CelticXroads

Back from Surgery

2009-02-28T16:16:00.001-08:00

Hi Everyone!

Well, the surgery went well on February 9, 2009, although I had some problems waking from the anesthetic this time as they put me totally under to do this surgery. They disturbed the scar tissue from the previous surgery, so it was quite painful, but I dreamed that Lance, my husband, had left me and I was quite hysterical. I was the only one in recovery, so they brought Lance up to try to get me calmed down. We were out of there by 11:30 pm and returned home at 3:10 am on the 10th.

Everything seems fine and though it's not the 80-85% down from the previous surgery, it's still quite a bit (about 75-80%). I think it might be a bit more than that once the incisions heal and the nerve endings reconnect from where they had been cut. Quite scary not to know how your life is going to change with any surgery, especially if they do one they did previously. The scar tissue always makes it more painful and it takes longer to heal. So far, so good.

Washington State has put a voluntary NAIS bill on the ballot, but they're going to mandatory anyway. It's scary to know that this will impact so many farms/ranches negatively and they just don't care. It'd be different if it were for the large farms, but because they are LARGE Farms/Ranches, they get a break by registering their animals as a group, not each one, which is pish tosh (aka bull shi*)! It's not fair to anyone when they do crap like this. So, I've sold all but 2 yearling Icelandic ewes and 3 male alpacas, a rooster and 5 hens...none of them ever leaving the farm at all. By all rights, I shouldn't have to do NAIS tagging at all nor should anyone else who's animals never leave their place of residency. Are animals will be illegal aliens soon...nice, isn't it? I read that Obama is going to dsband NAIS, but I don't think the Governors or Senators are going to go along with it, not to mention the Dept of Agriculture--too much easy cash for them.

Anyway, that's all for now, but I'll write more later.

Hugs to all!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

2009-02-07T14:35:00.000-08:00

My husband and I will be married on Valentine's Day for 11 years. We met through Match.com 12 years ago and never thought anything would come out of it and just became friends. Over that year, we learned a lot about each other and grew to love one another, so that is how we both came to be married despite a failed first marriage for each of us and my medical problems from a benign brain tumor found in September 1993 and a botched brain surgery & hospitalization in December 1993 resulting in chronic, level 8-10 head pain (or what the Doctors call Facial Pain, but it doesn't feel like my face, but feels like a super-nuclear migraine if you can even imagine that kind of pain). We are still doing well and when we got married, we made a vow to be married for 50 years (still possible as both our ascendants live into their 90's-100's) and then we'd renew our vows for another 50 (who knows, it might be possible in the future--LOL).

Despite all the pain, I keep doing my avocation which is fiber art. I knit, spin, crochet, felt, and other types of fiber arts and have given away so many gifts that everyone's got 1-2 afghans, hats galore, scarves, mittens, etc. You can only wear one hat, one pair of mittens, and one scarf at a time, and having 5-10 sets is over kill, don't you think? So, I started donating them to various charities throughout the United States (Sacramento, Seattle, San Francisco, for a few) for the homeless, to hospitals, to orphanages...or to anyone doing any event or auction to raise money for different charities. Then I figured as I am pretty productive in spite of the pain, to sell them at the farmers market where I live.

Granted, I don't make a lot, but I raise my own animals for their fiber (for right now I take care of animals because I am so afraid of the National Animal Identification System (infamously known as the NAIS) that I stopped breeding and raising them. So, I have 4 alpacas (1 Suri and 3 Huacayas), 2 ewes (pure-blooded Icelandic female sheep), and 5 Auracana chickens (also known as the Easter Egg chickens and each hen lays a different colored egg). I will be buying 25 more Auracana chicks this spring so I can sell my eggs also for the eggs themselves, for egg shell mosaics so you don't have to dye the egg shells (greens, blues, ivories/whites, pinks, or tans) or for blown egg shell ornaments or decorations (you decorate the eggs with paints and use wax to make sure the colors don't go everywhere--like batik for eggs).

I spin the fiber I get from the alpacas and the sheep, as well as my dog hair from my dwarf Great Pyrenees named Bud. I have some Persian cat fiber left from 10 years of brushing my Chocolate and Gold tortoiseshell Persian named Miss Lacey and will spin that up also to make a shawl for myself. Cat and Dog hair has 20% warmer fiber when you spin and knit or crochet it into a garment, so as I'm ALWAYS cold, I'll be warmer than I probably want to be.

I'm having my 7th brain surgery on February 9 with what we hope will be at least a 80-85% reduction in facial pain. When I had my 6th surgery, I had an 80-85% reduction in pain. However, I caught a late bout, and particular nasty case of the flu (got it from both ends), was coming down the stairs, got dizzy and fell, though I caught myself with the stair rail, but it did pull the line of electrodes out of place a fraction of an inch--just enough to get the pain back to the previous level and felt even worse than it was before. So, it took the Doctors to do a series of tests and consults to figure out that they needed to stimulate the infra orbital nerve which seems to relieve the facial pain more than when they stimulate the Trigeminal nerve. You see, when they did the last surgery, the electrode that was closest to the nose was the one that most relieved the pain. Thank goodness they got that figured out, and they'll implant the second line of eight electrodes under the old line which will continue to work, and put it closer to my nose right on top (I am only guessing on the actual placement) of the infra orbital nerve, which we all are hoping will get at least the same amount of pain relief as the first time around. However, it may or may not help at all, or it might even relieve more of the pain. None of us will really know until they finish the surgery and I'm awake in recovery. Last time, the relief was so apparent when I woke up, it was a miracle to not feel hardly any pain at all. Level 2-3 pain was so wonderful compared to what I was experiencing. I'm posting this here, so that if you read it, perhaps you'll think of me that day (surgery starts at 1:30 PM and last 3-4 hours) and send positive thoughts or prayers in my direction. Every little bit will help and I can use all the help I can get psychically/mentally/religiously. If you do, thank you very much in advance for giving me your wonderful thoughts and prayers.

So, once this is done, my recovery will take a while--maybe a year total between the surgery and anesthetic, plus I'm deconditioned after the last two years because I've been more or less bound to the house because I couldn't think well through the pain and didn't trust myself driving. So, I will be driving again, doing a lot fo the things I haven't been able to do over the least two years minus the 6 months I had the first decrease in pain.

Let me tell you something about pain. I went to a pain support group and there were 8 other men and women in the group. I was hoping I could get some help with the pain through verbal/emotional support through the group, but that was not what I found. It was actually a contest about who had the worst pain, those with head, back, arm or leg pain. ALL Pain hurts and there is no pain that is better or worse than the other. However, some pain can be more disabling than other pain. Back pain, I've come to believe, has to be the most disabling. If you can't use your back to do things, you are definitely SOL because you can't sleep, you can't lift, and many times, you cannot even walk. Head pain has got to be the next disabling because any of you who have had migraines or tension headaches, knows that you can barely think and you throw up a lot because you get so nauseous from the pain. Leg pain (regardless of ankle, knee or hip) is the next worse because you can't walk well and it hurts, and you baby it because it hurts and it causes back pain and head pain (not always but a good portion of the time). And lastly, I'd say shoulder pain, though that can also cause back and head pain. This is just my opinion and you may agree or disagree as the case may be, but it's based on experience as well as observation. However, the one thing I do know is that "Pain is Pain" and it "ALL" hurts like hell.

So, Happy Valentine's Day and I hope to be able to give you good news soon after I get home (I'll be home on Feb. 10 if there are no complications as it is a day surgery--yup, even for some brain surgeries you go home the same day--pretty amazing, huh). I don't know if I'll have the energy to post anything for a day or so, but I'll try to let you know ASAP.

Wish me Luck and remember me on February 9 at 1:30 PM.

Happy Holidays!!!!

2009-01-04T08:16:00.000-08:00

I hope all of you had a wonderful Merry Christmas and New Year!

I didn't expect to get much this year as money seems to be tight all around the world, but I did get a Babe Double Treadle Production Spinning wheel (in black). It took me a while to get the hang of it, but I talked with the creator/builder of the Babe wheels and we figured out some things I might be doing that weren't in my best interest as a spinner. Thank goodness, it worked out.

I'm working on a crocheted afghan for my sister, Karen, made entirely of handspun yarn (white Icelandic, silver grey Icelandic, gray Ronaldsay, and black Icelandic) and it looks like it will turn out very nicely for her. In the black color, I'll be adding bobbles. She likes blue, so I may add some blue to it by using the Ikat dyeing technique so it's regular, but not to far out (not tie-dyed, for instance or spotted). I'll post a pic when I get it close to being done and before I dye it and one after I dye it.

I've sold most of my animals. All I have left are two Icelandic ewes (they'll be yearlings this summer--silver grey and white with moorit spots) and 4 alpacas (1 white Suri and a cinnamon, a rose grey, and a white Huacaya). That way, I'll still have a variety of colors and types. I process my own fiber and I still have a dozen fleeces from last year and the year before to finish up, then I'll be in spinning heaven. I like processing my own fleeces. I also buy fleeces locally or at any fairs and festivals, I go to so I can try out other wool types.

It's rather exciting if you enjoy playing with fiber and textiles. I have been doing this type of thing since I was 4 yo, so it's in my blood so to speak. No one in my family really did much when I lived at home and the only fiber art my mom did until all the kids were out of the house (1 boy and 5 girls) was sewing. I remember her sewing doll clothes for our Barbie dolls when I was small and as I was the eldest child, I got to help her. My Paternal Grandmother taught me how to embroider. My Maternal Step-Grandfather let me help him when he was doing woodworking, but only small stuff like gluing things together and playing with the scraps of wood (nailing them, gluing them, painting them), but I don't have access to a lathe so haven't developed that as much as I did working with cloth and fiber.

Later on, my mom did some quilting and embroidery, and when her eyes started failing, started making canvas stitched ornaments. She supplied the whole family back in WI as well as the neighbors. As I said, it's in my blood.

I like gardening also. My Dad loved gardening. He is in his 80's and still has a garden every year. That's in my blood as well. When I was 8 yo, after my dad took us to a friend's farm and I got to gather eggs and we road on a wagon pulled by horses, I decided I wanted to live on a farm, raise my own food, and have animals. But growing up during the 1960's, I remember all the news about the Hippies and the Back to the Land Movement. I read Diet for a Small Planet by Lappé and read most of Rodale's Books on cooking with healthy foods and read Prevention Magazine (Rodale is the publisher) religiously, I decided at some point that I wanted. It took until I was in my late early 40's before I lived in a home where I had actual land that I had an honest to goodness garden. Before that, I lived in apartments and I had container gardens, but I loved it when I had a garden I could actually plant things in the ground. I enjoyed it so much.

