking in a bath; yarn hanging to dry)

And the finished product:

The pertinent details: this is 4oz of Romney, purchased from Zarzuela's Fibers, in the "Easter Egg" colorway.  It's a 2-ply yarn, and I spun it at about 9-10wpi (about worsted weight).  It came out to be about 112 yards.

This is, possibly, the first time I've spun a two-ply yarn that really and truly came out just as I was hoping.  I tend to underspin, which makes my plying quite loose, but with this I think I got the twist just right (or pretty close to "just right," anyway!) and I'm thrilled with how it looks.  And while there are a few bits that are slightly thicker, for the most part this is spun quite evenly.  I see a lot of improvement in this skein of yarn over many of my earlier ones, and that makes me very happy!

Voodoo Triangle

I mentioned in passing, quite some time ago, that one of my projects at the Baskets of Yarn knitting retreat this past March was entrelac.  I've been knitting on it here and there since then.  Want to see?

The pattern is the Autumn Entrelac Shawl by Jojoland, and it's knitted from Jojoland Rhythm, a yarn with very long color repeats (such that each ball of yarn in my bag looks completely different from every other ball -- you'd never know they were the same colorway!).  It's a triangular shawl, knitted from the top down, with a ruffle edging knitted separately and sewn on.  (I'm not sure I'll do the edging as called for in the pattern, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.)

Entrelac may be my new favorite thing.  It looks SO neat when it's done -- I've always admired it, but was afraid to try it myself, so I'm glad I had the opportunity to take Margaret's wonderful class at the retreat.  Had I attempted this on my own, I would have taken one look at the initial row of weird-looking triangles and been convinced that I was doing it incorrectly.  But no, it really DID look that weird at the beginning.  Plus, Margaret taught me how to knit backwards, so I don't have to constantly turn everything around for the purl row.  That was a lifechanging thing to learn, let me tell you!  And I find it fun and easy to knit as well -- just square after square, making it easy to pick up and knit for a short period of time and still have it look (and feel) like I actually accomplished something.

What makes it a Voodoo Triangle?  Well, there's the fact that entrelac is kind of voodoo to begin with, if you don't understand how it works -- it looks SO much more complicated and impressive than it actually is.  But really, the voodoo is in the geometry.  As I said, this is a top-down triangular shawl, and each row has one less square than the row before.  And through the magic of math, while it looks like I haven't gotten all that much done, I'm more than halfway through the body of the shawl -- I did out the math, and (not counting the initial row of triangles) there are 300 squares in the shawl, and I've gotten through more than 160 of them.  Amazing!

Incidentally, this thing is going to be huge.  Without any stretching or blocking, the top edge (which is the bottom edge in the photo above) measures over 60" -- my tape measures are all 60" long and it's wider than they are!  I don't think I'll block this severely, but still, it's not a small shawl.  I'm just afraid that before too long, it's going to be too warm to work on, what with all that wool in my lap.

Drip, drip

It's raining.  A lot.

For a couple of years now, I've really wanted a lounge chair for the backyard.  When I went away to visit my mom over Mother's Day weekend, Jim went out and bought me one as a surprise -- and believe it or not, I STILL have not gotten a chance to really try it out!  I think the chair purchase may have jinxed us. It keeps raining, and so the chair has spent most of its time at our house dripping wet, as seen above.  I saw in the paper today that we have not had a week without rain since March (and there have been plenty of days that were just gray and threatening, if not actually rainy).  I think the sun is broken. 

On the bright side though, the patches of our lawn that we re-topsoiled and re-seeded (to cover bare/sandy patches) are coming up, finally, thanks to the rain.  They're the dark green sections in this picture (and there are other patches in other parts of our lawn).  Note the streaks in the picture: that's rain pouring down.

Yesterday we had some sun for the first (and last) time in forever, and so I wandered around the yard taking pictures of some of our new plants.  Lots of the other new plants are budded but not bloomed yet, so there will be more pictures to come!  If the sun ever comes back out, that is.

Fuchsia in a hanging pot by the deck...

Hydrangeas!  In my very own yard!  I can hardly believe it.  I think I want to plant more of these - they're so pretty.  In fact, I say this quietly -- but they may make me even happier than lilacs do, if only because they last for so much longer!

