We have lambs!!!

 Billy woke me up bright and early this am. He came running in saying you have to get we have lambs out there. I flew out of bed threw on a pair of jeans, sweatshirt and my boots. All I can remember is Billy's face he looked so worried and at a loss of what to do it was kind of funny. I went out and brought them up to mama, she was a little confused, but by the end of a very long day we finally are doing OK and seem to be settling in.

 I had a really hard time taking pictures because they kept following me, but here they are :)

Twin ram lambs. We have not named them yet because we need to decide after our other ewe delivers  who we are keeping and who is going. However, Beth already has at least one name picked out ;)

Here is a shot of one of them that was temporarily sitting still. One is more black and the other I think will be a gray.

Boo Boo

So I have a few post that I really need to get up here, but the only one that is going to happen tonight is that I got a little boo boo the other day. I was getting the spinner going and got my finger caught in the gears and lost the top of it. Thankfully it is my right index finger (I'm a lefty) so it could be worse, but it still hurts and I can't get it wet which kind of get in the way of washing wool. I'm going to give it a few days and see what the Dr. says before I try too much. Anyway I will post a few more fun things in the days to come.

Summer Morning

The other morning I decided to take the camera with me and the girls while we where doing chores.  First of we have Beth taking care of her chickens, I have never seen  kid love chickens as much as this kid does. They all have names and the first thing she does in the morning is ask if I fed them and got their eggs yet. However, I wish she would keep them in their coop. They poop EVERYWHERE not to mention they like everything in the garden as well. 

Here she is showing Cocoa (she named them) to Emma and telling her to be careful or they will "beak you" if you get to close.

 Then their is our two resident sheep Lulu our Ewe (female for non-sheep people) and Charlie our wether (fixed male).  Lulu is a natural colored sheep and Charlie is a Blue-faced leicester X border leicester cross and his fleece is to Dye for (hahaha, I need to take a pic of his fleece that I dyed up for a sweater for myself, YUMMO). I never realized how friendly sheep are when they aren't n a huge heard.

My goal is to get a few more next year, but we'll see, dh isn't as excited about that as I am ;). I really want to get a few Cormo's.

OK so here is our very sad, sad garden that needs lots of love and care that I just haven't had time to do. I always seem to do really good in the spring, but then by August I've had enough with the weeding. There just never seems to be enough time in  day and that is always last. Anyway hidden in there are lots of cucumbers, tomatoes (50+ plant), squash, I had a watermelon, but the chickens got to enjoy that :(. There also the other normal stuff to peas, beans, onions, spinach, chard,etc.... 

Here is our tomato haul:

 This has been Emma's Breakfast lately. This kid lives for tomatoes, no wonder why I craved them so much when I was preggo with her. I think she is wearing more on her shirt than she is eating.

good thing I did some canning, man I have to remember to take more pix of things, I am horrible at that. I'll get better I promise.

Lastly this is our newest member of our family, another rescue. We named her Purl and she is a sweetheart, except I will be much happier when I can trust her not to pee in my house. She is much better than when she first came, but still really likes the carpet upstairs.As you can see she is very comfortable here :), little stinker.

 Well I guess that is how most our summer mornings go.

Good Weekend

This weekend was a great family weekend. Yesterday the girls and i had a playdate a friend and her daughter came over and it was great. The girls all played and we got to sit down and do some spinning and have some gilr talk :) I was bad though and for got to put my shiny new camera to work, oh well next time I guess. After they left Billy got the roof to the shed all finished up so its not leaking anymore while the kids and I tried the electric the Amy brought over for the sheep. The sheep didn't like it too much either they went right through it, grrrrr. After a few tries we gave up and instead put it around the inside of their regular pen so they could get used to it and hopefully this works. They did OK today, they were a bit unsure of it but didn't try and test it so we will see what happens.
   Today was a nice relaxing day. We did some weeding in the morning and some computer work on the Dandy-lions Etsy store, while the girls played. I am so lucky that they for the most part how well they get along.
                     Here are the 2 monkey's reading there books :) 

For Sale or trade Singer Knitting Machine

I've decided to sell my knitting machine because I just don't use it enough. I bought it a few years ago, but I just don't have the time for it. The kids, mill, spinning, hand knitting, and weaving have taken over.

The knitting machine is a singer 700 with ribber that uses punch cards along with many other assesories. Here are pics asking $300.00.

Here is the main bed

Here is the carraige




some of the tools and the ribber


Instruction books

Here are some more of the small pieces

The weekend from heck

Well it all started Friday night. I was really tired for some reason so I went to bed early. DD E got up a few times, but that is nothing out of the ordinary. I woke up with a sore throat, runny nose and achy all over and to top it off it was pouring buckets out. I had a guild meeting that I was looking forward to going to, so I went to that while DH watched the girls. Well only about half of the people came (probably because of the weather) so I stayed for about half and then I decided to go home and have a nap while the girls slept. The girls never slept and both of them had noses that were gushing and were so tired they were just crying over everything. I couldn't wait for bedtime. Well it came, but they were up all night coughing or crying. DD B new thing is to tell us she needs to go potty so she can get out of bed (did that like 3X). I was ready to cry myself, I just wanted to go to sleep. Sunday came, again no naps today either. I am so ready to go to bed, but at the same time I know as soon as I get comfy I will be awoken by one of them. Well hopefully tomorrow goes better than the past few days.

Sherman the turtle

OK I actually found time to take pictures of Sherman the turtle that I'm knitting for the girls. Like I said before I got the pattern from http://www.knitty.com/ and I found it through ravelry.




