So Time Got Away From Me

Honestly, I haven’t really had time to keep up with what’s been going on.  Things have been changing at such a rapid pace I can’t even begin to explain it.  There are super new exciting things on the horizon I can’t wait to talk about, and of course, there are goats…there are always goats.  So instead of endless words – I’ll get to those later – here are some pictures and we’ll get caught up on all the other stuff soon.

We had a surprise nest of chicks hatch.

There has been cuddly goats…

I spun a bunch of yarn….

We had a ton of plums I turned into jam…

I knit the magnamity cardi which I love.

These pockets are amazing!

And then there is this…which is super duper exciting.  I’ll post full pictures asap and the full story but right now…just a hint of what’s to come.

I want to thank you all for your awesome comments.  Things have been a little crazy around here and I apologize for not writing back like I normally would.  I plan to! I promise!  Things are ok.  Sometimes you just have to accept what the universe offers you and move on.  That’s what we are doing.  The universe basically told us (in not so subtle terms) that we were not living the life we were meant to and did something about it.  Frankly, if the universe didn’t completely shake us up we probably would have been on that path for a very long (and miserable) ride.   It’s something I think that you never realize about yourself while you are in the moment.  You might ask yourself “Am I happy?” and if you are not clearly UNHAPPY then yes, you MUST be happy.  That’s not always the case though.  The lack of unhappiness does not denote happiness.  We were just there.   So now we are not and you know what?  It’s ok.

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

Let’s Celebrate!

A few things have been going on in the last week which is why I’ve remained silent.  Last Thursday I stepped down into the goat stall as I was getting ready to put everyone away for the night, and I rolled my ankle.  Seriously, I heard that gross popping sound and I face planted into the straw.  Thing was is that though I am usually awesome and paranoid about bringing my phone with me at all times I decided not to take off my muck boots and go back into the house to retrieve my phone not 5  minutes before.  So there I was, laying on my face in agony with the almost certainty that I’d broken my ankle.  My husband wasn’t due home for another 2 hours and it is a long way back from the barn to the house when you are a cripple.

So I sat there for a moment and took a deep breath of the musky straw of the goat stall and remembered that I am not the ‘wait to be saved’ type.  I go onto my knees – my poor unreliable angry knees – and crawled out of the stall trying not to hit my foot to hard on the floor below because every tap was agony.  I used bits of straw and fallen hay as knee pads as I crawled on my hands and knees down the cement hallway toward the door.  The whole time – and this is probably stupid – I was physically saying to myself “I can do this.” over and over again.  Every shuffle of the knee and hand was “I can do this.”  Oddly though I still wasn’t crying.

Pretty pathetic right? Yeah, well, I knew once I got to the door of the barn I had 20 feet of mud to the fence and a bunch of goats who wanted their grain more than anything so I decided I’d test it.  I pulled myself to my feet and with the aid of one of the Mr’s many 2×4′s I took my first tentative step.  It hurt like hell but I could move.  So I did.  I used that 2×4 as a bastardized cane and moved as quickly as I could through the barnyard and through the yard and into the house where I had enough thought to grab and icepack before falling onto the couch and reclining as far as I could to elevate the offending joint.  I went fast because I knew that I was working on adrenaline and that it would probably wear off at any moment.  And it did.  Just about the moment I heard my husband’s voice on the other end of the phone.

So yeah.  We had a lovely little ER trip to our local hospital where I was checked in by a woman too bored with me to stop looking at houses and who got snippy with me about my -completely abnormal for me - high blood pressure.  HA! You know, the only people who make a big deal out of that are people who’ve never been hurt so bad they needed to go to the ER before.  Unless you’ve felt that fear and pain you can shut your sweet ass up.  My blood pressure was high because I was in pain, because I was terrified I wasn’t going to make it out of the barn by myself, because I had already broken this ankle when I was 13 and have two screws in it, and I was terrified that I would be out of commission for 8 weeks.

People, I have stuff to do.  I’m too busy to be a cripple for that long.

So 4 hours later I was greeted with the news that it was NOT broken.  People, I felt like I had just won the lottery at that point.  Everything else didn’t matter, I was as good as gold.

So yeah. My wonderful husband took amazing care of me for the next 3 solid days.  I hobbled on crutches and scooted around the house on a rolly chair and did my best to keep completely off it for that time.  The swelling went down and the bruising came - omg it is SO bruised! – and I’m able to walk around pretty confidently now with aid of a brace.