These lilies (I forget what kind they are...) are the only survivors from my failed attempt at perennial gardening a couple of years ago.  I dug them up during the Great Planting this spring and moved them elsewhere, and now they seem to be thriving.

And from the vegetable garden, the makings of some culinary excellence: tomatoes and basil.  YUM.  I can't wait till it's time to harvest some of the veggies!

Yes, I still knit

Those of you who tune in for the knitting have probably given up on me by now -- looking back here, it's quite a while since I've written a word about knitting.  I have been knitting, but not a whole lot, and what I have been working on is either boring to photograph or difficult to photograph.  Hence, no blogging.

So, what have I been working on?  There's a shawl that I promise to write about soon, and a vest that I'm sort of making up as I go along (and that is both boring *and* difficult to photograph), and a couple of pairs of socks.

When i went to the Book Expo, I brought along two different socks to work on.  This first sock is the second of my Conference Socks (the first having been knit at the CT Library Assn. conference back in April) but because it's on larger needles, I was afraid I might finish it and be left with nothing to work on.  So this was my Bus Sock...when I wasn't sleeping or reading on the bus to and from New York City, I was knitting on this sock.  This will be a FO post soon.

And this was my Line Sock.  This sock has been in progress for well over a year now - it started out as a Waiting Room Sock but soon wound up, ignored, in the bottom of one of my knitting bags - but I pulled it out for the BEA trip.  I worked on it while I was standing in line for autographs, and even while I was walking around the conference floor (such behavior will earn you weird looks and lots of comments - generally either "I wish I'd thought to bring my knitting!" or "You can DO that without LOOKING??").  I was a bad knitblogger, and despite the fact that the sock was literally IN MY HAND, it didn't occur to me to try to get a Sock with Celebrity photo with either Neil Gaiman or Dr. Ruth.  In retrospect, though, they were trying to get through a lot of people in a limited amount of time, and that probably would have been kind of rude of me.  I'm pleased to report, though, that Debbie Macomber, who was an absolute delight to meet, took the time to fondle and admire my sock, and made me take the ball of yarn out of the bag to show the publicist who was standing with her.  :-)

WWKIPD!

Happy World Wide Knit in Public Day!  Grab your needles and a project as you head out today, and spend some time knitting in public!  The nonknitters won't know what hit 'em.  ;-)

I'm running a WWKIP Day event at my library, so I'm off to buy cookies and juice.  We're even going to be magnanimous and share the refreshments with all the non-knitting library patrons. 

Have a great day!

Shaking myself up

To say that I've never been one to exercise much would be an understatement.  As a kid, I was never into sports at all, and would always choose curling up with a book over running around outside.  In high school, the closest thing I did to working out was marching band and forced volleyball games in gym class.  During college my roommate dragged me to the gym a couple of times a week, and since then I've made sporadic attempts at starting a workout regimen, but nothing ever really stuck.  I'd get into a groove for a week or two, and then something would throw me off my schedule and I'd never get back into it....until months later, when I'd make another halfhearted attempt at starting up again.

It's all catching up with me now, as I knew was inevitable.  I'd been maintaining my size for a few years now, but in the last few months my weight has been creeping up on me.  And a couple of unfortunate run-ins with full-length mirrors (including, recently, in a hotel bathroom -eeeew!), coupled with my difficulties finding pants that fit, have convinced me that it is really time to do something about it before my weight really gets out of control.

So, from the back of the closet came these guys.  They haven't seen the light of day in a long time, but today they got to go out for a spin.

And what did I do?  I ran.  Yes.  Seriously. 

The only time in my life, I think, that I've ever run a mile without stopping was on the mandatory mile run when I was a senior in high school...and the only reason I managed to run the whole thing was because it was raining and freezing cold outside and I desperately wanted to get inside where it was warm and dry.  ;-)  And while Jim has dragged me out for an attempt at a run once or twice since then, having never been a runner I've gotta start small.  So today I did the first workout in the C25K -- couch-to-5k -- plan.  The idea is that in nine weeks, three workouts per week, you can go from being a couch potato to being able to run a 5k (or 30 minutes). 