When we moved to Walla Walla, WA, that was when I had more land than I could imagine, so I began making flowerbeds, vegetable beds, herb gardens, and there were trees and raspberries already here in place, but we've planted more. When things actually start producing fruit and vegetables and flowers, I go crazy. Picking flowers every day to put in my vases is a real joy, but I'd like to plant a dozen roses so I can grow the hips to use for tea and to add to muffins. Rose hips when dried or frozen can be added to muffins in tiny bits and you get as much Vitamin C as you do from Cranberries or orange peel. They have several older types of roses that have enormous hips and are much easier to harvest than the modern roses with smaller hips. I like being able to grow plants, shrubs, and trees that no one grows around our area. We have a nice microclimate here so my family gets a chance to eat fruits and veggies no one can grow easily around here. This year, I'm buying 2 dwarf pomegranates that I can bring in the house in the fall before frost hits here so I can have my own pomegranates. I hate paying $1.50+/each for pomegranates in the stores. Even the dwarf ones get small pomegranates that you can eat...and you don't eat the outsides anyway--you eat the little red fruit on the inside.

So, let me know what you've been up to and what you're going to do with your gardens, hobbies, home, and your ideas. I think it would be great to talk and help one another.

Talk with you soon!

Hugz,
Fiber_diva

Knitting Onward: Elizabeth Zimmerman, Meg Swansen, and Franklin Habit

2008-05-19T10:03:00.001-07:00

I picked up "Knits," Interweave's Knitting magazine, from Knitochet last week because I'd let my subscription lapse. I was so happy to read the article on Elizabeth Zimmerman, Meg Swanson and Schoolhouse Press, Ltd. written by Franklin Habit. I was so delighted to read about people who have done what I've been doing for years. I only bought my first Zimmerman book, "Knitting Around," about 4 years ago. I grew up in Wisconsin and never realized what a fabulous knitter we had within the state. And like usual for me, I missed her at a time it would have been so easy for me to have met her. I lived about 150 miles from her, close to Lake Michigan, but north. I moved out West when I was 22, to Wenatchee, WA for a year. Then to Seattle, where I dabbled in assorted fiber arts and started my own custom-made sweater business. I made sweaters from my own imagination and from others' imaginations, from 1974 to 1987-ish. I stopped knitting for others and sold my sweater business to another knitter when I divorced my first husband, but soon found that some of my former customers came back to me. I was divorced by 1986 and worked for Providence Hospital for a little more than a year, then to the University of WA in Seattle for 10+ years. Being a single mom was not easy and I really envied people who had the local support of loving families to support them...the few I trusted in my family, my paternal Grandmother and sister, Tracy, were still in WI and the rest, I had disbanded from when I moved out West. The relationship with my Mother changed over the last few years and when she died last October at least one fence was mended to a certain extent. The past was just that, the past, and those things do not change, but we have the chance to try to make amends now, which my mother did try to do. I was one of the lucky ones--my mother apologized to me for what she'd done way back when. It changed a lot of my feelings towards her, so she she died, I mourned not having enough time with her--the mother I got to know after she apologized.

I have been knitting on and off for years, starting when I was 6 yo. I've also been crocheting on and off since I was 8. When I remarried after 12 years of being a single mom to Alexandria, we lived for 6 years total in both Southern and Northern California after we got married--my husband and his family settled there after his father retired from the Air Force. When we moved north again, we bought a small 2.3-acre farm in Walla Walla, WA, and several handfuls of a flock of Icelandic sheep, two Finnsheep, and two alpacas. We also had Miss Lacey, a tortoiseshell Persian cat and have Bud, a dwarf Great Pyrenees, who are deceased adn 3 yo respectively. At this moment in time, I am selling out of all but 3-4 Icelandic sheep and 4 alpacas because I need more time for knitting, spinning, felting, selling at the Walla Walla farmers' market, designing new items and patterns, and teaching knitting, spinning, and toysmaking classes at the local knitting/fiber store called Knitochet (http://www.knitochet.com/ and NOTE: if you get a chance to visit the owner, Michelle Keith, at Knitochet, you will be delighted by her assortment of yarn as well as her friendly demeanor, she'd be so happy to see you and to visit with you as well as give knitting advice if you need to confer on colors or designs).

Life takes many turns and all we can do is adapt and change with them. I got tired of being confined to just the store bought yarn and so in preparation for when I would have fiber animals, I learned to spin at Rumplestiltskin's (http://www.rumpleknits.com) in Sacramento, CA. So, when we finally moved to Walla Walla, I was ready for my fiber animals. I decided on sheep and alpacas, which turned out to be a wonderful direction for me to go seeing I'm allergic to rabbits. I can spin the kind of yarns I want to be able to use for knitting and crocheting. I'm planning to learn to weave when I get more time, but it may be a while. I already have my table loom, so it's a matter of finding a good teacher and I know some wonderful weavers here in Walla Walla. So, weaving will be something I'll be able to do soon enough.

For the present, I'll sell my items and yarn at the Farmers' Market, some of my yarn from Knitochet, and also from my farm. In the winter, when the market is over in October, I sell from my foyer "store" in my home, until the Market opens again in May. As I've mentioned before, I have Icelandic wool, Icelandic/Finn wool, Alpaca, Alpaca/wool blends, and various other fiber I've bought locally and spun into yarn. Alpaca always seems to be the first I sell out of in terms of yarn, but I have silver grey, rose grey, cinnamon, black Huacaya as well as white Huacaya and Suri. I process all the fleeces myself, then hand spin them, so it takes me a lot of time to get them finished. I finish one fleece at a time and if I dye any of them, it takes a bit longer. I have Romney (I sold my Romney ram last year), Finn, 3 shades of Icelandic, white Finn, Green Merino/nylon blend (sold my nylons last year--lol-- they were just too wild, but I will probably buy it from Paradise Fibers -- http://www.paradisefibers.net/ -- in Spokane, WA).

When I look back on my almost 54 years of doing fiber arts (I learned to embroider when I was 4 to create a bib for my forthcoming baby sister), I am amazed by what I've learned and am still learning. I picked up a DVD on Portuguese Knitting which I've been watching and putting into practice. I hope that once I've learned it, it will increase the speed of knitting I do now. I enjoy being able to design and knit/crochet patterns, but it all takes time. I figure if I can increase my speed, it will help me do even more. I haven't had any problems with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and hopefully will not have, so I will be able to knit and crochet the rest of my life. I do gentle stretching of my hands, wrists, and arms for range of motion (ROM), so that will help me be able to continue doing fiber arts. I enjoy working on a knitting machine, and on knitting looms, I've tried many other types of needle work: double pointed crochet hooks, dpns, circular needles, needlepoint, cross stitch, crewel emboidery, beading, punch felting, regular felting, fulling, etc.--but other than pot holders looms or trivets looms, I haven't used any larger looms for my crafts, but I am waiting to begin weaving as well. If I don't caretake so many animals, I will most likely find the time... It is my belief that we will not grow old if we continue to learn at least one new thing every single day...and I intend to make sure I don't grow old. ;^D I also believe that we will always go back to the things we love doing, even if we don't always stick with it all the time. ALL fiber artists, which is what we all are when we knit, crochet, or work with textiles or fibers, will always have at least 3-10 projects going at any one time. We finish 1-3, but start at least that many more. I think if we finally do finish all our WIPs (works in progress), it is time for us to move on to another life...so we will all live forever in our projects--forever remembers, just like Elizabeth Zimmerman...."Knitting Onward."

I enjoyed the article by Mr. Habit in Interweave Knits magazine, and hope to read his book called "It Itches" which will be put out by the same magazine.

Take care,
Jet

The Newest Lambs

2007-05-17T14:32:00.002-07:00

We finally have lambs now. We had 5 born, but one died when the ewe stepped on her and broke her neck (and it would be the one that I wanted to keep–wouldn’t you know). FYI, Finn & Icelandic sheep are in gestation from 145-155 days and I’m not sure if that is the same as other sheep or not. I now have a Cotswold ewe in the flock, so I have to figure out if she’s even pregnant this year.

Rocky, my registered Icelandic ram, was a little off this year and I still have 3 ewes left to lamb, and one is that Cotswold ewe, MJ, is the registered Icelandic ewe, Sandy, and the last is the Romney/Icelandic/Finn cross, Little Bits aks Bitsy. Bitsy was the product of a mistake when the Romney ram I was selling got in with the ewes, hence the 3-way cross. She is cute and her fiber is really nice so I thought I’d keep her for the novelty factor. Her lambs will be 50% Icelandic, 25% Finn and 25% Icelandic, so should have even nicer fiber.

I’m selling Rocky this year and buying a new Icelandic ram who’s a dark grey mouflon. I want more color in my flock rather than white. Rocky throws a lot of white lambs, so this is how I discovered how to get more color.

Having sheep is amazing! This year they’re lambing later than the last 3 years, but that’s fine. We had a set of twins our of Sophie a 50/50 Finn/Icelandic cross: Sam the ram, and Boyd: Sam is white with very light silvery gray spots on the left hip and left shoulder, and Boyd is black with a grey or white undercoat. Then we had a set of triplets out of Madge, our 100% Finn ewe: Stockings, a little black and white ewe lamb; Bobert, a white ram lamb; and the last, Sylvie, a white ewe lamb. Now we have Sandy, Blesa, and Bitsy left to lamb. I’m not sure MJ got pregnant this year, she’s our Cotswold ewe.

I mainly raise Icelandic sheep, but I like a little variety and I’m looking for a cross that has the ultimate fiber to spin. So far, the Finn/Icelandic crosses seem to be quite nice…easy to spin, lots of crimp, very soft, and it felts like a dream. So the other types of sheep I have are Finn (Madge), Cotswold (MJ), a Romney/Finn/Icelandic cross (Bitsy), and a Shetland/Lincoln cross (BW).

We also have our Icelandic ram, Rocky (after Rocky and Bullwinkle—we sold the lamb named Bullwinkle last year to a nice family along with 2 ewe lambs), and Whitey, an Icelandic wether. Whitey will be our meat sheep for this next year. The nice thing about Icelandic sheep, is that you can butcher from 9 months to 5 years and it still tastes like lamb, it’s that mild. You can tell it’s not beef or pork or veal, but it doesn’t have that strong taste. I believe it’s because the Icelandic breed doesn’t have as much lanolin in it’s fiber and less fat in their meat, where as the stronger, more muttony tasting lambs have a lot more lanolin in their fiber so more fat in their meat. I’ve talked with other shepherds about this and they agree, so I think this is true across the board, but I’ll have to talk with a few more sheep people to see what they say about it, so at this time, it’s my opinion.

