Cyber Monday

The Internet equivalent of black Friday- I wanted to announce I'm having a sale!
Http://www.woolandwingsfiberart.etsy.com

Drastically reduced prices on yarn, hats, tarot, and coaching.


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Blogging will be slow this month

As I participate in Nanwrimo. See you in December.


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Passage of time

Halloween always makes me acutely aware of the passage of fall into winter. It's the final harvest. Despite our still relatively warm weather (we are headed to the park today!), I notice the animals both wild and farm reaching out further and further to look for those last few seeds nuts and bugs. I've had to start bringing more hay for the sheep; their pen is about all dried up for leafy greens. I clipped the last sunflower head and roasted it's amazing seeds. I pulled the last huge sweet potatoes from the earth to roast alongside squash and pork tenderloin with fresh fall apples. The leaves continue to fall. The hens go to sleep earlier and earlier and there are less eggs day to day. The rabbits coats are growing thick and wooly (mmm wooly). Holliday movies and advertising is becoming abundant.
At this time of the world slowing down to sleep, I have been speeding up and drawing on the abundance around me. I recently received a scholarship seat to a fantastic life coach certification program and I am excited for the good things this will bring. In a turn of coincidence that makes amazing sense, it is a six month program and beginning at the final harvest, I will reap what I have sown at the first harvest again.

Everything continues to go full circle, ebbing, flowing, never ceasing. I just ride the wave.


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Check out windrose fibers!

I love reading this blog and today there is a contest!
http://bit.ly/15Qvhk


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Phew

Shearing those sheep is some crazy work but the fleeces are beautiful and I am quite pleased!
I wante to share these beautiful rolags I made from a sample of Dudleys wool and Ginger's fawn angora. They are for my friend Jen in Michigan and I think she will be really pleased.


Coming soon- @vtkmitboy's thel batts!
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Last Harvest

The local bees are soaking up every tidbit they can get as fall slowly kills off the pollen supply. So what is left in bloom? My sunflower garden!









This little fella was so plumb full of pollen he just fell right off the flower!



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What a wonky crazy week!

Went to a lovely rabbit show on Saturday and picked up two new bunnies! Introducing Snuggle Bunny and Tahiti:






Snuggle Bunny was a freebie I gifted to my son who loves her more than anything despite having to suck back mass quantities of Zyrtec to chill with her.
The rabbit show was fun. I brought our white rabbit Proncess who didn't place but I learned a lot about her and what they're looking for in a show rabbit and I will certainly show her again when she has a longer coat.
I think we will try breeding Tahiti to Nougat since they're both gorgeous satins. Nougat remains my best wooler, and you can't beat the color on our new doe. Just look at them together!




In sad news, we lost a hen today to a prolapsed oviduct. (Ew.) I'm wondering if she was the mystery hen who laid us a massive egg once every three days.
Sometimes this farming stuff really sucks. The highs and lows are drastic! I do have a picture of that but you'll have to message me for it cuz it's nasty and I don't feel like posting it.

Will be shearing the sheep soon, that should be fun and exciting and hopefully profitable!
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Sad news

Baby bunnies got too cold overnight and didn't make it. We will try again.


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Eeee bunnies!

My black bunny girl has had 7 babies!!!








There are four with grey skin, one black, and two pink. It will be fun to see the fur colors! (mama is black with tortiseshell and chinchilla and chocolates in her background, papa is a cream). So exciting!
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Exciting news!

Star, my very favorite barred rock, laid her first egg!



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Update!

Let's see here...
We have three new guinea keets which my son has trained to roost on his arm. It is so cool! (pics soon)

Noodle the rooster attacked my aforementioned son and found his way in a soup pot. Due to the massive number of chicken butchering details online I'll save you the gory details. He served 8 w leftovers and was quite tasty.

We had Cloudy the bunny bred and with any luck we will have babies on the 29th! If not, I'm considering showing het on Oct 3rd if she has a nice enough coat by then.

After a gun scare we pulled the boys from school. I'm happy to have them home but not under those circumstances!
If anyone has grades K and 3 Oak Meadow curriculum I'm looking.