I was actually inspired to do this, in a roundabout kind of way, by watching a Nova episode a few months ago - Marathon Challenge. The program followed regular, mostly non-athletic people as they trained for the Boston Marathon.  And with the exception of one woman who had to drop out due to repetitive stress fractures, they all did it.   It was incredibly inspiring -- I had tears in my eyes at the end -- and I thought, if all these people can go from zero to Boston Marathon in nine months, then surely I can run a 5k!　But since it was the middle of the winter, I put those thoughts on the back burner.  After those recent encounters with myself in the full-length mirrors, though, I decided it couldn't wait anymore.

So today was workout #1 - a five-minute warmup walk, then 60 seconds of running alternated with 90 seconds of walking for 21 minutes, then a five-minute cooldown.  And it went just fine -- each time I did one of the running intervals, right at the point where I was thinking "I cannot possibly run another step," it was time to walk again.  The running segments seemed shorter than I was expecting; the walking segments seemed longer.  I'm hoping that that's a good sign for my future progress.

I feel like I'm jumping the gun and jinxing myself by writing about this so early in the game, since I've barely started -- but I'm hoping that by being public with it from the very beginning, you'll help hold me accountable.  One of my problems over the last few years with trying to establish a regular exercise routine has been my inability to find a workout buddy.  I don't do well with the self-motivation and need someone to guilt me into
it.  So by putting this out there, I'm hoping a couple of you will nudge me if you don't hear about it for a little while (keeping in mind, of course, that I do blog rather more sporadically than I ought to ;-)). 

Blogging while Babysitting

Back in the day, I used to babysit a LOT.  I'd always pack up my schoolbag with all the homework I'd been avoiding and schlep it with me, and as soon as my charges were in bed I'd hit the books.  For some reason, I always got a lot more homework done while babysitting than I would anywhere else -- something about it was just conducive to studying (particularly writing English papers, if I'm remembering correctly).  Well, I'm babysitting today -- I'm watching Miss M, she of the Tulip cardigan, while her parents (and grandparents, and the rest of her family!) are at a wedding -- and blogging is the closest thing I have to homework these days.  It feels right to do it.  :-)  Miss M is napping at the moment, so...

I skipped the Nutmeg Spinners' Guild meeting today because I had some things I really needed to get done before leaving for Miss M's house, but I'll make up for it by sharing some spinning that I alluded to a couple of months ago (am I really that far behind in my blogging?  Yikes!).  Of course, I don't have all the details with me (like yardage and WPI) but I doubt anyone cares but me!

These first two batches were singles that I spun months and months ago; the singles had been sitting on my bobbins for quite a while! 

 
This first one is 4oz superwash merino (I think) from Sakina Needles (purchased from The Loopy Ewe), in the colorway "Fruit Salad I".  You might remember that I spun Fruit Salad II some time ago, and originally planned to ply them together but didn't like how the colors looked together once the singles were spun.  So Fruit Salad II became a two-ply, and Fruit Salad I languished.  I finally decided that I needed my bobbin back, and also that I needed some navajo plying practice.  There are two notable things about this skein of yarn: one, the singles are spun SO densely, the resulting yarn feels almost like cotton rather than like a soft merino; and two, you can absolutely see which end of the skein I started plying with -- my plying got noticeably better as I worked my way through the skein!  This is about worsted weight, and I think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 160 yards.

 
This is 8oz BFL from Sakina Needles (purchased from The Loopy Ewe), in the "Gram Positive" colorway -- but I've been calling it Lavender Fields or Spring Garden because that's what the color makes me think of.  This is a 2-ply, about DK weight, and there's something like 450 yards.  It should stripe gradually if it came out the way I intended -- I spun the first bobbin with long color repeats, and the second with repeats that were half as long as on the first -- and I think this would love to be a Baby Surprise Jacket.

 
Next up is 60/40 merino/bamboo from Spincerely Yours, "Goldflame Honeysuckle".  I bought this from Tamara a LONG time ago and was afraid to spin it because I didn't think I could do it justice!  I still don't really think that I did -- look at how uneven some of it is! -- but this was an absolutely lovely fiber to spin (I'm starting to really like bamboo) and the photo doesn't do the resulting yarn justice -- it's shiny and soft and gorgeous.  Interesting thing: I didn't put enough ply tightly enough the first time around, so I had to run it through the wheel once more and add some more twist -- and that COMPLETELY changed the way the yarn looked and felt!  It was sort of flat and disappointing before the extra twist, but afterwards it suddenly had that beautiful sheen and just looked SO much better.  The lesson I've taken from this is Don't Underspin!

