They turned out so amazingly!  Also, I have a new design fresh off the blocking wires!

I have not been blogging so much these past three weeks which I apologize for.  I’ve been crazy busy with work and the farm and all sorts of OTHER stuff.  I have lots of pictures (goat pictures) to share this weekend and maybe even some news that I’ve been sitting on for a while.

See, things went down about a month ago that I wasn’t really willing or ready to talk about.  Life changing news (and not the OMG THIS IS SO AWESOME! kind either).  I took some time to look inward and harden my shell a little bit.  I’m an odd mix of completely extroverted guarded person.  I am free about my happiness and addresses, my embarrassing mistakes, my failures, and triumphs but this was beyond those things.  This needed some time to just be and for the Mr and I to recover.  It was a sort of phoenix moment and I finally feel as if the wind has picked up and started to blow away the ash of the old and what lays ahead of us, our rebirth, is exciting, terrifying, and brilliant.  I know I am the luckiest woman in the world to have such an amazing family, such fantastic friends, the worlds best husband, two dogs that make me laugh and snuggle me when I need it, and a wonderful base of blog readers who don’t know me but leave such fantastically supportive comments.

I love you all.

I apologize for the radio silence this past week.  Frankly, work has been amazing and even more so, bag sales threw me for a loop.  I didn’t expect the popularity of them.  I kinda sold out like 4 times.  I’m sending out the final orders this weekend and then will be restocking the shop.  Things are just crazy right now and I have 12oo pictures of the farm to go through and post.  I’ll be more exciting this weekend I promise.  For now though, you can look at Willknit4borscht’s amazing version of my Strigose Cowl.

1. You will get over any fear you ever had of poop.

This means you will not even think about poop in your daily life, you will just assume that you have some form of it on you and it’s not a big deal.  It’s in your boots, it’s on your jeans, it’s probably under your nails (yeah a few of you just were grossed out) and it’s most definitely on your shirt.  That mud your stepping in?  Probably mostly poop.  Maybe some pee for good measure.  It’s just not a big thing after a while and you wash your jeans on Hot in the washer.  You also don’t touch your face with your hands, you learn to use your sleeve or shoulder to scratch that itch.

2. Hay gets everywhere.

It’s ridiculous, this stuff is better than velcro.  I started wearing overalls the other day (I know, totally not sexy at all) after my pants had fallen down around my knees for the umpteenth time (no belts don’t work for me because I have no actual hips to speak of) and you know what?  I gave in.  I decided I just didn’t want to deal with pulling up my jeans when I was feeding or running after the animals.  I’ve had these overalls ready for almost 6 months and I figured, it’s almost gardening season, what better time to not worry about your pants falling down when your bent over your veggies?  So I wore them and they are super handy.  They are men’s overalls which meant some tailoring and I have a huge superfluous zipper in front, and I might not be able to wait till the last-minute when I have to pee, but other than that I dig em for around the barn.  What I don’t dig?  The moment I found that I had a bit of hay in my underwear.  Yeah, that was probably too much information but it just goes to show hay gets EVERYWHERE.

3. You will have things that you can’t throw away but can’t recycle either.

Such as bailing twine (which is not twine but plastic) and feed bags.  I think they have a recycle program for the feed bags at the farm store but I’m not sure how much of those bags are actually recycled.  They are pretty heavy-duty poly plastic so maybe it works out perfect but I’m somehow a little doubtful of the process.  It’s like when you find out that all that glass your recycling isn’t good enough to be recycled so it’s crushed and sent to the dump.  Yeah, that makes me upset more than just about anything.

SO! I went on a soul-searching journey (for like 2 seconds) and wondered what I could do with my copious empty feed sacks.  Then it hit me….I could repurpose them!

I bring to you the Feed Sack Grocery Bag!  My bags are thoughtfully constructed so that they are sturdy, easy to carry, just the right size (have you ever seen those stupid too small grocery bags that won’t carry a gallon of milk?! DUMB!) and they are recycled from my very own feed bags.  I have sewn them up in a way that they fold completely flat for easy storage and also?  They can hold 40LBS of groceries without even a whimper.

