My Favorite Sheep...Of The Week

I thought about just taking a week off from the Sheep of the Week.  I hadn't found the time to go out and get a good portrait and I'm running so behind on the Iknitarod that I really needed to focus on that.  I hated skipping a week though because then it gets easy to skip another week when I can't manage my time and then another week...

The request for this week/last week had been Tabitha.  She is one of the five young(ish) Jacobs we have.  She's the only sort of chummy one in the group so she stands out.  Chummy as in she will come up to you to get a cookie.  The rest like cookies...but you have to toss them from a distance.  Jacobs... ;-)

 

When I was doing the barn check this morning, I found her front and center, almost like she was reminding me I hadn't taken her picture.  It was still pretty dark, but the iPhone does a great job in low light and this is not too bad.  I will try to get a better portrait this week though.

Here is as close to a baby picture as I have of her.  She and her fellow Ts arrived in January of 2017. She would have been maybe eight or nine months old here. I don't have any funny stories about these five crazy Jacobs, but their trip up here from WV was a pretty cute post.   

I had them set up in the horse stalls for quarantine and I enjoyed using Kate to move them out to the yard to graze every day and then back in.  Tilly even helped a little.  Those were fun days.

I love Jacob sheep.  I think they are beautiful and if I could only spin one type of wool for the rest of my life, I'd pick Jacob.  Their fleeces are easy to care for and process.  They yarn spins easily and can do quite a few jobs depending on the individual and whether they are on the softer side or more medium.  The fun you can have blending the colors is the best.

What I don't enjoy as much about Jacobs is their more "primitive" personalities.  Henri was a friendly Jacob and Annabelly was sweet, too.  Tabitha is as close to "friendly" as we have anymore.  Tavia could probably be talked into being more friendly if she didn't have the other three bad influences around.  

That's okay.  We have quite a few less colorful...but more colorful sheep who are more than happy to fill the sheep are so fun roles :-).  Everyone has a place.

Special request for next/this week?

Tour de Sheep

 

My Tour de Fleece is more of a Tour de Sheep this year.  So far I've spun 10 sample skeins.  Let's see if I can remember them all...PPPP, Henri, Petunia, Boudreaux, Woody, Buddy, Rebecca Boone, Count Chocula, Miss Ewenice and Hershey :-).

I have really enjoyed pulling out these old friends.  I'd forgotten how soft Boudreaux was, how luxurious Hershey was, how...everything Miss Ewenice was.  She's been gone 10 years now.  I have some Renny set aside for tomorrow.  I can't spin Ewenice without spinning some Renny :-).  

The Right Words

I'd been thinking about my Tour de Fleece for several weeks and was not getting super excited about any of my possible plans.  I knew Pinto was going to be the captain, but had a ton of trouble coming up with his graphic.  The weather is miserable.  There will be no peaceful porch spinning around here this year.  Honestly, I was feeling a bit of dread thinking about putting it all together.

Tim and I like to play a few of the currently popular word games each morning.  I play Wordle, both Word Hurdle games and the Quordle, which is trying to guess four words at one time.  It took a good while to talk me into trying them, but now I'm hooked.  I sit on the Wool House porch with a big cup of coffee and start guessing. 

The Wordle for July 1, the first day of the Tour de Fleece was...

Can you even believe it? :-o

It gets better.

The TdF plan I was most leaning towards was doing a deep dive into some of my most treasured fleeces.  I'd just finished spinning a bit of PPPP and was feeling sentimental.  I have Woody's lamb fleece, Daniel's lamb fleece, some special Ford, Henri, Petunia and for a really deep dive, some young(ish) Miss Ewenice.  

I was still not completely convinced...but I couldn't come up with any better ideas.  I really needed to find some inspiration or it was going to be hard to cheer lead the other members of my team when I couldn't even cheer myself along.  

I started working on the day's Quordle.  

As you can see from the PINTO graphic above, as you guess words, you almost always get some correct letters and sometimes even get them in the right locations.  Yellow means the letter is in the mix, but in the wrong position.  Green means it's the right letter in the correct location.

Three of the four words in the Quordle game behaved accordingly and I ended up figuring out each of those three words.  The fourth word...

The first guess yielded me no correct letters.  Neither did the second guess.  I did finally get one letter, but in the wrong position on the third and fourth guesses, but back to zero correct on the fifth.  In case you are wondering about my word choices, remember I'm trying to guess three other words at the same time.  STAID, BASTE and RAMEN were the correct words in the other quadrants.

You get nine chances to guess the four words.  I'd used up eight chances and only had two letters and both in the wrong positions.  I had one chance left, but I knew it was hopeless.  Still, a game is a game and I decided to make a wild guess and see how close I could get.