Last, we have 4oz (I think...might have been 3oz?) of wool/angora/mohair dyed by Sue Dial/Harvest Moon Handspun (Ravelry link).  I bought this from Sue at the Baskets of Yarn retreat and spun it almost right away.  It practically spun itself -- the fiber combination was just amazing, and the finished yarn (a vaguely thick/thin singles - I tried to be very relaxed while spinning it, in honor of Sue's laid-back approach to spinning!) is incredibly soft and fluffy.  I've got about 200 yards -- enough for a cowl or a small shawlette or something.  Whatever I make, it has to be simple enough to show off the gorgeous colors!

So that is that...I have two more spinning projects I've finished since, but while I've photographed them apparently the pictures haven't made it to flickr yet, so they'll have to wait for another day. 

Miss M is still napping -- I guess I can go knit for a while!

My Very Geeky Day

I spent today at Book Expo America.  I didn't realize until I got home just how geeky a day it was:

* I got two posters for my office: one for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and one featuring Eric Cartman (of South Park, for those readers who may be unfamiliar). 

* I met Chris Claremont, who is apparently a god to X-Men fanatics, based on the reactions of other people I was standing in line with.  (I'm putting together a graphic novel collection at the library, so I'm trying to be better-versed in these things!)  He was signing copies of a new X-Men comic.

* I got a copy of one of the issues of Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen Adventures.

* I met A.J. Jacobs, one of my very favorite writers - he signed an ARC of his next book.  He was even accompanied by his lovely, long-suffering wife Julie (who, she said, got to pen a rebuttal that appears in this new book). 

* Biggest geek moment of the day, though - I SHOOK NEIL GAIMAN'S HAND.  I was one of the lucky 170 people in his autographing line at the Harper Collins booth this afternoon.  He signed (and doodled in) a copy of The Graveyard Book, we exchanged a few words, and did I mention I shook his hand?  I may never wash that hand again.  I am pleased to report that I managed to speak coherently, didn't drool on him, and failed to confess my total crush on him.  I also didn't even THINK to snap a picture, but trust me.  It happened. 

I'm headed back to BEA tomorrow, but there's no way it could possibly live up to today!

We Remember

When I visited Normandy while I was studying abroad, I was able to go to the American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, overlooking Omaha Beach and the English Channel.   It is the final resting place of 9,387 American soldiers, largely from the D-Day invasion but from other World War II operations as well.  The cemetery is a sad and lovely place, perched atop a bluff overlooking the sea; I remember it feeling isolated and removed from the rest of civilization, silent but for the breezes and the birds.  The graves all face west, towards the United States: rows upon rows of stark white crosses and Stars of David.  I remember thinking, as I walked among the graves, how sad it was for the families of these soldiers -- I'm sure many of them were never able to visit the graves of their loved ones.

I go to our town cemetery each Memorial Day.  The main purpose of the trip is to plant flowers on my father's grave (since Memorial Day weekend is the traditional planting weekend around here - no more frost danger at this point) but while I'm there I walk around and look at the stones.  While it's still an active cemetery, there are graves in it that go back as far as the early 1800s.  Today while I was strolling, I found myself thinking about that cemetery in faraway France, and reflecting on the different ways we honor and remember these soldiers, whether they are buried near where they fell or in their hometowns, alongside their parents and their wives and their children.

These brothers both died at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, within a day of each other, during the Spanish influenza outbreak in 1918.

There are a number of gravestones of men who died in the Civil War.  This is amazing to me -- my town is so small, and there couldn't have been that many people living here at that time...and yet, all of these gravestones, plus however many are in the town's other cemeteries, or in the military cemeteries.  Each of these deaths must have touched so many people here.

I wonder, was it some comfort to these mens' families that they were able to be laid to rest at home rather than half a world away?  Would it matter to you if you lost someone you held dear?

Again with the sheep and the wool!

I think that after today I'll be done with festivals for a while -- I'm running out of room to store the inevitable acquisitions, and I'm running out of free weekends too!  My buddies Tamara and Cheryl and I headed northward today to the Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft festival.  I love this festival -- it's a lovely drive, and it's a nice, compact, friendly, low-key event.  It's small enough where you can leisurely walk around to check everything out -- and then make a second pass to make your purchases.  That makes it much more relaxing than Rhinebeck, which always feels very harried and every-knitter-for-herself, you know?