The body of the turtle is on the left and the legs are on the right. Below is the shell in progress. I decided to be different and use purple and natural grey for the colors. My plan is to make one turtle MC- Purple CC- grey and the next turtle the other way around. This is if I have enough yarn to make both.

Surprise long weekend and one less in diapers !!!

We had a decent sized snow storm this past Friday so we got a nice long weekend that is great. I love these extra moments to have fun with the kids and get some knitting and spinning in while the kids are napping (like right now). DD- E is finally getting on a routine and is having a morning nap and an afternoon nap. It seems like as soon as she was able to start eating solid her whole personality has changed. She now sleeps through the night and is happy when she is awake. Her happiness makes everyone in the house happy because now I can finally put her down and get something done she is getting so big.

The other good news is that DD - B is finally out of diapers. I mean I can't really complain she is only two so it could be worse. I am just so proud of her. She is so independent and already wants to go potty by herself. Here is a picture of the girls that we took the other night when they were being silly.

Right now I'm working on knitting a stuffed turtle for each of the girls. I got the pattern from ravelry, they are going to be so cute. I am using my fiber challenge fiber to make them. Our guild gives us 8 oz of fiber to create something ( this year it is coopworth). I've got one of the bodies made and I'm working on the last leg. The other thing that I am working on is spinning up some 75% coopworth 25% Alpaca for a sweater that I want to make for myself. Well I'll post some Pics of these things latter I am going to do a little knotting and spinning while the kids are sleeping.

Not much time to do anything

OK I know its been awhile since I posted. Since the Baby has been born it just seems I can't get anything done. She is so different from my first. The first was so easy. You could put her in a swing and she would be happy for hours. This one on the other hand. I can't seem to put her down. If I do she only let me for about 15-30 min and that is with her complaining the whole time. Now we have more trouble coming as well..... she won't take a bottle and if she does it is only from me. We are going to be in big trouble in a few weeks when she starts daycare. She is such a momma's girl. Don't get me wrong I love cuddling, but I do need to do other things as well, like go to the bathroom with out her crying.
Needless to say I have not been able to get much spinning in or anything else. The good news is that it can all wait and sooner or later she will be off playing and I will be able to sit down and do something. Right now I'm just enjoing the moments that she isn't crying. She is getting so big so fast. At 2 months she weighed 9.5 lbs and at 3.5 months she is already 15 lbs!!!! SHE JUST DOESN'T STOP EATING! I can't imagine how big she is going to get when she starts eating soilds.

3 Projects finally completed

I've been trying to reduce my unfinished project corner. I've managed to finish three more projects (I only took pics of two though). The first was my nephew's bulldozer hat I made on the knitting machine. It was royal blue with caterpillar yellow bulldozers on it. My sister says that he loves it, he won't go out of the house without it on.

The next project is my daughters hat. This one was done from scratch. I wash and dyed a blue-face fleece that I got a while ago and processed it at our mill. I added some angelina to the roving as well, just to give it a little sparkle. Then I spun it on my Kromski Minstrel and knitted it on the knitting machine.

I think it came out really cute. You can't really see the little sparkles in the pic, but you can when your holding it.

The third is also a hat. I was making it for my husband, but I kind of like it myself so I'm not sure who will be using it more. This one is also out of blue-face, but a natural colored dark brown fleece. I spun it up a while ago and didn't really know what to make, but when I saw a pattern in the spin off magazine this yarn called out to me, so I figured I would give it a shot.

It came out a little on the big side, but I'm sure it will tighten up when I wash it so I'm not worried about it. I like it because it is nice a light compared to the machine knitted hats. It has a lot more give to it.

Now that I have finished all of these projects I can start working on something new. I made up some batts of assorted alpaca and wool seconds from the mill and it think I am going to try and spin some of this up since I never spun from a batt I think that I will be fun to try. The batts are supper soft even though they are from seconds. The alpace that they come from are super fine alpaca so there really isn't any bad fiber on them. Well wish me luck..... I'l let you know how it turns out.

What a great X-mas!!!!

This year was so much fun. Our 2 yr old finally had an idea of what was going on. She kept telling us that she wanted Santa to bring her a red toy and a blue toy:). She ripped through all her presents so fast (along with everyone elses as well).

Here She is ripping through one of her gifts as happy as can be.

Here I am probably telling her to slow down just like my parents used to tell us to. It's kind of scares me that I really do sound like my parents when I swore that that would never happen, hahahaha.

Since start up a new business and all money was rather tight this year to say the least. So I asked my husband for only one thing which was a Tom Forrester Spindle and my wish came true. I absolutely love it. I've never spun on a spindle so I wasn't sure if I would like it, but it works great. I got a light weight (29 oz) to spin sock weight yarns on. I can't wait to spin well enough to use it in a pair of socks for myself.

Here is a pic of the top view and on the right is a pic of the first spindle spun yarn ever!!! It didn't come out to bad, but I have a long way to go before it will be consistant.

Baby E... is here !!!!!

It seems like it has been so long since I've had a chance to write. A lot has happened including a new addition to the family. We had a baby girl Oct 16 at 8:13 AM. She was 20.5" long and weighed in at 7lbs 6oz.

As for her older sister that is 2, she hasn't been too jealous. She does the usual like get mad when the baby is on my lap or when she wants something and I can't jump up and get it. She really does love her though. When she goes to school that is all she talks about.

Handbags

This week I finally finished my felted bags. They came out so good. I lined them and put a pocket on the inside. I'm thinking of selling them, but I'm not sure if anyone would be interested in them.