With only one vowel possibility, the O, I knew there might be a chance they were going to use it twice.  Y hadn't been used, so I tossed that in there as well.  Two Os and D and a Y...I had to go with WOODY.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

And I won!

How's that for some inspiration :-D.

It was pretty crazy just to get PINTO, but also WOODY on the same day?!?

 So I started my Tour spinning some Woody :-).

Saturday Spinning

I left my Tour de Fleece goals pretty loosey goosey.  While spinning every day would have been ideal, I figured that getting anything done was better than what had been getting done.  I've washed several fleeces, wove the Daniel scarf, prepped some lamb fleece, spun a couple of small skeins.  Today I wanted to clock some mileage.  

I'm not sure why I grabbed Henri, but I'm glad I did.  I love spinning Jacob fiber and hers has always been a fun spin.  She had an almost silky fleece that practically spun itself.  I recently got Kate Davies' Book of Haps and decided Henri would make a nice hap.  Of course, half the fun is deciding which one...and spinning the yarn.

I don't remember when I did this, but found one ball of singles already finished.  Can't beat that. Now to look back through the blog to see if there's a note about when I spun that.  Surely not last year's Tour de Fleece...right?  Oh, good grief, it was :-/.

Pretty Henri

This was her last fleece (2015) and it has some quite a bit of VM (vegetable matter) mixed in. Too much to think about selling it...and I doubt I would have anyway.  She was a favorite sheep and much missed.  I'll love having a cozy memento.

Henri had gotten too feeble to make the trek in and out of the Del Boca Vista annex this summer and this has not been a summer you could weather out in the little shed.  Yeesh, it's been hot!

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Bullwinkle got himself in all sorts of trouble today and now the Unit is in danger of being called the BRS (Bullwinkle Retrieval System).  Pictures on Instagram, but also shared to Twitter and FB...in case you aren't already following his adventures.

So...

I thought about titling this post "Saint Tim Saves Lamb Camp...Again" but since I hadn't shared "Saint Tim Saves Lamb Camp...The First Time" I figured there was too much back story needing to be caught up.  Suffice to say, a huge thank you to Saint Tim (twice) for making sure we could all enjoy adorable lamb pictures, now including Bullwinkle, this spring.

I was thinking I could title this something about "Sheep Dreams" (can I have a show of hands for Dianne to revive her beautiful blog? ;-) but again, there is more to the story than just sweet Bullwinkle taking a good nappy on/in my lap and having a big dream about something, probably More Babas.

I could title it "Goodbye Dear Henri" but that's not the whole story either.  The whole story is good sheep friends that get old and feeble, their sheep friends who understand and don't understand, and people who understand that sheep understand and don't understand.  Good husbands who borrow equipment from good neighbors so they can bury good sheep while sad shepherds sit in the yard with sweet babies while grass grows, the sun sets, birds settle in for the night and bunnies hop across the driveway while good dogs sit and watch, having understood that we are all here to take the best care of each other that we can.

If you turn up your volume you can hear a little talking :-).

How Hot Is It?

There are Jacobs in the aisleway of the barn!  Completely against the code of Jacobs.  Jacobs hang out in the outer stall (except Billy Belly who is always in the inner stall - maybe because he snores or something).   Jacobs, being a more "feral" breed than, say, any of the Nistock sheep, don't like to draw attention to themselves.  They stay "outside".  Yesterday they were "inside".  That's pretty darn hot.

Ford, Henri and Jester have learned to like being in the aisleway.  It took awhile.  That's Heidi and Allie standing up.  Look how many sheep are lined up along the wall.  

I'm not sure who's idea it was, momma Baby Belly or daughter Clover Belly (like Emily and Casper Belly, they are inseparable), but there they are, smack in the middle of the aisleway.  I took this through the gate because I knew if I got too close I'd spook them and they'd scatter.  Let 'em sleep.

Oh, and here comes Casper Belly with momma Emily behind her.  It's getting pretty crowded in there!

Uh oh, and now Hershey (cue duh duh duh duh music).  I'm not sure why he left his Number One Profile position in front of the outer stall's fan.  Possibly Murphy finally got one over on him.  Or maybe he came in to get a drink and saw I was in the barn.  He's the opposite of feral ;-).

Daniel has been ruling the left side of the aisleway fan.  Last year he had the outer fan.  Hershey pushed him out this year.  Is he making a move on the aisleway fan too now???  Can you tell how close he's standing over Daniel?

"Ready to say Uncle yet?"

"I can take whatever you dish out."

Actually, I'm not sure that's what's going on.  For some reason, the hotter it gets the closer sheep want to stand.  The physics of it probably work if everyone's a sheep, but if it's me they are all leaning on, usually at least four at a time...it's not at all cooling or comfortable.  Still fun, just not very cool ;-).