My chickens are laying again, about 4-6 eggs a day, so I’ll have enough to sell again this year. I have 2 roosters and 8 hens after the feral cat killed 7 hens, so we got a live trap and trapped the cat, and took him to jail (actually the animal shelter) so they could either get him adopted or whatever (and I think it was the whatever). He was really feral and had been adopted and abandoned at least twice since we’ve been here (not by us but our neighbors that adopted it, abandoned it, then adopted it again, then moved away and left him). That made me really upset and I called the animal shelter about it, but they said just to bring him in—I think the people who adopted him, then abandoned him should have taken responsibility of taking him to the pound, but because they’d already moved, the shelter didn’t do anything to them. So, I don’t think he was save-able as much as I wanted to save him, but I tried to 4 months to try to get him to be more friendly, and I never got past the snarls and his urinating because he was scared and then he’d run. I felt so bad for him, but I didn’t want to lose any more chickens.

At any rate, once he was at the pound, I bought 25 more chickens, this time Aracaunas and all pullets at that. I ordered 25 straight run Americaunas (the Easter Egg chickens), so I won’t be doing business with them next year if I need more chicks. So, if I want chicken soup or dinner, I’ll have to butcher my hens instead of the spare roosters. I had 13 roosters in my freezer and ate them, and I have one left. We had chicken once every two weeks from last summer until now, so it worked out well and though they were a little tough, the soup helped that a lot also.

I also have to shear my alpacas so they have bright and shiny new haircuts for summer before it gets too hot for them, not to mention I have to trim their hooves as well. In the Autumn, they’ll have all their shots for the year. I worm them about once a month with a naturopathic wormer using cob (molasses mixed with grains), chopped garlic, finely chopped onion, nutritional yeast (aka brewers yeast), and DE (diatomaceous earth) in appropriate amounts. I stopped using store bought wormer because I’m not sure what it does to the meat as well as the fiber. It seems that the natural wormer keeps the fiber softer, and when I used the chemical wormer, the fiber was more coarse—not what I want in my fiber. I’ll have a great fiber crop this fall though, and it wasn’t too bad this spring either, but I’m not sure if I’ll use the shearer that I used this time for next year. The sheep all look ragged, but that’s the way it goes.

Our cherry and apple trees are blooming. I love the light pink blossoms that shower down the sweet smelling petals when the winds blow. It was lovely yesterday. We planted 3 spreading yews in the front area where we took out the blue rug juniper. Lance and I are both allergic to juniper so we’re going to get rid of all of it, unless we move to our new property, but not for a while. We also planted 4 yucca, 2 rhubarb, 6 daylilies, and some other bulb flowers as well as a dianthus (different are than the others). I like having some color out front instead of having it all green. I like the idea of the rhubarb also because once the leaves come out it, almost looks tropical, Kind of like small sized Gunthera or Giant Elephant ears.

I’m planting my garden as well…mangels for the animals in winter (it’s a type of beet they use for farm animals—trace minerals, iron, B-vitamins for stress and cold), both spicy and mild mesclun, herbs, lettuce, and I bought 3 tomato plants: a cherry, an early girl, and fantastica…I wanted more heirlooms, but this year they didn’t have any, much to my dismay.

The only dismay I do have is that there is something killing my adult chickens so my egg production has dwindled along with the flock. However, I bought 25 Auracana chicks in March and they’re about half grown now, so when they get about 4-5 months old, the egg production will go back up. I have 10 customers patiently waiting for eggs and now they’ll have to wait longer. Oh well, they’re still less expensive than store bought farm fresh eggs and really are farm fresh. We have a live trap out there now with cat food in it to catch the raccoon or feral cat. We’ve already caught two feral cats who’ve killed the chickens and taken them to the pound, but there is something else out there killing them (we’re down to 4 now out of 13). I really wish that people would not let their cats run wild. The second one we caught was half-tame and was part Siamese or Himalayan, but Lance said no more cats than Norphan, so to the pound she went, but I think she’s salvageable, not like the first one we caught. People move away and leave them behind or they just dump them on the highway, so between feral cats and feral dogs, it’s a huge problem in the country. Really ticks me off that people put off their problems and don’t take responsibility for their animals.

Also, I’m now selling again at the Farmer’s market, this is the 4th year now, and sold over some yarn and a few other items, but it always takes time to get people to see me. I had a nice 2′ x 6′ banner made with the picture on my business cards as well as the same information on the front of them. I’m also doing flyers this year so that I can give them to people as they pass buy. It really has helped a lot in the marketing and it’s harder to get rid of flyers. One woman bought some yarn for a friend who lives in another state and will send my business card along with the yarn so she can call me to order more if she wants. It was a good connection, to say the least. I also sold some yarn to the local yarn shop. I hope it’s selling so that I’m able to keep supplying her with yarn. It would be terrific.

That’s about it on the home front for now, except my tomatoes are in, the mangels are planted as well as the mesclun (spicy and mild) for salads. I’m feeling happy right about things–life, love, marriage, business–and can only hope it goes as well in the near and distant future…and I hope they go well for all of you, too.

I’ve got groceries to get, so I’ll write more later! TTFN!

My First Ewe, Sophie, had two ram lambs on 3/28

2007-03-31T16:40:00.000-07:00

Well, Sophie lambed first and gave me two ram lambs: Sam (who I'm bottle feeding due to some intervention from Bud when he wanted to play with the newest lamb) is a white and gray lamb, and Boyd, who is a black lamb. Both are 75% Icelandic and 1/4 Finn and are lovely little boys. They were born in the morning of March 28, so are only 2.5 days old and are as cute as bugs in rugs. I love lambs, and I should make a few pins saying this, don't you think?

Anyway, I also have my 25 pullets aka hen chicks and though I would like it if they started laying very soon, it will be 4-5 months or more before they start. However, my 8 hens started laying as soon as the sun was out more and the days grew longer. I'm getting about 5-8 eggs a day depending on when they're laying. So, I already have 4 dozen eggs and have sold 3 dozen. $2.25 for a dozen and $2.75 for 18, if you bring your own cartons. Otherwise add 50-cents to the cost of the dozen and they're still cheaper than the eggs at the store at
$2.78 and $3.78 depending on whether they're brown eggs or organic. The brown eggs may or not be organic, but the ones with the organic identifier are definitely much more costly. Mine are farm fresh and chemical free (we're been chemical free since we moved here & cannot get the organic identifier for 7 more years if we stay where we are).

All I know is how good the eggs taste and how bright orange the yolks are meaning they have a lot more betacarotenes in them (so lots of A, D, & E). So, I'm a happy camper.

In the last rain we had, we lost all our peach and apricot blossoms, so though they're bare of blossoms, they still look dark pink. The apple and the cherry trees are getting ready to blossom though. All the daffs are in bloom, and not the irises or the roses, but they're coming along as well. Everything else is leafing out so the leaf buds have broken open and I should be getting more of my plants in the mail any day (more everbearing raspberries, hardy kiwi, and other things I ordered but didn't survive). I can hardly wait.

I have some bulbs and more rhubarb to plant also that I picked up or have to transplant. I have two rhubarb plants already showing with lots of leaves and stalks. I'm so hungry for rhubarb and strawberry pie I can almost taste it. The strawberries should be coming in June and then I'll have a steady supply until frost, so I'll have pies all summer. Yes!

I didn't get to go to the High Desert Fiber Festival this year because of feeding Sam. In the first week, I have to feed him every two hours the first day, every 3 hours the second day, every 4 the third, then 3 times a day thereafter, until it's time to start weaning them after two months...then it's 3 bottles a day, then in another month, one bottle a day, so by 4 months, they're weaned, (though they still come for bottles--they don't get them). Besides, they start eating hay solids and grass solids starting after the first week, but don't eat it totally until 3-4 months. Sheep and lambs are amazing. Anyway, I was disappointed I couldn't go to the High Desert thingy, but there's always next year.

So, that's all that happening right now, so I'll keep you updated. I should be having between twins to triplets from Blesa and Madge, Sandy will probably have one or two, and Little Bits (or Bitsy) will probably have one. I just hope I have more ewe lambs or I'll have to butcher a few of the ram lambs (who'll probably wind up being wethers or castrated rams). We'll see how it goes.

It was a beautiful day yesterday!

2007-02-18T09:54:00.000-08:00

It was such a beautiful day yesterday in Walla Walla, I couldn't believe it. Sunny, warm enough I had to take my coat off to work, with a lovely light breeze starting to stir the branches on the fruit and nut trees. Absolutely lovely! I didn't realize how much the gloomy late winter, early spring gray was affecting me until then--who would have thought I'd have a minor case of SAD (Seasonal Affectiveness Disorder). I believe there are tons of people who are affected by SAD, but don't even realize it. I grew up in WI, and I used to get "cabin fever" from time to time, but they didn't call it SAD. Now I know better. :?

No lambs yet, but it is getting closer by the day. I do believe my sheep, Blesa, will be the first to lamb. Her udders are as large as after she had her lambs last year...only problem with that is that the teats nipples are too large to fit inside her lambs' mouths and they hang almost to the ground. I had to milk her last year to get the colostrum out for the poor little lambs...and it looks like she'll have twins or triplets this year, so another year of bottle fed lambs. But I do love the bottle fed lambs dispositions anyway...they come when I enter the pasture knowing I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the few few weeks, then later in the coming months, it drops off to two bottles a day, then one bottle a day, then weaning. I follow exactly what the mothering ewes do so that the lambs don't get a short shrift of milk and grow properly.

Lance told me last night that he'd finish up my stanchion today so that I'd be able to milk Blesa properly for the lambs' milk because her poor udders get so sore that she really needs to get the milk out, not to mention that if I don't get the milk out, she could get mastitis (udder infection).

In addition, with the stanchion, I can milk, trim hooves, give the sheep their 8-way, vitamin, & BoSe shots, and in the future, possibly shear. Oooh...I feel like I am getting a birthday present early (Feb. 19 is my birthday).