To celebrate let’s have a contest!  Comment here with your worst injury and I’ll pick 5 random people (with help of the random number generator) to win 3 patterns of mine of their choice.  You have until Monday the 27th before I’ll pick my winners.

And though this has nothing to do with the post here are some goats.

 

Happy 2012. I have a feeling it’s going to be awesome.

 

Merry Goat-mas!

We wish you a merry goat-mas…

We wish you a merry goat-mass,

We wish you a merry goat-mass!

And a happy Baaaah year!

It was the night before Christmas and we were dressing up a goat…

 

“What is finer than dressing up a goat in headbands so cheery?”

The only thing better is dressing up a wooly ram…clearly.

Authors Are Not Knitters

Well, some are I guess by the game of numbers, but for the sake of my post I’m not talking about those cross overs.

For the last few months I’ve been following more and more authors either on twitter or on facebook.  I’m always interested in to how their minds work, how they write, and what their styles are.  There have been some lovely experiences and there have been some that have made me feel bad about myself, what I read, and what I write.  When the first post came through I frowned and thought that it was just a bad day this person must surely be having.  We all have those, we all post about them in one way or another and then we move on.  The world understands.

Then the posts became more frequent and frankly, more hateful.  I unfollowed this particular person on twitter and am now contemplating doing the same with facebook.  Is it life changing?  Not at all.  Is it frustrating?  Sort of.  The posts in themselves are not as terrible as I’m sure others could be but the nature of them I feel was that of a 13 year old boy not getting enough attention.  This particular author calls out others by name (but not enough to link them so that the author would know about it), calling their work dumb, uninspired, and the readers of that particular book vapid.   (He did not actually call them ‘vapid’ but I inferred that).  This post has happened twice in the last week’s time, and more like it prior.  I’ve had enough.  I’m a polite person (usually) by nature and I believe that each person should be treated with respect and dignity.  This kind of behavior rubs me wrong in all sorts of ways.

Frowning at this post, this tiny snippet of nothingness asking his followers to forsake this “crappy” book for one by another (which I have read and haven’t written a review because I still don’t know if I actually LIKE it) made me think…”This guy obviously doesn’t knit.”

That’s pretty random right?  Well not so much.  Knitters as a community understand each other I think at a more base level than any other sort of hobby community.  We all do the same exact thing.  You can’t knit any better than anyone else.  You can have projects that turn out better but you can’t actually knit better.  Why?  Because the knit stitch for you is exactly the same as it is for me or for the Queen of England (does she knit? I think it’d be lovely if she did!).  It’s the same.  The yarn may be different, the gauge, and the drape but it’s all the same stitch.  Sure, some projects turn out better than others but it’s all relative.

Give two knitters the same skein of yarn, the same gauage and ask them to make plain socks and you will come out with two pairs of perfectly wearable socks.  I very much doubt that one would be a clear winner.  And here’s the serious kicker, even if there was both knitters are gracious about it and will not draw attention to it.

Knitters are kind to each other even if we don’t care for the project being worked on we appreciate the spirit of the knit.  I’ve never before heard a knitter call out another for a crappy project.  (Crazy design is different mind you).  Never have I read a post that would declare that all knitters knit this sock over that other sock because it is “smarter”.  How crazy would you sound if you publicly declared a sound knitable design that brought hours of pleasure “stupid”?  Knitters would laugh at you and tell you that you have missed the whole point.  Not everything has to be entrelac fair isle complicated just to bring pleasure, people, we love the garter stitch because of it’s ease and sometimes, it’s just the right thing.

I think the world would be a better place if more people knit.  They’d push aside this nasty better than you attitude and realize that a knit is a knit for everyone and a purl is just the back side of a knit.  No matter the arrogance you knit with, your stitch is still the same as mine and they are both equally as good.

Let’s remember to get off each other’s cases, pick each other up, and knit.

Perfection Cowl – Free Pattern!

Just dropping in to say I didn’t die in Minnesota – as much as I tried!  I had an amazing time and ran myself absolutely ragged seeing friends and family.  There was only one low point which didn’t come as a surprise – and it wasn’t even family related! Amazing!  I’m just about back to normal and ready to post pictures, goat news, turkey egg progress, and sheep sex.  You know you’ve been wondering about the sheep sex, I know you have, I can feel it from here.

So to tide you over I have a new free pattern.  The Perfection Cowl was designed to be just that…Perfect.  It adds ribbing and garter stitch to make a cowl that wont be too baggy up top while still leaving lots of wonderful drape at the bottom.  This cowl is easy as pie to knit and is the perfect stash buster for that extra skein of yarn you have lying around.  This would also be amazing in handspun! 