But it could be a show of strength.  I think of Jester as being a pretty big sheep.  He's definitely big for a Jacob.  He's actually using the gate as a head rest (I think), but I wouldn't be surprised if he's was wishing he could get a couple licks in on Hershey ;-).  

B. Willard just wishes everyone would go back inside.

Yesterday seemed to be the hottest day so far.  Today is supposed to be in the 90s too, but tomorrow there's a chance of rain and the high is just the upper 80s.  I can't believe I'm saying "just the upper 80s".  Sigh...

If You're Having Trouble With Your Camera

The first thing I'm going to tell you to do is...all together now..."Read your owner's manual!"

What was the last thing I did today?  Yep...  

"Hahahahaha!"

Actually, sweet Kate would never laugh at me.  She's had plenty of opportunity, but I really don't think it's ever crossed her mind.  I think she's just yawning.  Or panting hard.  We are all panting hard.  It is way too hot and humid :-(.

I've moved the Del Boca Vista annex into the front half of the barn, opened up the back half of the barn aisleway to provide a little more shade and breeze for the rest of the sheep.  Several, especially Spud, are way too hot and I'm worried about them.

I also took quite a few really awful pictures this afternoon.  In fact, I've had a lot of frustrating camera shoots lately.  I FINALLY thought to look on a Nikon forum to see if anyone else had ever had their camera randomly change shutter speeds every freakin' shot.  They sure did!  And it was an easy fix...aka operator error.  Sigh...

Try to stay cool!

Portal Pics

I purposely took the Liddy/boat/truck portal picture, but when I downloaded the other shots, I realized I had several other portals too :-).

Liddy's doing very well out in the B A R N.  She's got Blossom and Lila with her now.  Blossom is pictured here.  Lila had already headed in because it was getting hot.  

I'm toying with adding Maisie to the mix today.  Liddy needs to get used to dealing with multiple sheep and while Maisie will probably punch on her some (the little darling ;-), she doesn't have horns and might be more apt to "play" a little.  The older aunties are pretty dull I'm afraid...which is also why they make great aunties.  Miss Ewenice would be proud :-).

Look at that smushy mouth.  Sweet Daniel sleeping on his foot :-).

Poor Kate has had a rough couple of weeks.  Between the never ending thunder storms and then days upon days of fireworks (don't get me started!) she's worn out.  On an interesting note, when Liddy is with her, she's much less stressed.  Or maybe she's as stressed, but if Liddy lays down, Kate does too and that makes us all feel better.

Del Boca Vista Summer Annex.  The storms and cloud cover kept things cooler last week, but now the sun is back out and Jester is really struggling.  He's in pretty good shape in the cool, breezy aisleway, but he sure complains about having to move in here every morning.  Of course, that's after he's complained about being outside first ;-).  Those opinionated Jacobs!

Tour de Fleece Update:  I've gotten quite a bit of wool work done now that Liddy is (mostly ;-) hanging out in the field.  I have several fleeces washed and ready for the mill.  I spun some Billy Belly on the owl spindle at the house Saturday night and started Petunia on the wheel yesterday afternoon.  We have a great group checking in on Ravelry.  It's never too late to join!  Or just pop over to see what everyone's working on :-).

It's Tour de Fleece Time...And I'm Already Racing To Catch Up

One of the few things I look forward to each summer is the Tour de Fleece.    I have fun figuring out who our team mascot will be, how I'll portray them on our official team "ravatar", spend hours thinking about what I want to spin, what new technique(s) I'm going to try to learn, what my friends are going to work on...

This year I thought Buddy might like to be our mascot.  You know, give one of the older kids a chance to get back in the spotlight.  Buddy's a great (and loud ;-) cheerleader and a real team player. He'd be perfect!  Until he misunderstood about the whole bike thing.  Buddy doesn't like to go fast. He's made that perfectly clear.

Even though we all tried to get him to calm down and listen, explain that he didn't have to actually ride a bike, he just covered his ears and then his eyes and then his ears and yelled "ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba"...and then 20 stepped up and said he'd be happy to cover the mascot duties this year and we all agreed that was a good plan.

Of course, 20, realizing that the Tour de Fleece begins tomorrow morning with the start of the Tour de France, decided we all needed to quit messing around posing with a bike and get ready to actually start spinning.  He pulled out Petunia's roving from two years ago, Henri's from last year and helped me snip off the sunbleached ends of Baaxter's fleece so it's ready to wash.  I'm hoping to make a run to Ohio Valley Natural Fibers next week!