Lance took me out to dinner at the Homestead Restaurant in Walla Walla for Valentine's Day, which also happens to be our anniversary (our 10th, no less)! We had a really nice time, but I wish we could have sat next to each other rather than across from each other. The pricey dinner included hors d'oeurves, dinner, dessert, a polaroil pic, a rose, and great service (we had to pay for wine, coffee, and anything extra). We ordered batter fried mushrooms and bruchetta, very rare filet mignon with garlic potatoes & veggies, & raspberry cheesecake for dessert....lovely and delicious, except for the mushrooms which had the batter being a little under done (the batter around the large mushrooms was still wet instead of fried) so I sent them back. Oh well, we all know nothing is perfect, not even 10 years of marriage, but we try to keep things going for each other with lots of "I Love You's" and hugs and kisses each day. Seems to work out fine considering what we both had with our first marriages. Guess those first marriages were our practice marriages to get ready for our marriage. ;)

So, yesterday... It was almost 70 degrees. Lance and I both worked on the trees that had been cut down (we lost 2 willows to 50+ mph winds in the fall and winter, then had an arborist take the rest of them down this spring). Cutting up the large pieces and putting the small branches and such into the burn pile (we haven't burned anything yet as we need a County burn permit). We've cleaned up most of the property since we moved here, so that we have gotten some additional land which I threw grass seed on so the sheep will have a bit more pasture where the original burn pile was. When I dug and hauled everything out of the corner, I noticed that one of the previous owners had actually tried to burn wood/garbage in that corner and several of the fence posts had chars on them as well as two posts almost burned entirely through. We also had a branch on the apple tree that we had to take off and when we did, we noticed a lot of dry rot and perhaps termite damage in the center of the branch. Of course, we were already aware that one of the previous owners didn't know how to prune trees either, so that left the cut branches parallel to the ground leaving a place for water/rain to get between the bark and the inner tree to be compromised. Oh well, we'll have to replace most of the trees anyway (we've already taken down 10 of the 14 apple trees, the two willows, probably 2 of the peach/apricot trees, and maybe one of the walnuts... What a waste. Oh well, we'll put in trees that are more appropriate (a couple of elms, arborvitae around the front pasture to replace the ones that are dying for bad pruning, put in a couple more apricot/peach trees to replace the ones that are almost dead--basically starting from scratch. It really upset me to see how poorly those trees on the property had been taken care of and I knew that this would happen, but I didn't think we'd still be here to deal with them... But isn't this what life is all about. I do have 2 tulip trees coming though for the lawn area, so we'll see how fast they grow; and we've got volunteer elms coming from Dale's Dad's farm (Dale is Lance's partner in Zydax). But I'll still have to buy the peach and/or apricot trees and maybe get a few bush cherries and sand cherries to provide a nice privacy screen near the front pasture, but I don't want them to grow so tall that I can't see my sheep and alpacas when I'm looking out the front window.

So, today, I'm a little sore, but I'll go out and work a bit more in the pastures scooping alpaca pucky and sheep sh*t to put into the back pasture's compost heap. You'd never believe just how much accumulates during the winter when I can't get out to shovel it each day, but the lovely compost I have for my gardens is wonderful. I can hardly wait to see how my garden grows... Mary, Mary, Quite contrary. How does your garden grow? And all of that nursery rhyme.

Today, the wind is a bit stronger and I see clouds encroaching in the SW, so I'd best get my behind out there to finsh what I can before the clouds get out here and I lose the day.

TTFN!

A bit more about my animals and poultry

2007-02-11T14:11:00.000-08:00

So, we have a small 2.3-acre farm with 9 sheep, 4 alpacas, 11 free-range chickens, 3 guineas, a ranch dog (a dwarf Great Pyrenees named Bud), and a barn cat (name Norphan because she was “an orphan” = “‘norphan” like in the Pogo comix strip).

Alpaca names (they’re all male):
Alpacas are part of the Camelid family which includes camels, alpacas (Huacayas & Suris), llamas, guanacos and vicuña. Today, the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña are found in South America. There are 28 different colors of alpaca.

Koko is a Huacaya (cinnamon with a white Harry Potter stripe on his front locks on his head)
Earl Grey is a Huacaya (rose grey which is a grey with reddish/brown in the grey that looks rose or purplish)
El Dorado aka Eldie is a Huacaya (a beautiful sparkling white boy and very handsome)
Al Paca is a Suri (with white dreadlocks and fiber so fine it feels like silk)

Sheep names:
Icelandics are a primitive, dual-coated breed originating from Iceland and have been there for over 800 years first brought to Canada in the late 1970’s-early 1980s, then brought to the U.S. shortly thereafter. The fiber grows from 8-14″ long in one year, so I shear twice a year to have fiber I can spin without too much trouble.

Rocky is our Icelandic ram–lustrous white fiber will be 2 yy in spring of 2007 and is our flock sire
Sandy is an Icelandic ewe–dark grey mouflon lamb will be 1 yy in April of 2007
Blackie is an Icelandic ewe–charcoal grey, 5 yy
Blesa is an Icelandic ewe–reddish brown, aka moorit, fiber that’s almost as soft as a lamb’s wool & she’s 4 yy
Whitey is an Icelandic wether (a wether is a castrated male)—ivory and tan and he’s about 5 yy

Finnish Landrace or Finnsheep:

Madge, a white Finn ewe–4 yy in May

Cotwold

Emmy, a multi-colored brown, gray, black ewe–1 year old in April

Crosses:

Sophie, an Icelandic/Finn cross ewe–3 yo in February
BW aka Black Wether, a Lincoln/Shetland cross wether—2 yo in March)
Little Bits aka Bitsy, a white Romney/Icelandic ewe—1 year old in May

This is a picture of Sophie & her two lambs below. Quite a color difference in the lambs, isn’t there? (The lambs are sold.)

The lamb below is Ralphie, one of the bottle-fed wethers. Bud’s only 14 weeks here. He was 2 yy now and is a little bigger now, but he’s gotten more chest on him and more weight. Ralpie was sold.

It’s fun watching all the animals interact together. Bud and Eldie (Eldie is about 30-40 times Bud’s size) play, is spite of the huge differences in size, for as long as an hour or more, just chasing each other, then Eldie pushes Bud tail over teakettle, then they rest and start up again. When the other male alpacas, usually Al and Earl or Earl and Koko, start their dominance actions, Bud thinks they’re playing so he gets right in their amongst them. I love watching all their antics: sheep, dog, and alpacas. It’s one of the reasons I love living on the farm!

All the ewes should be lambing soon...usually near mid-February. SOme of them are large enough around the middle that I think several will be having triplets or very large twins. We'll have to wait and see what we get though. I'm also planning on buying 25 Americana chicks from McMurrays Hatchery as the people at the local hatchery I used to buy from retired after their entire flock came down with a disease and they had to be put down...and as they were fairly along in age, they decided to retire instead of starting over again. It makes sense to me, but I miss them dearly. They referred us to other people who hatch chicks, but I don't like them that much.

I’ll chat with you again soon and I’ll tell you about my endeavors with a Kertzer cardigan pattern that I’m making for a friend.

TTFN...

Happy Holidays from Jet and Celtic Crossroads

2006-12-17T12:01:00.000-08:00

I know the last 5 posts or so have been under the same date, but I had to republish them from my other blog on MySpace.com. I wanted to make sure you all were caught up on what was going on in my world.

It's interesting that so much has happened in a few months. My November spinning class went well, and my student and I have become friends. I have another kids knitting camp this Tuesday and Wednesday, and that will be fun. I'm pretty excited and I love working with kids. I used to volunteer for the YMCA when I lived in Seattle and used to have great in depth conversations with the kids there...most were very bright and knowledgable for the 8-15 yo group...but kids are growing up much faster than when the boomers were kids. Television, radio, music, magazines, etc., have all helped that happen and I'm not so sure it's such a good thing. Kids don't seem to have as much fun with their busy schedules: sports, extracurricular activities to the nth degree, starting to worry about college when they're still in the 5th grade. No wonder kids are so stressed with everyone pushing on them from their grandparents, parents, and teachers to their friends. It's especially bad in the BIG cities, but even in the country where we live, it's like that now, though they're a bit slower about it than in the big cities, but the stress is still there nonetheless. The kids now don't have any spare moments to really play and be kids for the most part.

I was invited to participate in another festival in Prosser, WA, for the 3rd Annual Wine Country Festival. I'll have a chance to demonstrate spinning and it is so fun to watch people. I love doing that because parents and their kids take such an interest in it.

The people who bought Rommy, two 2006 ewe lambs and a 2005 yearling ewe, will be picking them up today... It's been awhile since we have held the sheep until they could pick them up, but they are getting them. They live here in town, so they'll have the chance to build their sheep farm well with 30 acres (lucky for them).

Lance and I are searching for 20-40 acres near where we are now, but it hasn't been easy. We not only need the land for me to have a profitable business breeding and selling sheep, but we also need water rights to make sure the sheep have their pasture and have some grass/alfalfa we can grow so we don't have to buy it for the sheep each year. It will all work out, but ti takes time. On this land, we'll be building our own home: either a straw bale or a partial underground home. We'll figure that out when we get the land which we'll build. The house will have a solarium where I can keep my plants and raise some exotics that I cannot grow now due to lack of light. I want to raise a pomegranite as well as some oranges and satsumas, maybe even some kumquats and limes. Some orchids too. I wish I could have a banana tree. It would mean another fiber source and banana leaves for cooking if I weren't so allergic to them. It is a shame, but being able to recognize your limits and boundaries is part of life.

I finished spinning up my Ronaldsay wool a couple days ago. On Monday, I have to stop by the airport gift shop to see if anything has sold and to replace or change stock. I have to go by every two weeks, but it's worth it to have a place to sell my crafts and yarn in the winter. With the Farmers' market closing at the end of OCtober, it does make it difficult to sell things though sometimes people come to the house to buy yarn or other items, so I have kept a few here for that reason.

We're practically finished Christmas shopping, only two more gifts to wrap and send. I made a pair of tube socks for my SIL to wear with her new Birkies (blue with peach stripes on the toes and a band of peach at the top). I also have a shawl I'm knitting for a friend and a shrug I'm making for a woman I met through Knitochet (www.knitchet.com), the local yarn and fiber shop. Every time I go into the store, I find some interesting yarn and fiber to knit or spin respectively. This is going into her 3rd year of being in business and her store is beautiful and just as nice, but very different, as Wild Women Yarns, the LYS in Walla Walla that went out of business two years ago.

December 30 will be 9 years since I met Lance, my husband, the first time. When we met that day when I got off the plane at LAX, was the best day of my entire life. Our life together hasn't been perfect by any means, but we love each other a lot, and we both have the same ideas about what we want to do with our lives and our marriage, so it works out pretty well. We've both had to compromise to a certain degree as in all marriages if you want them to work out for very long, but it's not because we have to, it's because we want to. We'll be married for nine years on Valentine's Day next year.

Get your shopping done ASAP so you can enjoy the Christmas Spirit and n spend your time worrying about getting it done. It only gets worse when you procrastinate and you have to deal with all the crowds.

Happy Holidays!

Hugs,
Jet

My Friend Left, but Other Things Have Happened...

2006-12-17T11:57:00.000-08:00

Well, my friend, Bill, is gone now to Denver before he heads back to Nicaragua in two weeks. He has family and friends there. He says his stay with us was fine, but it was way, way too cold for him, not to mention the lack of sunshine.

We've lived in Walla Walla for almost 4 years now and this is the first time we've been overcast this much. Usually, it's sunny most of the time and it's overcast only when it rains or snows or is foggy, but when it's foggy, it burns off by noon. Oh well...the same thing happened when I lived in Seattle and my youngest sister, Linda, came to visit. It was the worst winter we ever had with flooding, tons of rain and overcast 100% of the time. The next year, when my second youngest sister came to visit with her husband and his family, it was beautiful with sun every day and warm enough weather that you didn't need to worry about wearing heavy clothing or a raincoat. Much different than the weather in WI at the same time: lots of snow, wind, and cold. That is the main reason why I moved from WI to live out West. Seattle might not get much snow in winter, but it's moderate most of the year. Walla Walla is hot in summer, cold in winter, but usually there is sun all year long because we're in what is considered the Banana Belt of the area. Spring is earlyt here as well, so lets see what happens this spring. I already have 4 seed catalogs...and I can plan for what I want to grow next year.