Currently on needles:



95% wool 5% silk slipper sock. Hoping to get a secnd pair of ankle socks out of this yarn; it wasn't cheap.

Sorry for the brevity and late update- things have been crazy settling back into our normal life.
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And the winner is...

Huffleduck with Jemima Puddleduck! Thank you all entrants this was fun and Ms. Puddleduck appreciates not being called "girl duck" anymore!


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There's a monster in my garden!

But I slayed it!



Weighing in at a full 2lbs, meet lunch!

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Ducks are cool.

The female duck was having a hard time getting into the feed dish so Ping scooped out food for her, waited for her to finish, and THEN he ate. Wow.


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New friends and a contest!

This is a testimony to the law of attraction! Yesterday I was looking through the Meyer Hatchery catalog and dreaming of ducks when someone popped up on freecycle giving away a pair of ducks! So I nabbed them up and brought them home. It's a boy and a girl (eee ducklings??). The girl was attacked when younger and has a pretty gimpy leg but seems to get around and the boy looks after her. I gave them the dog house and free run of the sheep pen for now. Unfortunately they won't be able to truly free range with that bad leg but the sheep pen is pretty big for just two ducks.

On to the contest! I'm bamong the boy Ping after my favorite childhood book. Please leave suggestions for the girls name in the comments below, or tweet it And leave a link in the comments. Winner will achieve the glory of naming my duck, and a handmade needle felted duck to play with or display as you see fit. Name will be chosen at midnight the 31st.
Go!







Sheep says, "WTF is that?"



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I'm on to you chickens!

Now that I know where you nest during the day- lay me some dang eggs!!!



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I'm ROASTING here!

I figured Peter wouldn't want us to languish away in grief so we decided to have a bonfire and marshmallow roast to lighten things up. Nothing fixes a bad mood like sugar and chocolate.



























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No funny tales today

Peter Cottontail, my beloved red satin angora bunny died today of unknown causes. I buried him under a tree near one of our beautiful wooded trails. May he hop through the meadows in bunny summerland. He will be missed.


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Nougat Shawl

It's finally done! I've decided to list it since it's so elegant and I just don't party LOL
Over 42" long and one naked satin angora! Little Nougat has achieved twitter fame by winning the alpaca-bunny-smackdown for softness. I love this little guy so much.
Anyhow check out the shawl:













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What have I been up to?

Let's see, a lot of the same old stuff. Working on my shrug and a pair of socks. Just spin up a ton of peach merino/silk and planning to start my white batch of merino/silk for coachella.



The garden has been giving forth plenty of cucumbers and I'm thinking about making pickles.
I've bee harness training the sheep. It's getting easier but I can't say they like it. But since I'm the only one in charge of the sheep a harness makes like an extra pair of hands.



The ewe I was planning to get was exposed to parasites so we will be getting a black ewe, bred. Lambies this spring!!!!



I've been baking tons of sprouted grain bread. It is awesome.
Etsy is open but I haven't loaded anything new this week due to verizon doing what they do best and delaying the wifi hookup. Look for new items Monday. Should be a ton of destash fabric.
The boys start school the 26th. I'm less than pleased but what can you do. I have very little information about the place and I don't like that. Guess we will take it day by day.

Off to go knead more bread dough!
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Thank you friend!

Pollinate those squash blossoms!



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Cloverbud interview at the fair

Jacob got to show his chicken, Sparkle, at the fair yesterday. Sparkle is a three month old golden buff hen and he was very excited to share her with the judge and his 4H friends. He is incredibly proud of his medal and has it hung on his wall!
It wound up being a crazy long day. I had to run home, drop off the chicken, run back, pick up husband and kids to drop hubby off, then run back to the fair again so the boys could walk in the 4H parade. Then a few rides with friends and finally babyman said enough already so we came home. Phew!






















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New addition

One more bunny coming to join us tomorrow! She is a black French angora and I'm getting a fantastic deal on her diego the owners relocating. Pedigreed and show quality. I wasn't going to get more rabbits but I figure she will be a good investment because: I can blend her with Nibbler for a nice grey/black wool, it will give me a darker angora to offer, the cage I'm getting with her will be a good size for breeding usage, and she has a nice coat ready for the rabbit demo I'm doing the end of this month (my other rabbits are bald).
Any ideas on a name for her?