The Tour de Fleece is a fun spinning challenge for all spinners, even brand new spinners.  We follow the Tour de France bike race, try to spin every day, take official rest days the same days the racers do and, well, here are the official specs from the Ravelry page:

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Welcome to our group for participants in the annual Tour de Fleece spin-along during the Tour de France. They spin, we spin. A real spinning-themed spin-along.

The concept is simple:

Challenge Yourself.
Spin.
Have fun.

This year, the Tour de Fleece starts on Saturday July 4 and runs until Sunday July 26th, 2015.

Guidelines (NOT RULES):
Spin every day the Tour rides, if possible. Saturday July 4 through Sunday July 26th. Days of rest: Monday, July 13th and Tuesday, July 21st. (Just like the actual tour.)
Spin something challenging on the challenge day (usually the toughest high mountain stage: this year, it’s Stage 18, on Thursday, July 23rd, when they will climb 5 mountains, including the 1,924m high Col du Glandon).
Wear yellow on Sunday July 26th to announce victory. Why not wear yellow on any day you feel particularly successful? (Yellow is the color of the race leader in the Tour - but here we are all ‘race leaders’) Other colors if desired: Green (sprinter - think FAST), Polka-dot (climber - as in uphill), and white (rookie).

Teams: Join one, or many, or none.
Peloton (the main group)
Rookies (first years)
Sprinters (fast and/or high mileage, like lace, sweater quantities, etc)
Climbers (conquer mountains, big personal challenges)
Breakaways (textured “art” yarns)
Lanterne Rouge (you will participate as much as possible but you may skip days here and there)
Maillot Blanc (This team is intended for our younger participants. Anyone under the age of 18 who wishes to take part in the Tour is encouraged to participate in the Maillot Blanc team. This thread will be monitored and is required to be kept at the equivalent of a G/U rating.)
Wildcards (This is for people who want to form their own team. This includes sponsored teams, like those affiliated with a specific fiber shop or people who live in the same town, etc.)

The teams are inspired by the actual Tour de France.

Doesn't this sound fun?  It is!  If you'd like to join Team MyFavoriteSheep, it's not too late.  Come join our group on Ravelry.  We are a laid back group, all very nice, very supportive, many are very knowledgeable and everyone's willing to help.  We even have prizes :-D.

Happy Spinning!

Fleece Peeks

Spud - I normally don't like sunbleached tips, but I think his are stunning.

Woolliam

The longwools (Woolliam, Keebler, B. Willard, Buddy, Rebecca Boone, Hershey) have nine months growth instead of six this year, so the staple length is really nice.  Long, but not too long and no one had a heatstroke last summer :-).

Murphy

Henri

Baby Belly - I still can't get over how clean the fleeces are this year.  Thanks, Kate!

Lila.  This is my sleeper favorite this year.  Lila just cruises along under the radar...

Buddy...the best curls...and the "best" lanolin producer ;-).  It really does wash out.  Just be prepared with super hot water!

Keebler - another grease ball, but we know how he cleans up :-).

Chocula on the left, Ford on the right.  Guess how much Chocula weighed!  Well, you'll never guess because the picture just doesn't really capture it.  13.5 pounds :-o.  Daniel weighed just over 13! That's a lotta sweaters!  I'd be willing to divide those two fleeces into two 6.5 pound fleeces...which is still a lotta sweaters :-D.

Liddy, working hard growing her first fleece :-).  Kate resting up for VM (vegetable matter/hay) patrol next winter :-D.

The forecast is looking a bit damp for this weekend...so just dress appropriately and come have some fun anyway :-D.

The Princess Of Del Boca Vista

Henrietta

She likes being the princess.  Jester and Ford go out and do "guy stuff" much of the day, even when it's cold.  Henri doesn't do any more than she has to ;-).

Sleepy Sheepy Shots

When I went out at noon yesterday to check for frozen water in Del Boca Vista (no heated water out there :-/) everyone was so cute napping that I ran back for the camera. It might be dreary and drab out in the fields, but barn shots always look pretty cozy :-).

Woody, what a favorite funny face.

Spudalicious and his comfy pillow - poor Spud!

Hershey and his big boy fleece.  Hard to believe that chocolate brown from the other day was him!

Pretty Petunia, always quick with a smile :-).

Baaxter and Murphy mid-chew.  Ford and Jester are out back grazing - tough old guys :-).  

Wool Is Warm

Chickens aren't dumb ;-).

Lila makes a pretty cozy snuggle buddy when it's cold!

These chickens just don't seem as warm ;-).

Some of the sheep stayed in the barn this morning and some went out.  Jester was cold last night, but he was up and out grazing this morning.  Ford was with him, but Henri stayed in the shed. I've got another series of cold shots to post in a bit. 

Snowy Vista

Ford looks pretty happy in Del Boca Vista :-).

With his buddy Jester close by and cousin Henri just inside.