Looks like some of my ewes are already pregnant, so that is great. I will probably start having lambs the end of February to the beginning of March...then start the sales and the shearing. I can hardly wait.

The last 3 alpacas will be shorn this spring as well, so will have plenty of fiber to spin...

I love having doing my spinning and other crafts that I do... They give me such a sense of peace, very similar to meditation or prayer. I noticed that some of the knitting and crocheting magazines have prayer shawls, so that's a good thing.

I was asked by the "Country Register" to write an article about my farm and business, so I'll get that to them as soon as possible, an article for Fiber Femmes (fiberfemmes.com), and another article for the "Country Register" about the fiber cooperative we're starting up in the Blue Mountain area of SE Washington, NE Oregon, and SW Idaho. I can harldy wait. I have to write up an outline for the Kirkman House Museum to see if they can help with this, but it's possible, so I need to cut this short and get that done ASAP.

Other than that, I've finished 1/2 of a pair of socks for my SIL, Joann, and have 4 more Christmas projects to go...

So, get all yoru projects for Xmas finished, and I will chat with you all again later.

Hugs,
Jet

My friend's here fron Nicaragua

2006-12-17T11:55:00.000-08:00

Hi! My friend, Bill, came to stay for a week. He lives in Nicaragua and had a band named "All Those Wasted Mangos." It disbanded when the people who were in the band went back to their respective countries. I think he really enjoys living there and likes not having to deal with so many people as he's kind of shy.

I had a really bad headache just before he got here--it had lasted 8 days, so when I picked him up, I felt rather exhausted. But the visit's been going quite well and there is one more thing we need to do before he heads back to Nicaragua...but we have a couple more days.

I talked with my Mom for the first time in about 4 months or so. I never thought I'd hear this come out of her mouth, but she apologized for all the bad things she did to me when I was growing up. She also told me that her mother, my maternal Grandmother, had abused her when she wqas growing up: physically, verbally, emotionally, spiritually, sexually, & every other way you can imagine...so it was no wonder Mom had passed that on to her kids. I just thank God I didn't pass it on to my daughter, or I'd have been perpetuating the abuse. Not that she didn't get a spanking once ina long while, but only when she scared me by running in the street and not looking and she got a spank on her bottom because I didn't want her killing herself. I think I spanked her about 12-15 times in her whole life...not like when I was a kid... I was lucky I lived through my childhood and teenage years the abuse was so bad. In the 50's through the 70's, there was no Child Protective Society to help kids and no one really listened to kids, "kids were seen and not heard" was the phrase of choice. No wonder abuse was so rampant, not to mention incest.

Anyway, I was very happy Mom apologized, but even so, I forgave her long ago, but not for what she did--that was unforgivable. The physical abuse was hard enough to deal with, but the head games (emotional, spiritual, verbal) she played were worse by far. It took me years of counseling to get to the point where I even knew what mental health was...and I still got fooled by people who were good at playing those same games.

I learned after a while though...making lists of good qualities that I wanted in friends and boyfriends, as well as lists of negatives to make sure I didn't miss things. It was a lot of work, but I did figure enough out that I did find the man of my dreams, as well as many friends who I enjoy being with and doing things with. It's one of the things people don't realize is that any relationship, whether friendship or love relationship, needs to be worked on. It's not easy, and it never is, and if you never fight, someone is stuffing something they don't want to talk about.

I sometimes feel I spent so much time trying to fix me, that I missed out on lots of other things. I've resolved that though because if I hadn't done the work, I wouldn't be the person I am today--I've become a person that I can say I love and want to know and be friends with...and I don't think many people can say that about themselves. I like being with me and can stand to be alone with myself for hours at a time.

When I was younger, it was easier being drunk or really busy to the point that what I felt like or thought about was buried under tons of stuff. If there are tons of stuff to do or drinking so you cannot think, you never get a chance to love yourself or get to know yourself. And if you don't love yourself or know yourself, then how can anyone else love you or know you. As a famous philospher once said, "Know Thyself." I'd have to say unequivocally that he was absolutely correct.

I heard from Alley, my daughter, via email the other day. She's doing well, and is again living in Seattle. She had a boyfriend who was insecure, jealous and manipulative (which is how her father was with me). Apparently, the city they were living in had floods and they had to be lifted out by helicopter which she thought was "way kewl." She got all her stuff, and when she got to where the helicopter dropped them off, she told him she was leaving, and she did. He was isolating her from family and friends, adn it was only a matter of time before he started to become abusive. It's the same pattern her Dad had when we were first dating, and it only got worse after we married. I stayed with him for almost 10 years (my daughter was 2-years old when I left and divorced him under the domestic violence act in King County), but was so happy after we were apart. Once the divorce was final, April 15, 1986, I cannot tell you how much I celebrated with my friends. It was the happiest I've ever been and the freest I've ever felt.

I have my handmade items on consignment at the new Walla Walla Gift Shop at the Airport. I'm one of 12 artisans who are selling things there. I sell most of the summer at the Farmers' Market (sellilng from the first Saturday in May until the last Saturday in October), and don't make any money during the winter months. Selling my items at the Airport will give me a chance to bring in a bit of money during the months I usually don't get much income.

I also was invited to participate in the 3rd Annual Wine Country Spring Fair in Prosser, WA. It's the second Saturday in May which coincides with the Farmers' Market, but I'll have to wait until my friend leaves on Dec. 7 before I can decide what I want to do. That weekend is the same weekend that the parents/visitors are in town for the graduation ceremonies at Walla Walla College and Whitman College, so it is a HUGE sales day. On the other hand, the Wine Country Spring Fair could be a bigger sales day as more people come to that (thousands, rather than hundreds), so could prove to be quite lucrative. I just need to sit down and work out the numbers.

I taught the spinning class last month and it was really great. The woman I taught already had an inkling of how to spin, having taught herself, but she wanted assurance that she was doing it right and if I could teach her anything she didn't already know, then that would be great as well. She did really well, and I told her that after I taught the class and it was totally over, that I'd like to develop a friendship. She was game to doing that as well, so we're on our way to becoming friends.

I have another knitting class in mid-December though with 6-12 yo girls (maybe a boy or two as well) adn that will be terrific. I like to teach and teaching kids is so fun because they really want to learn. I'm pretty excited about it and will possibly have a chance to teach both spinning and knitting regularly.

In addition, I'm going to be knitting a shrug for a woman who bought a kit and is afraid to knit the shrug. So she was looking for someone to do that, and the owner of the LYS (Local Yarn Shop) suggested me, and will wait until after the holidays to I'll have time to do that. I'm already knitting a pair of socks for my SIL, 4 rabbits for my husband's business partner's wife, a wool sweater for my husband, and a pair of socks for myself. Another friends, Miss C, asked if I'd knit her a shawl, so I need to get together with her so she can pick out the yarn of her choice so I can get working on that as well. In the midst of all of this, I'm spinning and working on small projects to add to my inventory at the airport as well as making more for the Farmers' Market. You can see I have my work cut out for me.

I am sending off 4 or 5 (can't remember how many) scarves down to Sacramento for a friend to give out to the homeless down there. I'm also sending off a tiny lavender teddy bear to a friend who is doing a book that she'll auction off to benefit abused children. Just have to get both boxes down to the Post Office to get them off.

One of the many things I want to do this year is to get some certificates: hand spinning, handknitting, machine knitting and crocheting. Not so much that it will do anything but help me feel that what I'm doing is of the highest quality so I know my clients and customers trust my skills in these endeavors. It also helps people feel more confident about my skills in teaching them what they need to know about these crafts, so I've got a lot on my platter...not to mention that I want to learn to do some bisque ceramics and maybe some clay bead work. I can get them fired locally, and I'm hoping that they'll have some classes soon. I also need to get the glazes and the clay to do the work, but that's coming along as well. The biggest project of all is learning to weave on a loom. We'll see how much I can accomplish this year.

The only thing really stopping me from accomplishing any of this stuff is the head pain I have from the botched brain surgeries and the migraines and the hormonal migraine headaches I get from monthlies and the peri-menopause hormones that I hoipe will finish soon (Doc says it could take from 1-10 years to finish up menopause--oh great). Other than the pain, I'm amazingly healthy...don't know what would happen if I got really ill, but I think I'll do fine until I finally just die in my sleep (at least that's how I'd like to go). We'll see if I can fight against the pain long enough to get what I need to accomplish, accomplished. Keep your fingers crossed.

The nice thing about doing the fiber arts I do is that many are akin to meditation and prayer...like spinning for instance. The sound of the wheel turning, the rhythm of the treadle, the yarn starting from loose fibers and changing into nice even yarn--well, it's all part and parcel of that meditation/prayer feeling. You don't really have to concentrate really hard once you've learned the particulars of spinning, so it leaves your mind clear of that worry. Once the worries are gone, you can let your mind just flow and you find that you can think more clearly. That's the best part...solutions pop into your mind like it was there all along and you're free to act on them or not as you choose. Knitting and crocheting are the same way, unless the stitches or patterns are really intricate because if they're complicated, you have to focus on them rather than the meditation part of knitting or crocheting. But I love doing them anyway.

I hope to hear from you all soon...

Look life full in the face and tell it--YES!--I want it all.

Hugs,
Jet

Things Are Going Well...

2006-12-17T11:50:00.000-08:00

Things are going well...I sold 7 more sheep this weekend, but I sold two I wish I hadn't sold--Rabbit and Sweety, two of my original 3 bottle fed lambs from my first lambing in 2004. I did keep Sophie though. Rabbit was this white ball of wool, a Finn/Icelandic ewe lamb and Sweety was a black ball of wool, a purebred Icelandic ram lamb, who became a wether (a wether is a castrated ram). Both were sweet and nice lambs, but Sophie was outstanding and is our public relations sheep now. She stands and lets people pet her and she wags her tail...and it doesn't matter who the people are or what size they are (*kids or adults) and she will do the same thing. I do miss Rabbit and Sweety though.

We did have an accident though. One of the brown ewe lambs drowned...and I didn't even see her. She looked like a lump of mud at the bottom of the creek and if the water hadn't moved her so we saw her tags, we might not have found her at all. Poor little lamb...it broke my heart to see her there. We buried her at the back of the property...

I also sold some of my wool and some of the hats I've made. I'm shipping off 5 scarves to Sacramento and a tiny bear to a woman who is using it for a project she's doing to raise money for abused children..