Here my lovely assistant demonstrates how the bag isn’t even phased in the lease when it’s holding 20lbs of milk jugs filled with water.  I tested it for a greater weight but seriously, who’s shoving 40lbs of groceries into one bag?  I know I could easily lift it but I know a lot of other women who can’t.  So I think 20lbs is a good weight for the average grocery goer.

Seeming was really important to me.  I wanted to make sure that they would hold up and look nice.  The feed sacks already have natural box seems so I emphasized those on the sides after I’d cut out and sewn up the bottom.  They stand nicely on their own whether filled or empty.

Here it is on my composter which wasn’t the best stage I thought at first, but then, it is a recycled bag on a composter.  It kinda goes right?

We are not limited to only chicken feed either!  I have goat bags, turkey bags, and general livestock bags.  There is something different about the texture of the goat bags.  Maybe they are more highly recycled than the other two?  They are a little more cloth like than the chicken crumbles.

If you would like your very own bag I have put some up for sale on my etsy shop.  They are $3.50 a piece and all proceeds will be dumped back into the animals themselves

The Strigose Cowl is a nod to my Strigose Shawl!  It uses the same slipped/ twisted stitch pattern in two different colors then translates into smooth stockinette for the center in a vibrant pop of color!

I used three skeins of MadelineTosh Sport from the Stash.  1 each of charcoal, mare (which might actually be marine if it wasn’t written wrong because I don’t understand how mare is blue) and citrus.  The smooth yarn was beautiful to work with, it’s so tightly spun and bouncy that the cowl is cozy, stretchy, and beautiful.

That Strigose pattern is so mesmerizing!

And that pop of color! I think it just makes it.  I’m working on a small cowl version right now that would only use 2 skeins since I think people like the option of using less yarn.  This pattern is open for testers right now and I think one of them is actually going to make this in fingering weight because she is a petite thing and infinity scarves are too long for her so I’m excited about that.  Think of this pattern in a variegated yarn for the strigose pattern!  I can’t wait to see this knit up by other knitters!

I have also started working on a wrap version of the Rough Sea’s Shawl.  I don’t have any pictures right now because it is just a blob on the needles but it’s turning out quite wonderfully.  It’s knit in a way I haven’t done before and something that makes this a totally new pattern with out just turning my existing stitches into a rectangle.  I think it’s really quite special and I can’t wait to get to that pretty lace border with all those nice edges.  I’m just about there but, *sigh*, I am charting it out and making adjustments to make sure it fits nicely in pattern.  This is my most un-favorite part of the whole process but hopefully I’ll be on track today and this project will be off the needles (and ready to be blocked, photographed and blogged) by the end of next week.

We have lambs!  Oreo and 1tag decided to have their babies on the same night.  It was fortuitous!  The Mr and I had cleaned out the old turkey stall just that day and gotten it ready for their arrival.  We ushered the sheep inside (which was a huge pain in the butt because that’s what sheep are) but we got them all in and settled.  That night it snowed 5″ and the sheep dropped off 2 lambs for our trouble.  I can’t tell you how glad I was that we had them inside.  Now we are only waiting on 1 more ewe.

The girls gave us two ram lambs so they won’t be staying long term on the homestead.  When you have boys on the farm they aren’t good for much.  You only need one breeder and from there, every male is superfluous.

We also have baby goats!

Brutus (in back) and little Twinkie take a nap.

Need a goat of your very own?  Jet is now for sale.

Rocket is staying with us because she has the privellage of being a girl.

Tank ADORES the baby goats.  Well, he adores all goats no matter what.  He’s a super goat enthusist.  He will sit at the gate and just gaze at them adoringly as they play.  It’s really pretty sweet.

So much has been happening.  It’s like it was all planned out (if sheep and goats had the ability to plan anything that is).  DD gave birth to amazing triplets that I adore so much.  They are healthy and happy and bouncing around like puppies.  They are the epitome of SWEETNESS.  Then the other day (because we’ve been meaning to do it for 2 weeks) the Mr and I cleaned out the old turkey stall and threw down fresh straw.  The sheep were getting close to their due date we knew so on a whim we put them in the barn to get them used to it.