Yes, I came home with some things.  Want to see?

I'm having a total brain hiccup and can't remember who I bought this from, but it's an 8oz merino top roving.

My favorite thing about Massachusetts Sheep and Wool is that Spunky Eclectic always has a booth there.  I love Amy's stuff, and I fell down hard in her booth.  I bought this lovely sock yarn...

...and all of this roving.  The top pic is a 4oz braid of BFL; the bottom one is four 4oz braids -- yes, one whole pound -- of Wensleydale roving.  I loved the colors so much, and Cheryl talked me into buying enough to (hopefully) make a sizable project out of.

A day with friends and fiber...what could be better?

Ten on Tuesday: Favorite Cities

I've been wanting to start doing some of these weekly blog memes, and this topic seemed like a good place to start!  I doubt I'll do it every week, but I'm sure at least some of the topics will strike my fancy.  :-)

So here are ten of my favorite cities, in no particular order.

1) Bath, England - I lived here for five months while studying abroad in the fall of 1999.  I loved every minute of it, and should the opportunity ever arise to take a job there, somehow or another, you'd better believe I would jump at it.  It's a beautiful, elegant city in a lovely part of the country.

2) London, England - London is about 1.5 hours from Bath by train, and I spent a decent amount of time there during my semester abroad.  Normally huge cities don't really appeal to me (you'll note the exclusion of New York City from this list of mine) but London somehow felt welcoming and homey to me in a way that New York and Chicago, to name two other big cities, never have and never will.  There is so much history and culture there.  It's a city I could never, ever be bored in.

3) Washington, DC - Jim and I lived in the DC suburbs for a few years after college.  While the suburbs themselves didn't really do it for us, we LOVED the city.  It's another place I could never be bored - and as a bonus, there are so many great things to do there that are totally and utterly FREE.

4) Portland, OR - I fell in love with Portland the minute we drove over the river from Washington, and I immediately felt comfortable and right at home.  Portland has awesome restaurants, a great transit system, Powell's, beautiful gardens, a view of Mount Hood, proximity to the Columbia River Gorge (which has to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth), and a gazillion yarn stores.  What more would one need?

5) San Francisco, CA - I think the topography alone is enough to put San Francisco on this list.  Living in a place as I do, where hills are blasted out with regularity so that we can flatten the roads, I find the fact that San Francisco even EXISTS to be fascinating.  ;-)  And oh, the views. 

6) Seattle, WA - More than anything else, I loved Seattle's location, with all of the water on one side and the mountains on the other.  As with San Francisco, the scenery is to die for.  And they have an awesome public library building.  :-)

7) Boston, MA - Even though I don't go there nearly as often as I'd like, as a New Englander I think of Boston as "my" city!

8) Burlington, VT - We went to Burlington for the first time a couple of years ago and just adored it.  It's a small city, yet has plenty to do, and it has a real West Coast vibe somehow, despite being here in New England. 

9) Paris, France - I probably don't even need to expand on this one.  On a more personal note, though, I visited Paris all by myself, without speaking a word of French, and lived to tell the tale.  It sounds like such a small thing, but it was one of the most valuable experiences of my life and I am so glad I did it.

10) Montreal, Quebec - I can't go to Paris often, but I CAN go to Montreal, which is, as far as I'm concerned, the next best thing.  No, it's not quite the same, but the cliche -- that Montreal feels like a little bit of Europe right here in North America -- is absolutely true.

Festivals and shopping and yarn, oh my!

It's been a fiberiffic week around here!

First up: last weekend I went to New Hampshire Sheep and Wool with my mom.  We'd gone together last year and had a blast, and decided to do it again this year.  The timing of the festival -- always Mothers' Day weekend -- is just an added bonus!

Maybe it was just me, but the festival seemed less crowded this year than in previous years.  The forecast for Saturday had been questionable (though it turned out to be a lovely day to be outdoors) so maybe that kept people away?  Who knows.  But we had a good time -- as with last year, the highlight of the day for us was the alpacas.

O HAI

The alpacas look so incredibly goofy when they've been sheared -- these big fluffy heads perched atop spindly little giraffelike necks.  Hee!

This alpaca was the starlet of the bunch.  Look at those eyes!  Those lips!  A pinup girl to be sure.  (Who knew that alpacas could be pretty?  In a related story, there was also an alpaca that somehow looked exactly like my cousin Lora.  I didn't get a picture, though, sadly.  You'll just have to trust me on this one.)