My spinning class went well and I made a new friend, Anne Glassley, a sister fiber artist who's interest is in felting, but wants to spin. She was not the beginner I thought she was, she had taught herself both the wheel and the spindle, so it was more a matter of building her confidence and showing her how to check her twist so she wasn't over-spinning the fiber. It was if she was a spinner in a past life she picked it up so fast. I told her that we should get together for lunch soon and she thought that would be great, so that's what we'll do. Her husband, Bob, was a very nice fellow as well. He was so considerate and really cares about his wife a lot and wants her to enjoy her life--you can see how much he loves her..

Lance bought a Yamaha V-Star 1100 motorcycle and both got helmets and may take a ride if the weather warms up over the holidays. He wants to take it out towards Clarkston or Lewiston, so that will be interesting. I haven't been on a motorcycle since well before I divorced my former spouse. When we took a long trip, he kept dumping the bike while I was on it because he kept packing wrong...it has to be balanced or the bike's off-balance and you get dumped. 4 times was 4 times too many, so I told him I wasn't going to ride with him any more, and that was a couple years before I divorced him. Best move I ever made, and I became a single parent of a beautiful 2 yo daughter..

It's been interesting though...seeing a motorcycle in our garage, but it's a real beauty...dark red with silver/gray flames outlined on the tank and fenders. Low to the ground and it has a nice rumble to it, not the potato-potato of a Harley Davidson, but a good sound nonetheless. In the summer, we might get a Yamaha Virago 250 for me to put around town to do some errands. Gas being what it is, we'll be saving more gas using the bikes rather than the cars anyway. If we didn't live right on the highway, I'd settle for a moped, but a moped won't go fast enough on the Highway so a 250 is the bike I'll need to have..

I'm working on a pair of peach cotton/merino socks for my SIL, Jo, who got her first pair of Birkenstocks this summer. I've wanted a pair for quite a while and that might give me the impetus to get a pair. I told her I'd knit a pair of socks for her to wear with the Birkenstocks and she was all for it..

I'm still working on Lance's V-neck sweater out of the silver gray Icelandic from Moe, one of the Icelandics I sold this spring. He had a beautiful fleece and the sweater is going to be very handsome with the light, dark, and medium gray striping as I spun it from the lock. I've got the sleeves finished and the body to the underarms, now it's a matter of getting the arms to the underarms and then finish up the upper arms, shoulders, and neck, then putting on the edging...and it's done..

I finished my shawl and took it with me to Knitochet to see if the owner could sell it for me. It's made from a wine/silver/white/black gimp type of yarn made of rayon. I loved the color and how it worked up...looks like I put metallic yarn in it but it's how the rayon shines. Really lovely with lots of ruffles and movement when you put it on. Keep your fingers crossed..

Well, I'm off to bed. Take care....

Hugs,
Jet.

AAA Fiber Arts Answers

2006-12-17T11:46:00.000-08:00

I've been getting lots of questions about fiber arts: knitting, embroidery, crewel embroidery, rug hooking, papermaking, crocheting,spinning, felting,dyeing, weaving, needlepoint, cross stitch, sewing, quilting, serging, or any other fiber art you have technique or how-to questions on.

Based on all the questions, I decided that it would be a good thing to start a blog group related to answering those questions.

If you have any questions, please ask and if I do not know the answer right on the tip of my brain, I can find someone who does.

I just want to help you enjoy your fiber arts as much as I enjoy mine.

Just so you know, the group is moderated so there won't be a ton of XXX-rated or other slimy sorts able to post nasties of assorted types on this group. It is a help group, not an advertising group.

Hope you'll have some questions soon so I can help...I love helping people who are interested in learning about fiber arts.

I've also posted some new upcoming classes on the bulletin board, in case you'd like to learn in person.

Hugs
Jet

Being Successful

2006-12-17T11:42:00.000-08:00

I was looking at the calender today and noticed that we're halfway thought the month. Time is really flying by this year. My Grandmother used to say that as you get older, time just flies by... You start out when you're a kid and you're always feeling bored, so you run around with other kids and even then, you still feel kind of bored. As you get older and there are more enticing things to do, you find that you're not as bored as you were before. Then you graduate from high school, you go on to college or you get a job or get married, and then there never seems to be enough time.

One day you look into the mirror and that 20 yo is no longer there...there is a more mature and, hopefully, more intelligent person than there was even a few years before. And time is flying by like there is no tomorrow. Kind of scary, isn't it? This is where I always wish that I was back at age 8 when I first started saying to my folks and grandparents that I was bored, but knowing what I know now.

Wouldn't that be terrific? Going back to an earlier stage in your life and knowing what you know at 50 or more? I'm not talking about what stock would be making money back then. I'm talking about the mature thinking, the mature emotions, and all the things we learned on our way to 50 or more.

Knowing which person to watch out for (not the exact person, but that certain type of person) or that you want to get to know better. Behaviors we had when we were young seem to have mellowed out by the time we hit 50. Knowing that we need to start saving when we're young so that when we retire, we can take care of ourselves and not worry about pensions (those would still be nice tough), social security (that will be long gone soon enough), and our families. Knowing that we made the right decisions that we won't pass on knowing that we screwed up when we were younger because of bad choices we made or not so nice things we did.

Personally, I'd only go back to age 23. I had a nasty childhood and wouldn't go back to before 23 even if I had the chance. 20 was the start of my life when I could made my own decisions, the right ones, so that I could feel good about who and what I was. I had saved $25,000 by that point, but I wouldn't have married my first husband--he went through my savings like it was water.

'd have made different decisions about my life...have gone back to college sooner to get my degree so I could have been promoted sooner and gone up higher in the ranks.

I'd have taken more art courses and more courses on sales and merchandising than I did, so I could have done better when I had my custom-made sweater business.

Oh well...as they all say, the past is past, and we have to look towards the future, which I am doing. I have high hopes for my future, despite of the head pain.

I want to raise more Icelandic sheep and sell the lambs. I want to make sure that I raise them well so they have nice fleeces that I can process and spin and sell. I want to teach more people how to do the crafts I love so they don't disappear forever. If the world keeps going the way it's going, we may need those crafts again for clothing and household goods.

I want to sell the items I create, from patterns, clothing, and home decor items to regular folks, to creating things that businesses would want for their front offices.

I want to learn more fiber crafts. I want to learn more about everything. I love learning and can usually do much of what I've learned, so I keep learning. It's a neverending cycle.

I want to enjoy my life more, and if that means creating things until I'm 100, then that's what I'm willing to do. I love doing it and sharing what I do.

Anyway, I'm successful at what I'm doing. I'm selling sheep and lambs, fiber, yarn, baby, teen and adult clothing, afghans and toys. I'm also selling patterns I've created myself for shawls, mittens, toys, etc. I'm teaching classes to more and more people, and I'm learning more about myself throughout all of this. I may slow down with age, but I feel that I'm happy I'm doing this now when I have the energy to do it, than to wait until it's too late and miss the boat.

So, do what you love and hopefully, the rest will follow. You'll be a success in your own eyes. Isn't that what's most important? It doesn't matter if you're a success in anyone else's eyes, but your own.

You are the most important person in your life, so take care of yourself. You can love people, but if you don't love yourself, they won't feel loved.

Hugs,
Jet

Life, Love, & thanks for all the Jalapenos

2006-12-17T11:38:00.000-08:00

Life is so strange sometimes. You run into people in real life or on the Internet and you wonder who and what they are in reality. Are they honest, do they give to charity, are they ethical and moral or the opposite. It's hard to say unless they actually do something to prove themselves one way or another.

Because I survived a very abusive childhood and young adulthood, I really have no reason to trust anyone. However, I try to trust most people because if I don't, I feel the abusers have won. Most people I've meet have good hearts, and I think that's a good thing, especially when we can't even trust our politicians--even the President.

I haven't voted for anyone of the Presidential candidates since 1980 because I didn't trust them and I refuse to vote for the "lesser of the two evils." I've written in the person I believed to be the best person for that position. I may not get that person into office, but I'm making a large statement about the quality of the candidates by saying that I don't like the people that are getting onto the ballots, besides exercising my right to vote.

I guess I make a real effort to vote because no one that I know of in my family does vote. My Mom thinks it is a good thing that she hasn't ever voted, my Dad and Stepmonster (oops, I meant Stepmother) do the same thing...but then they complain about who gets elected. I don't think that they have any right to complain if they didn't do anything to make a difference in the first place. But that's my opinion on voting and who's elected.

Anyway, I tend to trust people first, and let them show me what they're really like over time...how else can I explain why I have people I've had friends for over 40 years... Mostly, I like people, and though I do make mistakes like everyone else, I try to make amends and apologize if I've harmed someone.

In the past 13+ years since I had the 1993 brain surgery, I've had to up with severe, chronic head painm and it's been a lot harder to stay in contact with people and make new friends (thank God for the Internet). I'm down so much of the time from the pain and breakthrough headaches, that I have to make a extra efforts to stay in touch. I've had an additional 4 surgeries since then, and the last finally reduced the level 8-9 pain to a 7-8, it's still hard to function.

Let me explain a bit more: after the first surgery, the neuro-oncologist left me with all but 1/5th of the tumor in my optic nerve, and didn't seem to care about the 3-day cerebral spinal fluid leak, that left me with chronic, severe right-sided head pain. I was let go from my job at the University because I couldn't do the work because the pain was so bad. The good news was that the tumor was benign, but that was about all the good news after that.

After the surgery, I couldn't read without tossing my cookies after only a few minutes, and that about killed me as I love reading: text books, reference books, poetry, romance and scifi--everything and anything. I'm what you'd call an information Junkie. The original surgeon wouldn't prescribe any pain meds. I went to a neurologist in Bremerton, WA, who tried to find something that worked--accupuncture, medications, etc. and found one medication that sort of work, but he sent me to the pain clinic at Swedish Medical Center to see if they could find something that worked better. The MD, who had my case, tried other things like injecting lidocaine into my spinal column and other things before he tried other medications. The injection didn't work, but he did find a medication that did work and it brought the pain down to a lower level, but then the breakthrough pain was still higher and the meds didn't work for that--I had to stay in bed with a pan beside me because when I had that pain, I was throwing up constantly...so I didn't have to diet. lol

I was already exercising 3-4 hours a day to build endorphins, I knitted, crocheted, and did what I could to keep my spirits up and to not focus on the pain, but it was so bad, there wasn't much I could do. I did want a life though, so I did what I could, and was as functional as I could be under the circumstances.

Then I needed to have another surgery--the second--because the MD didn't take out all of the tumor--he took out what was from the right optic nerve to the carotid artery and optic chiasm behind it, where it was girdling artery/chiasm, and took the top off the optic nerve, then put it back on. No one could figure out why he didn't take the tumor out of the optic nerve. The second surgery happened because the other MDs thought it might help the pain and becasue the tumor was growing outside the optic nerve again. A little later, we found out that the tumor by the artery/chiasm was growing again.