Overnight it snowed 5 inches and in the morning the Mr went out to the barn to discover 2 little lambs.  Pictures are terrible because it’s the BARN and has terrible barn lighting but yeah.  2 little healthy boys.  Since they are boys they will both end up…well…as dinner.  I know that probably made a few of you sad, but on a farm, boys get eaten, it’s a fact of life.  Girls, girls are gold.  The goats produce milk and the ewes produce wool (which is finer this year than any I’ve seen it from my sheep!).  Boys?  Boys get floods of testosterone and become idiots.  So boys aren’t our thing.

And now there are some of you who are all “But Preita!!! You had baby boy goats! Surely you aren’t going to eat them!!!”  No, rest asured we are not.  They are going to be sold off to other people.  Maybe as a future breeder, maybe as brush control, maybe as something else.  But they won’t be staying here either in the barn or anywhere else.

So you know how much I love my goats?  I love that I can go in to the stall and pick them up for a sweet cuddle and they lay their heads on my shoulder or kiss my nose.  I love that they are content just to be snuggled and chill out.  Lambs?  Lambs are not like this.  Lambs are quite the opposite.  Lambs KNOW they are not supposed to be off the ground, they KNOW they are not supposed to be cuddled or snuggled or pet.  It makes me a little sad because they are sweet little babies with curly little fleeces that make them look like poodles but yeah, I guess it helps with attachment issues.  Maybe my goats KNOW they could never be dinner so they don’t mind?  I don’t know.  Lambs, while cute, are not goats.

We have been handling the goats a lot which is something we probably won’t do too much with the sheep.  The kids on the other hand benefit from a lot of handling because two of them will be future milkers.  A wild goat is a pain in the butt.  Goats that are used to handling are easier to milk, lead, and groom.  Above I’m holding our little girl out of DD.  Since the Mr was the midwife and pulled 2 out of 3 goats from DD’s womb I gave him full honors of naming them all (something that was hard for me because I’m a control freak sometimes).  Above is Twinkie which makes me giggle ridiculously.  Especially since DD is short for Dumbledor (we did not name her) so when we register her it will be Dumbledor’s Twinkie.  It’s silly but I love it.

So yeah.  We are waiting on 1 more ewe and then we are done with babies for the year.  Kind of makes me a little sad because I loved the process.

In other news I’ve decided to start work on an E-book on Ravelry turning some of my most popular shawls into rectangular wraps/scarves.  It will be a lot of knitting but I hope to have the release by the end of summer.  I don’t just want them to be plain rectangles where anyone with half a brain could have pulled them off so it will take a little more planning.  Where the wrong side is just not as nice I plan on dealing with that so no one has to see it.  So yeah.  Off I go to the races!

My list includes;

Cherry Surprise

Rough Sea

High Desert

Pix

Weave It!

Coastal Waters

and Strigose

And then after the Ides of March kicked us in the teeth we had a miracle.

DD had her babies.  Triplets!  And if the Mr wasn’t home we might have lost at least 2 because 1 goat was breach and he had to help mama out.

Two twin girls and a big fat boy!

Using just slipped stitches and a simple right twist stitch you get such a neat effect.  Also?  I added loops!

Here are the specs

Techniques used: Knit, purl, slipped stitches, right twist stitches, & applied i-cord.

Finished Measurements: 60” wide & 25” deep

Materials: 2 skeins of 400 yds each (in two different colors), 1 US #6 24” (or longer) circular needle, 2 US #4 DPNs, tapestry needle, stitch markers, row counter.

Queue It here.

The loops are super handy becuase you can secure the shawl around your neck and never worry about it slipping off!

Also the loops are just neat.

Specs:
2 different fingering weight yarns (about 300 yards each)
US # 6 circular needle
Measurements 66″ wide & 25″ deep though it could be bigger or smaller depending on blocking
Ravelry Link