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The alpaca bunny smackdown

It all began innocently enough. One day on twitter I was speaking with Alpacamundo and mentioned that I've worked with angora for so long now that alpaca almost feels coarse. She felt those were fightin' words and I said, a little competition perhaps? After much deliberation we decided to trade samples along with neutral third party spinner, vtknitboy.
I sent along a bit of my best from Nougat, my chocolate agouti (shawl finished pictures coming soon!). In return I received a half ounce of peachish tan alpaca. Admittedy it is a very fine fiber and I spun it light and thin to see what it could do. It did have quite a bit of VM which I struggled with but the fiber itself is quite nice.
In comparison to Nougat however, on softness factor only, I feel the bunny still wins. I do however think the alpaca is a stronger fiber than the angora, and I do love me a blended angora/alpaca spinning batt for the best of both worlds. Since the bunny goes a long way, a 10% angora to alpaca blend can make for arctic quality finished goods.
This has been really fun so far and I'm delighted to see how others have jumped in. I'm anxiously awaiting verdict from Alpacamundo and Vtknitboy.


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Babyman's hat

For whatever reason my son hands me the same ball of yarn everytime we visit our local yarn store. I decided finally to buy it and make him something. He has requested a hat and socks. Here is the finished hat. It's a bit short but since it's crochet I may lengthen it come winter. For now it makes a nice summer skull cap. The yarn is lambs pride superwash in true green.










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By popular demand

A better shot of the sheep:



I think I'm going to name the little black one Nibbler after the pet from Futurama. I've yet to see him stop eating.
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Bock! Ererooo!

One thing I forgot to note- as we are dragging Dudley down the hill, Noodle the rooster decided to greet his wooly new friend with a series of loud gusty crows. It was awesome :-)



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No free range sheep for me!

So I'm sitting there folding laundry when I see a sheep peeking in my living room window. Now I admit I had been thinking it'd be nice to fence in that area and have sheep peeking in the window but the key word is 'fence'.
Anyhow, since I've had more exercise in one day than a fat lady needs, I will spare you the play by play and give you the short version:

Bad news: sheep are loose!
Good news: they trimmed up the grassy spot near the swing set that hubby hates to mow.
Better news: after much todo and hulaballoo and chasing around they moseyed back into their pen all by themselves.
Awesomest news: looks like our organic insect repellent worked- after all that Mucking around in the bushes I didn't pick up a single tick!!!

Phew.

Am I a real farmer yet?


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The sheep have arrived!

My two wethers are here! And what an adventure it was to get them here. Imagine, torrential pouring down rain. Two wet sheep. My aforementioned awful steep driveway. The sheep lady shows up and can't get her truck up the drive. So, I drive down the hill in my SUW, load the first sheep into my trunk as I sit with him holding him down by the horns as my husband drives is back up. First sheep is Dudley, a two year old morrit wether who weighs about 175lb and is no wimp. No wimp, who is now sitting in my lap pooping away as I hang onto his horns for dear life as we bumpity bump and get air hauling tail up the grand canyon that is my driveway.
Next, we have to get him into the sheep pen, which is halfway back down the hill.



See barn to right, garage, upper left. Imagine hurricane force rains, dragging an angry national geographic looking big horned mountain type Icelandic sheep by the horns from said garage to said barn. Thankfully after a brief scuttle getting out of the car, he offered no resistance heading into the pen and immediately started noshing on the foliage.
The littler sheep was caged and thus a bit easier to get in. Both seem to be enjoying the grasses and weeds after a cursory exploration of their new digs.
Any name suggestions for the black lamb?




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Mm fiberlicious

I spent a few hours today blending 3oz of honey tussah into 7.5oz of white merino.
Ohhhh I couldn't have dreamed how pretty this wouldve turned out. It is awesome. And soooo soft. I have no idea yet how I want to spin it but I'm planning for something close to the skin. It's that soft.












I wound up with a big huge soft puffy bagful. I am sooo excited.
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