ALPACA LOAF.

And here's a bonus goat.  He was quite the cutie too!

So what did I get?  I was quite restrained, actually.  (Restrained in my photography, too, as I only took pictures of one of my purchases.)  I got some lovely shiny pale aqua merino/tencel roving, a kit for a new-to-me craft that I'm dying to try (I am going to save that big reveal for when I actually try it!), and this gorgeous Grafton batt.

The picture doesn't really do it justice -- this beautiful blue-green positively glows from within.  I couldn't say no to it!  (Now I just have to learn how to spin from a batt...)

And this week, there was even more fiber to be had!  My friend Trish, who I met at the Baskets of Yarn retreat, was in New England visiting for a family event.  It would be a criminal offense, I think, for a knitter to visit southern New England without a trip to WEBS - so I took the day off work on Thursday and Trish and I went shopping!  No pictures of the actual trip, but here's my haul.

Valley Yarns Goshen -- I think this is going to be Hey Teach!

Classic Elite Classic Silk - there's enough here for a vest.  (I've been on a vest-pattern-queueing kick lately.)

Berroco Ultra Alpaca in an absolutely impossible-to-photograph and impossible-to-describe colorway -- it's like an olive green with rust worked into it.  It's a prettier color than you might think, and I really liked it!  Very unusual.  I'm not entirely certain yet what this will be, but maybe Francis Revisited.

Two pictures here because it's so beautiful -- Malabrigo Sock, in the "indecita" colorway.

This is, I think, too pretty to be a pair of socks!  Any suggestions for a good scarf/shawlette pattern that would show it off to its best advantage?

And this is why WEBS rocks so much -- all that above, plus a skein of some plain charcoal gray sock yarn for Man Socks for Jim?  $100.  All those hours of knitting entertainment, plus finished garments at the end?  You can't beat it!

Trish and I had a lot of fun on our day together.  Yarn, a nice lunch, and time spent with a friend -- does it get any better than that?  She even brought me a totally unnecessary, but greatly appreciated, gift: Claudia Handpainted sock yarn.  Thank you so much, Trish!

And now, we knit!

I love spring!

It's that time of year again...

Lilac season!

Our tree is beautiful this year, as you can see, and it smells absolutely heavenly.  I just wish it lasted longer!

I'll be at New Hampshire Sheep & Wool this weekend with my mom.  Should I be keeping an eye out for you?

A Day at the Farm

Last Saturday Jim and I drove out to the Hudson Valley Fiber Farm to see our friend (and favorite shepherd!) Susan and meet "my" new babies.  I'm one of the farm shareholders, and over the last few weeks it's been raining babies over at the farm - more baby goats were arriving by the day, and the lambs should start making their grand appearance any time now.  The arrivals are made even better this year with the advent of the LambCam - a webcam set up in the nursery pen.  Some of the births have occurred in full view of the camera, letting us all share in the experience. 

Anyway, after seeing all the LambCam cuteness, I had to go meet all the new kids for myself.  The HVFF is only about an hour from here, and now that I know how just close it is and how easy it is to get to, I hope to go visit more frequently!  Some of the animals were being sheared that day so we got to watch that, and there were baby goats to cuddle.  It was a bit of a dirty day -- it had rained a lot the last week and the pen was very muddy, plus many of the animals were freshly de-loused and therefore a little goopy/wet-looking -- but if they were all this cute under those conditions, the Cute Factor must be absolutely through the roof on a dry, non-medicine day!

Susan is a wonderful hostess and let us hang out for quite a long time -- Jim went for a hike on the property while I hung out at the house with Susan, farm manager Erin, and fellow shareholder (and farm regular) Heidi.  We had a lovely afternoon chatting, doing a little bit of work, and attempting a drop spindle lesson. 

Pictures from the day are here.  Some highlights:

Goat shearing, before and after.

Goat tongue!!!

Look at all the wool under that jacket!  (The sheep will be shorn next weekend, weather-permitting.)

Me with baby Nickelodeon, the youngest kid, whose birth I watched live on the LambCam!

More Nickelodeon

Goats and buckets = cats and boxes.

These little dudes are learning how to head-butt.  I love how the bucket-goat is watching them...teehee!