So that's where the third surgery came into the picture. It was called a Gamma Knife procedure that was supposed to stop the tumor from growing--it was supposed to help within a year--and eventually it did stop it, but after 9 years. And through it all, the pain was so bad I wasn't sure that anyone could do anything about it.

During this time, I was trying to date and figure out if there was something else I could do despite the pain. I tried going to school, but with the problems I've had from the pain when I read, I couldn't do it, so dropped the math class.

I joined Match.com when it was still a small company and met a lot of single men, and made some friends with some women as well. I met my second husband, Lance (see the pic on my main page) through them. We were friends for almost a year and we talked about everything: how we felt about our divorces, what was our part in the failed marriage, childrearing ideas as we both had daughters (his daughter was about a year old than mine), what wines and foods we liked, our families and the problems there. We were both still dating as we weren't sure the 1000 miles expanse between us would allow us to get closer than friends.

I met a guy, let's call him Johnny for the sake of privacy, who seemed to be nice. He took me to meet his Grandmother and we became friends with his now deceased Grandmother. She warned me about Johnny--saying he never stayed with any woman for very long--and I told her that I was aware that he wasn't going to be in my life for very long. That didn't make it any less painful when he broke it off 3 months later (we were together for 4 months and he'd proposed to me after 1 month). I told Lance about it, so he suggested that as friends, I should come down for 5 days over the Christmas/New Year's Holiday. He's take me to museums and we'd go for hikes/walks and that would help me get over him.

So, I flew down to LAX from Seattle on December 30, 1996. When I got off the plane, he was as good looking as his picture. He asked me if I was too tired or would I like to do something before we headed back to his home. I wanted to do something, so he took me to the Huntington Library and Arboretum near Glendale. It was so nice there and I had a great time, and all the while we talked. Then he took me to dinner. We both realized we had started to love one another over the time we were emailing and phoning each other.

The next night was NewYear's Eve, and he cooked me dinner (ratatouille, boulliabase, veggies, salad) with fine china, crystal, candlelight, and silver dinner ware. No man had ever cooked me dinner before and it was lovely. He had bought some very nice champagne, and even made a whipped cream cake for dessert. I gave him the Christmas gift I'd bought--Ottmar Leibert's Nouveau Flamenco CD--and we danced to it. He proposed to me. I asked him if I could give him an answer in a couple days, so over the 3 remaining days, we spent a lot of time talking instead of sleeping--we probably got about 10 hours of sleep in 5 days as we talked about even more than we had, seeing he was talking about spending the rest of our lives together.

So, now we talked about more private things like our previous lovers/spouses, what life was like and what we thought we'd like our lives to be like if we did get married, favorite colors, favorite music, and those sorts of things. The last evening, his daughter came by to spend the night after her return from her Christmas vacation with her mom and grandparents in Hawaii. So, she opened her Christmas presents from her Dad, then we all goofed around with she and I putting Christmas ribbons on Lance's hair...we even have some pics of that. After she went to bed, we danced more to Ottmar, and I told him that I'd marry him. To say he was ecstatic was putting it mildly...and I was very happy as well.

The next day, I was going to leave about 3 PM, we went shopping for an engagement ring. I've never liked diamonds all that much because they're too cold and I've never been a traditionalist anyway. I chose a 1/2-carat amethyst--which was perfect being that our birthdays are 4 days apart and I was the older of the two of us--with diamond chips around it. It was beautiful. Lance and Andrea took me to the airport after we ate lunch, then waited until I was settled at the airport and left. I couldn't believe those 5 days...and when I got on the plane, I promptly fell asleep on the trip back to Seattle. I was so tired.

I told my daughter what had happened and she was so excited for me, not to mention that it meant we'd be moving from Seattle to Southern California and she could be a "beach babe." Mainly, she just wanted me to be happy and she always wanted to have a sister, so she got everything she wanted.

We were going to get married in June, but we figured that we'd waited long enough and decided instead to get married on Valentine's Day. We were wed at the Maple Leaf Evangelical Church, the same church I became a born again Christian, and were married. There were 26 people at the ceremony and Alexandria, my daughter, was there with Susanne Wilhelm, my Matron of honor, and Sol Porras, Lance's Best man. My friend and our wedding photographer, Herb Goode, gave me away. Neither of our families were at the wedding, but I had all my friends there.

The next day, we loaded up the moving truck and were on our way to Southern California. It took 4 days as the truck they gave us couldn't get past 15 mph on the steep hills. When we got to Fullerton, we unloaded the truck, then we went to his folks for our belated reception with his family and friends. It was very nice, but I could tell that his folks were worried because he told them after he proposed to me, that we were going to get married. So, when we got married 45 days later, I guess they had a right to be. It took a year or so before they realized that this was going to last.

It's been almost 9 years now and I can harldy believe it.

In 1999, I had my fourth surgery by the same neurosurgeon who did the Gamma Knife procedure, this called a cingulotomy. It took a few days to recover, but when I was feeling better, I realized I could read again--at a much slower rate, but I so didn't throw up, which was a very good thing and I could read again.

However, I lost my cooking skills...I had been a dinner chef at a Red Lion Restaurant and those are gone and the surgery did not get rid of any of the head pain.

I had the fifth surgery in December 2005. It was called a rhyzotomy and the result was a 20% decrease in the pain, which meant a 20% decrease in my pain medication. I'm hoping to have another of these surgeries because when they did the temporary procedure (when they inject lodocaine in both the upper and mid branch of the Trigeminal nerve), it reduced the pain by about 40% and I believe that if they do the rhyzotomy again, it will reduce the pain some more. We'll see how it goes.

As you can see, my life has not been as nice as some have had, but I'm a much stronger person than I ever thought I was or could be, so I'm happy with how I've grown over the years. What more could a woman ask for?

Hugs,
Jet

t's been busy around here...

2006-12-17T11:35:00.000-08:00

I can't believe how busy it's been around here. I've had 25 calls from my ad in the Country Register for fiber, yarn or items for Christmas; then 5 people have stopped by this week. It amazes me how people are involved in the fiber community in some way or another.

I also have wool and alpaca fiber for paper makers as well as people who want to use the fibers for doll hair, wall hangings, weaving, paper mache, and other crafts. I have a lot of fun trying to find out what people want and I do love chatting with people about their crafts.

I've got tons of craft groups in my groups section and have all the crocheting, knitting, spinning, doll making, and other crafty ones that I can find having to do with fiber or yarn. It's amazing how many are there.

My ewes are getting pregnant, though it is hard to tell in the beginning, but I should start lambing near the end of February through April. I hope you can come visit me and see all of the animals, alpacas, sheep and lambs, not to mention the chickens and my dwarf Great Pyrenees, Bud, and Norphan, my cat (both he and she are neutered/spayed).

One of the things that really bothers me about living in the country is that people let their animals run wild and destroy other people's property and animals. Last year, we had someone who lost most of a angora goat herd including pregnant does and some of the kids, but the people couldn't figure out whose dogs killed them, so they took a BIG loss. My alpacas and my dog help a lot with keeping predators away from my sheep and I've not lost one to predators, though I have to the cold, the heat and/or being butted the wrong way by one of their flock mates.

When I first got my sheep, I lost the registered ram because he butted someone the wrong way and got a skull fracture and went into convulsions. We had to put him down, so he's buried in the back pasture. This summer, we lost Java, my favorite alpaca due to the heat and he's buried in the other back pasture we have. I hate losing animals even if it is expected, like with Java...the Vet told me he had some genetic problems and he wouldn't last the year and that was 2 years before he died, so though I expected it, I still cried.

And we've lost lambs every year for one reason or another. A friend of ours told me that lambs are born to die as they have one of the highest attrition rates of all the animals, but that's one of the reasons why I have mainly Icelandic sheep--they're used to tough conditions originating from Iceland, but there are still losses from getting trampled or butted too hard or other reasons (when they are still born or die because of birth defects). The first year I lost 7 lambs, the next year only 4, this last spring, I lost 3, so it seems to be going down, but we'll see how they do this spring.

Also, from time to time we get bummer lambs--bummers being orphaned lambs where the ewes won't let them nurse for some reason. Bottle fed lambs are the most friendly of all the animals. I had 4 the first year with one dying on me, the second year I had 1 and this last year I had 3. I hope to not have any because bottle feed lambs is a busy job because they get fed 3 times a day for a month, then 2 times a day for a month, then once a day for a month or two, then they're on grass.

Most of our sheep get grass until fall, then start eating alfalfa hay, which they eat throughout the winter and the spring while the grass grows again. I cut the grass in the yard and feed it to them and they love it because it's different. Even with the hay, if they leave a lot, all we have to do is to move it to another place and they'll eat it as if they never saw it before, but there was a lot of waste. Now, we have bale boxes for bales of hay and there's a grid (we made the grid from cutting up cattle panels) and they can't pull tons of hay on the ground, so the waste and cost of feeding them has dropped by 2/3's or more. Bale boxes work for both the alpacas and the sheep so all in all, we're now happier with our feeding arrangement. We roofedd the last bale box two days ago and with the roofing on it, it got real heavy, so we both had to lift it into the cart, which was attached to the riding mower and moved it out to the front pasture where we have fertile males that we haven't sold or are going to butcher. Our registered Icelandic ram, Rocky (named after Rocky of Rocky and Bullwinkle--and right now we do have a Bullwinkle, but he's sold--he's one of the bottle fed lambs) is in the back pasture with all the ewes so we don't have to worry come the day we have to register the lambs.

I've been working on a crocheted shawl right now made with a cone of gimp yarn (cotton and rayon with slubs) in a wine/reddish brown/pink/silver color combination. It's for a young or teenage girl and has a madarin neck and lots of lacey holes so it's very frilling and feminine. I'll post a picture later.

For those of you who've viewed my pics, the magenta yarn was dyed by me with Jacquard protein dyes in a red violet shade. I loved the way it came out, but I prefer to buy my dyed fiber or yarn and sell my natural colored fiber and yarns so that others may dye them. I have a lot of dyes for when I want colored projects for myself or my family, or when I do a dye workshop with a few others. It's fun to do, but I'm so busy spinning yarn or knitting or crocheting something, that dyeing is something I only do occassionally.

I'm finishing up a knitted, silver-gray, naturally striped Icelandic sweater for my husband, and I'm working on a pair of knitted socks for my SIL down in Southern California (aka SoCal). She's so excited and wants to learn to knit as well, so next time I see her (and if she hasn't already taken classes in SoCal), then I'll give her some lessons.

Speaking of classes, I'll be teaching a spinning class at Knitochet in Walla Walla on November 11 and 12. And then I'll be teaching another knitting class for kids in December. I'm so excited. I love teaching as much as I love fiber arts, so when I get a chance to teach classes, I learn as much as the students do. It also forces me to look at my techniques and such in a new light so I can create even better product.

