Dinner Time

Clementine got a name and a nose yesterday.
Dinner time is always a mad dash for the feeders. I was about 20 minutes later last night and Stacy caught them on my camera, while I was feeding.
This is an overhead view of another feeder.
Nicely lined up in a row! I got to check out all of their fleeces today.
Emmy and Brillo will always pose for a camera, because they are looking for a handout. Brillo has noticed that the feed shed is open. They have gotten very confident over the past year. They will walk all of the way into the shed, which is surprising, since it is so small and narrow. Their noses direct them to the grain.

A day for animals

Stacy brought me a needlefelted sheep the other day in response to a comment that I made about wanting to use coiled yarns on a sheep to see how it would turn out. It took 3 yards to get her fully wrapped. Stacy is going to add a nose and she is done. Cute? I think she is going to need a name.
This is an angora goat without her fleece.Pretty sad looking. I got her back from Tor this past week. She is one of Saffron's does from last year. Tor told me that she had the best fleece out of the does that he had. Wouldn't know that by looking at her now!
This is the ram that I have chosen to use for breeding with some of my Shetland ewes this year. Now that I am going to use him, I am going to have to look his name up. I tried to forget all of the rams' names until I know whether I am keeping them or not. His horns are beautifully spaced like his fathers'. He is out of Espresso and Hazelnut, a really good combination.
I am feeding Agave grain each day to keep her really friendly. She followed me around while I raked this evening, so I decided that she needed a little extra. This gives new meaning to the expression - eating out of your hand!
The ram on the left is going to be castrated and kept for his fleeces. He is 3/4 Shetland and 1/4 Border Leicester. The ones with that cross last year had the best fleeces. He is one of triplets. I will probably keep all three at least a year, if not longer. They are really small. To his right is the Jacobs ewe lamb. She has four horns, which you can just barely tell.

The XD card for my camera arrived today. I noticed that I can get 30 minutes of video on it! Kind of impressive.I took a minute one tonight, so will have to figure out how to look at it. I can't believe that I can get 800 pictures!

Empty bag

Usually, when Marc goes out to the animals, they head in the other direction. This time he was carrying a bag of stale chips. He had a lot of friends. I caught this picture as he was heading out.
I really went out with the camera to catch pictures of the colors of the sky and of the trees as the sun reflected off them. In the foreground is Absinthe with her triplets. I will probably use her buck for breeding. He is the oldest and has the No Size type of fleece that I am looking for. Saffron has twin bucks that are just as lovely, but I can't use them all. I don't have enough pens!

Additions

I sold off my only red buck last year, so I had to buy a new one. His twin sister was so cute, I got her too. They were born in January and already need haircuts.
I spun up a freeform novelty yarn celebrating school days. When a portion of it did not look right with the rest of the skein, I removed it and then got hooked into knitting it up. I am now spinning another 75 yards to go with what I have, so it will be long enough. I chose to use a size 11 needle. I could have gone with a larger needle, but I wanted to see how much the edges would curve in and out due to the textures. I cast on 22 stitches and am just doing garter stitch. I thought about doing a log pattern design, but decided that I would have to spin even more yarn, since I would be binding off stitches and losing in size.

Playing with camera

Marc wanted to show Frodo off to someone, so I loaded another photo.
Storms passed us by tonight, but I caught some cool looking sky shots for future reference.
This camera picks up the texture, so I went back in the shop and played around with it.
The above is the front rack in my shop. It is almost all freeform novelty yarn. I have gone back to spinning everyday yarns. I decided to spend Mondays and Tuesday designing new yarns and catching up with the classics during the rest of the week. Since today was a holiday, I created a novelty yarn. Will post it tomorrow.

Runaways

These were the last two Shetlands born. Since they are in the arena, they are not with the rest of the lambs. This picture shows them in the wash - they had wandered away from their moms and were trying to get into the area with the rest of the lambs.
I am testing the close up function of my new camera. I can't get near these two, so I am impressed by the zoom capability. I managed to scare them back into the arena with their moms. And then found them out again, nosing up to Agave (in the picture below.)

These are the locks on one of the yearling does. I was too far to read the ear tag to be sure of who she is, but the camera did a great job of picking out the details of her fleece. Hers is about 2.5 inches long now. The humidity is giving all of the goats gorgeous ringlets.

Ghost Riders in the Sky

I decided to crochet flowers to go with this skein. They turned out really well and stand out, which is what I had hoped for. By making them myself, I was sure that they would match. It is hard to find novelty items in some color combinations.
Another view of the yarn.
On Ravlery, I see all these nice neat piles of yarn as stash. Well, I decided to post mine - I wouldn't dare to do it on Ravelry! The stuff on the chair is going into the current yarn - a deep pink to wine colored yarn. Haven't settled on a name yet.
This is the pile that I was working from yesterday.
Kyle's black kitty was so small that he crawled right out the bottom of this cage. Kyle moved the cage to the kitchen and Garfield made himself right at home. The rug he is sleeping on was one of my felting mistakes.