This pattern is free!

What do you need?

200 yds of worsted weight yarn
1 us #8 16″ circular needle
Stich Marker
You need to be able to cast on, knit, purl, and cast off.

That’s it!  Have fun and I hope you enjoy!

Updated Designs

So I have a problem, I knit a lot of designs but don’t model them (because lets be frank, the skinny girls sell the patterns).  I didn’t really have a go-to model for when I finished a knit design which was becoming a sort of problem.  Knits just look better when they are modeled.  Well that problem has been solved.  The Mr’s business partner’s wife is drop dead gorgeous and agreed to model some shawls for me.   So today we went out to a local park and I drug out some old shawls to get some better photos.  They turned out amazing.

Fall fields looks way better on her than it ever did on me.

Channel Islands Shawl.  Still one of my most favorite designs ever and this is probably my most worn shawl I own.

Rough Seas Shawl which I have completely re-written and used my fancy chart software for.

Sweet Corn which looks way better on a body than it ever did on a branch.

She’s amazingly gorgeous right? Yeah, I find it a little intimidating but I  worked through it. I had to hear the Mr’s voice and his parents in my head the whole time telling me that we are all good at different things.  Hell, I played in Carnegie hall when I was 17 which a lot of people never do in their lives…EVER.  So it’s not like I’m a looser but ya know, I might have made a complete ass out of myself talking too much and being a dork.  Only time will tell.

All patterns are available through Ravelry (and the links are on my pattern page if your interested).  I’m really excited about working with Shauna in the future because she’s so tiny (ie less yarn consumed for patterns, meaning more because they costs me less) so the sweaters I’ve wanted to do for quite a while will fly off the needles.  I’ve already ordered yarn for one I’m going to be starting shortly.  It’s Robin Hood inspired, but in a good way.

Oregon Flock & Fiber Fest

So I’ve been kinda behind on the blogging thing.  We’ve had a lot going on here on the homestead and life has kind of gotten in the way.  Frankly, our life has been centered around a lamb with a punctured trachea for the last week and now that we are confident that she’ll make it I’m finally starting to relax again.  Farm animals aren’t pets but it doesn’t really matter when you have an animal in pain under your care. 

First, we got a new truck. No it’s not a sheep, but it is a Ram!

The Mr is thrilled and I’m thrilled that I don’t have to worry about him breaking down in the suburban anymore.

So, Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival was awesome.  We drove down (in the new truck!) and I promised myself I would not buy a sheep or a goat and I actually made good on that promise, but I’ll tell you, seeing those Angora goats made it hard!

We went to the animals first because that’s always my favorite part.  I love seeing the goats and the sheep the best, and even at the fair this is my favorite part.  It was nice seeing all the adult pygora goats so I know how big my boys will get, and I got some information on local goat dealers, and even might have a line on a boyfriend for my Icelandic gals.

This beautiful boy had blue eyes! He was by far my favorite.

The Jacobs are by far the Mr’s favorite sheep.  He has a serious thing for those 4 horns and maybe this year I’ll find him a 4 horned lamb.  We also bought fleeces.  Romney and Jacobs which I’m pretty excited about.  I was amazed at the deal on these fleeces, maybe because there were so many and they were all in one spot?  This amount of fleece on the web (if I could find it) would usually cost about 80 bucks but the most we paid for anything was 20 and the lowest was 5!

One thing I didn’t know was that Carrie of Apenglow Yarns was going to be vending here.  I met Carrie a few years back through my friends Tom & Mette at Ranch Of The Oaks.  It was a lovely surprise to see her and her yarns are just amazing!

Like I said, we met an Icelandic breeder which was nice (because they aren’t a hugely popular sheep) and I’m arranging to see what boys she might have available for me to rent. We aren’t looking to have a ram on our property yet so we basically are looking to rent a gigilo ram during the breeding season.

I bought some yarn, a few fleeces and no animals.  It was a sucessful trip even though it poured in the middle of the day and we had a blast!

Goats and Sheep I Have ‘Em

It’s been hot here on the homestead the last couple of weeks but I feel as though Fall might be right around the corner.  At least I really hope so and everyone wearing a fleece agrees with me. 

A little bit ago something happened that has both made my life easier and more insane.  The sheep realized that the goats get grain every night to come in.  Then the sheep were all “OMG I want grain too!” and my life went insane.

Now no one will do anything I want them to with out their ration of grain.  I have to hold the bucket above my head when I go into the pasture so that I don’t get mauled.  I have to make sure to keep the bucket away from heads and not put it on the ground as the sheep like to go in and lick the last bits of grain up.  This wouldn’t be a problem…..except the bucket has a handle – naturally – and some how this handle is awesome at looping itself over a sheep’s neck or around their neck and front hoof!  I only had to chase two panicking bucket stealing sheep across the pasture to realize never to put the bucket down again.  One of the yearlings had it around his neck and arm pit and was running at top speed away from me (because ya know, I might EAT them) at one point it had both it’s front legs in the bucket and was doing a modified sack race.  It was ridiculous and when it finally fell over and gave up I had to double triple check to make sure he was ok.  Honestly, he was fine but being a little bit of a drama sheep.  He was all “Fine! FINE! Just kill me now! Do your worst! I’m ready to die!” and I was all like “Get your ass up you damn sheep” and when I took the bucket off he looked at me strangely and ran off.

Now that I am grain bringer I am not so fearsome.  I am a benevolent ruler of all things on four legs.  I kind of dig it, I just wish they’d be a little more patient with letting me feed them.

Now every time I walk into the pasture everyone thinks they are getting grain.  I have a load of addicts on my hands.

This one in particular gets a little wild eyed and starts licking her lips.  It’s enough to make a person thank god sheep are vegetarians – they are right? If I fall down they won’t eat me will they?

I’ve been also working with them really hard since the whole “Great Sheep Escape”.  Along with a little bit of grain every night to bring them in I have been hand feeding it to them.  The two black yearlings from last year don’t trust me but everyone else comes right in.  I’ve got my two twin lambs (the chocolate one in the picture above) and her sister even letting me give deep cheek scratches, ear rubs and chin scratches with out grain.  This is a huge accomplishment fo me because these sheep are not pets.  They don’t want you to touch them they just want you to feed them and be left alone.

The pygoras are also doing really well.  They’ve settled in really nicely with the other goats and I love to see them all run in a herd.  There are two that are small enough to fit through the goat fence *sigh* but thankfully they don’t go anywhere when they can’t figure out how to get back.  I came home from dropping my inlaws off at the airport to hear a goat CRYING it’s heart out.  Afraid that it was hurt I went to investigate.  Well it was in my neighbors pasture by itself crying for help.  So I grabbed a grain bucket and a lead rope (that can be made into a nifty goat noose easily) and headed over.  I always wonder what people think of having you on their property.  I know if someone was chasing something I would help and wouldn’t care less as long as I got a picture afterward, but I don’t know that other people share my thoughts.

(the goat that escaped was Blue Steel – the one in back making the classic Zoolander face).  So I caught the wooly bugger and tried to lead it along.  But people. That goat was just being such a wimp and it was HOT.  So HOT.  So I picked up the goat because it’s maybe 30-40 pounds tops, and I start walking back through the pasture.  Now I’m super hot, my pants are falling down – overalls are ordered! – I’m tripping over long grass and decide this is bullshit.  I walk over to the fence, roll the goat so that he’ll land feet first and drop him over the fence into my own pasture.   He landed on his feet just fine and scampered off crying for the other goats.

Now at this point, I’ll admit I was worried because I had yet to see my other goats.  I was now of the impression that all the goats had somehow escaped and I was doomed to repeat “The Great Sheep Escape”.  I walked around the property line, back into my own pasture with my grain bucket and lead rope – just in case – and set off looking for the goats.  Well the sheep were all about me because I had grain, and the turkeys were chasing because apparently I am Queen Sexy Turkey and they LOOOOOVVVVEEE me, and the geese came because it’s not a party with out the geese and they really just want to make sure everyone’s following the rules.  So with my circus in tow I head out.  It didn’t take me long before I spotted them behind a huge pine tree.

There they were, nibbling on a bush completely ignoring everyone.  Moral of the story?  If you are in a pack you won’t be left behind, if you are in a herd you better not fall behind because they will leave you and ignore your crying sad ass.

In other news Kodiak is now as much friends with the goats as Tank is.  Apparently everyone loves a goat and I can’t really blame them.  They are cute as buttons and sweet as sugar.

Tank and Kodiak are truly brothers.  They rough house and tease each other in a way that only boys who love each other can. 

I’m working constantly with the little man and his recall skills are getting better every day.  Soon I hope he’ll be ready for sheep herding classes.

Also, I’m still dealing with this.

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