I'm also planning some workshops at my home, as well as selling yarn and Xmas items, so people can call for an appointment and see what I've got now.

Anyway, you can see why I'm so busy, so I'll have to break off for now and write again later.

Hugs,

Jet

Life can be so much fun...

2006-12-17T11:08:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but things have been busy.

My husband's brother and his wife came from Southern California to visit us and their parents for 5 days and left this morning to head back. We went wine tasting, we ate at the best restaurant in this area called the Whoop 'Em Up, which has 5-star cuisine. I had a rare ribeye steak Cowboy style (really delicious), hubby had Jumbalaya, BIL had blackened catfish, FIL had a blackened catfish poorboy, SIL had a fried oyster poorboy, and MIL had a Frisee salad with chantrelles, poached eggs and some other stuff in the salad. Everyone was pleased, but my SIL commented that she never thought Walla Walla and the surrounding area would have a restaurant like this, and that Walla Walla was completely different than what she thought it would be, in a good way, of course. After dinner, we went to my in-laws and we had some wine and watch Brokeback Mountain. It was so sad that I cried. We took them up to the Elk preserve in theBlue Mountains above Walla Walla, but although we didn't see any elk, we saw mule deer, white tailed and black tailed deer, so it wasn't all a loss, and it was a fun drive.

I sold 6 lambs/sheep this week, so I'm very happy...it's always nice to have an unexpected windfall. The people will pick them up the end of October/beginning of November.

We finished roofing one of our bale boxes. A box that holds a bale of hay with a small portion of a cattle panel cut to fit on top of the bale to keep the sheep and alpacas from wasting it. Before we built them, they probably wasted about 1/3 of a bale just because they wanted the sweet flowery/leafy part of the alfalfa hay. Now they graze from the boxes and there is little or no waste, so we're saving more money that way, but we'll still need to get two more tons of hay soon so we have enough to last the winter.

I'm spinning some white Corriedale wool into yarn and it's very soft. Sometimes, the type of wool I'm spinning isn't as soft as I'd like, so then I felt it after I'm finished or I make a rug out of it. Either way, all my yarn goes for good things. I sell as much of it as I can and I sell quite a bit. My peers say I'm doing well based on the competitions I've entered, so I believe that my yarn is worth the price I sell it for. I keep working along.

I'm working on a shawl, not sure if I mentioned that before, but it's coloring is merlot red, silver gray and white with black under strand. I'm creating a new patterns and this is one, so what I'm working on is a prototype... If it looks good when I'm finished, I'll type it up, take a pic and make a copy so that I can enclose it in a plastic sleeve that you can put in a 3-ring binder and sell it. I'm also working on a domino rug with various colors of rug yarn, but that's to use up some rug yarn stash I've had for years...time to get rid of it, and if I can use it or sell it, I will.

I took my SIL foot measurements so that I can make her a sock to wear with her first pair of Birkenstocks. She's excited. I have a sweater for Lance, my hubby, that I've been working on for a year that is made from Moe's fiber, a nice silver gray. Because I spun the wool from the lock, it's striiping naturally and is so goodlooking that I'll probably have to make one for his brother even if it doesn't get as cold down in SoCal (Southern California) to wear a sweater. It does get chilly in winter, but most of the time it's temperate to hot, mainly hot. I don't know why, but I rarely make anything for myself. I sell most of the stuff I make or give it as gifts to family and friends. I think I'll make a nice skiing set for when we go to Sun Valley this winter to go with my ski outfit.

I learned to downhill ski right after Lance and I got married almost 9 years ago, and though I'm afraid of heights, I do it anyway. I just do more "esses" down the slope if it bothers me, usually if it's really steep like a double diamond or double black (it depends where you are as to what it's called). Lance just goes Banzai down the steeps like it's nothing...but it's where he gets his speed fix. he's been skiing for 14 years. I can hardly wait until we can go skiing though...we need a vacation. We both work really hard and haven't had a real vacation, other than one weekend, since we both became self-employed.

My 35th high school reunion is next year, so we are taking time off to do that. I want to show him off to my classmates--my younger man--he's so handsome and funny. LOL In truth, I'm 4 days older than he is, but we play like it's a big deal becasue it's fun and besides, I always wanted to marry a younger man and I got my wish. Though I can't say that the 4-days I'm older won't beat the statistics that say a woman should marry a younger man because me die sooner than women do... I still am happy I'm older than he is because I look younger.

Well enough chatting for today. I'll be back again later in the week...

Ciao for now,
Jet

Issues: Aging, retirement alternatives, schools, education, NAIS/organics

2006-06-11T18:17:00.000-07:00

This is MY opinion and mine alone!

How can people think it's organic, when the basic premise of organic is not just chemical-free/antibiotic-free/growth hormone-free, but it's a way of life so that you do not deplete the soil nor give people drugs and chemicals that they don't need to survive in a healthy, safe manner. It's why I'm fighting the NAIS rulings they're trying to get passed through. It's interesting that the letters I've gotten back from Gregoire's office (she's the Gov. of WA) says that it is not mandatory IF you are not selling your meat/eggs/etc. If you are, then you need to register your farm and your animals. It pretty much follows that if you do not do this by 2009, you're in hot water. THIS is NOT Voluntary in any way if you HAVE TO do this by a certain date/time. The government is just trying to pull another Homeland Security and the War on Iran type of scam on us again! We've lost so many rights that I think people are so afraid of voicing their concerns because they're worried they'll wind up on the FBI's most wanted list if they complain about the problems with the gov't.

ALL I want is to live a life that's organic, chemical-free and as self-sufficient as I possibly can and do it in an ethical/spiritual manner. That's not so much to ask, but if I have to bend to the Government's will, then it is a huge amount to ask, don't you think so? Paranoid? A little, but after we had the Iranian war (which wasn't really to help the Iranians, but to get the oil/gas), Homeland Security (voted in with the fear that 9/11 would happen again), and other rulings, laws, and amendments shoved down our throats because they attach these things to the laws, ruling,s and amendments to what we do want. What I'm seeing is that we have little or no choice to vote on the rulings, laws and amendments that are piggybacked because if we don't vote for the whole package, we won't get the things we really want and need. It's like we have to vote for the worst of two evils by voting for the bad things, which take away our rights, in order to get the good things, like decent health care for everyone, social security, and other good things that we really do need.

And don't even talk about schools: we have such a high proportion of retired people locally that we can't get a YES vote for a new high school that's up to building codes and the educational programming sucks. The kids cracking brick, bad plumbing, leaks, asbestos, and other major problems because we can't get a YES vote. The majority of the population is retired and don't have kids, so they keep voting NO and not looking at the larger picture, then wonder why Johnny doesn't know how to read as a junior or senior in high school. As you can see by my example, this has been going on for years and it's not just the retired people's fault, but is an ongoing problem. BUT we can stop it, if we try.

I know it won't be too much longer and I'll be a part of that group (I'm 52 now), but you have to look at the larger picture. If kids don't get proper and good educations, the crime rate goes up because those same kids won't be able to get good jobs. The retireds don't look at it like that. I hear them talking in whatever lines they're in, banks, and other places (mall walks, for instance) complaining about money for schools and education. It's why the school costs have gone up so drastically for the parents who do have children: no one wants to vote for school levies, and it's only going to get worse. There's no such thing as FREE public education any longer, if you haven't noticed. My daughters are out of public school at this point being 22 and 23, but I look at what is going to happen...not what is going on now.

Some are new soapbox issues for me, but they're just as important as the rest of the soapbox issues. I would have thought the hippies of the 60's through 80's would be smarter than this, but they've gotten more narrow-minded and have larger tunnel vision than their parents did, and it is more than I would have thought could happen to such a forward-thinking group.

What happened, friends?!?!?!? We're all over 30 now and whom do we trust? Don't you see that we cann't put on blinders now after having stirred up so many things during those turbulent Vietname years? We have to continue to change things, if not for us, then for our children and grandchildren, so that we won't have to depend on them when we need help. We need to have an adequate support system and I highly doubt Social Security is going to be around too much longer--the government can't afford it with their high salaries and we all know they won't take a "pay cut." If we keep our heads in the sand and don't do something about this one particular issue, retirement homes, we'll be left in them to die, as our parents, our grandparents and our other relatives, when we're too ill/disabled to tend to ourselves without killing ourselves out of just being too old. We cannot afford to keep our heads in the sand any longer. We need to do something about our situation NOW before we cannot do anything about it because we're disabled or ill. We cannot pretend we're not getting older by dyeing our hair, getting face (and other) lifts, working out, using tooth whitening toothpaste, using botox and other wrinkle relaxers, etc. However, when it all comes down to it, We ARE ALL GOING TO DIE when it's our time and who knows when that is. How much does it matter if we leave a good looking corpse or not, if you're stuck in one of the charnal houses we call retirement homes.

I don't know of one person who has relatives in a retirement home that knows their parents do not want to be there. Would you? Seeing the elderly in wheel chairs propped outside their rooms, just sitting, doing arts and crafts that don't really challenge their minds and bodies so they stay active. Of course, some of them cannot do it because they've had strokes or are physically unable to do it. My own beloved Grandmother nearly blew herself up when she tried to clean her gas oven and used bug killer instead of oven cleaner...she didn't die then, but fractured her hip which healed, but she kept falling because of her meds, and then broke her hip again and she died shortly thereafter at 98 yo. She wanted nothing more than to move back home because she hated living there...and this was a really "nice" retirement community, but it still wasn't home...and no one wanted to fork out the cash so she could stay at home either, or stay with her themselves. Way too selfish to do that after all her years of helping everyone else.

I see it and it's frightening to me and no one is listening because their heads are in the sand hoping it won't be that way. Personally, I hope it happens quickly with no lingering illness so I won't have to worry about retirement homes, but there are no guarantees in thsi life. We need to be looking at retirement home alternatives, which is another soapbox issue, I'll write about on another day. We ALL have to start thinking about these things or we'll NEVER have it any better when we get old enough and really need a place.

We trained our kids to be selfish--think of yourself first, take what you need, a dog-eat-dog mentality, everything else will take care of itself. Whom do we blame when we need someone to help us and there's no one around? Many of us taught them not to have limits or boundaries, and they don't... What does that say about how they will care for us in our old age? This is not the past any longer and we don't have large families to help us in our old age, nor do they want to care for us in our old age. Let's just put Gramma and Grampa into a retirement home until they die. Sounds like great fun, doesn't it? We've created a group of pampered, spoiled children who only think about themselves because that is what we taught them.

The main thing is this: We need to start looking for retirement alternatives so we are not stuck in a place we do not want to be when we can no longer take care of ourselves.

I can't believe it's the end of May already!

2006-05-30T17:36:00.001-07:00

It's been a hard weekend! I was going to do a spinning demonstration at the Folklife Festival at the Seattle Center on Sunday, May 28, but my car broke down and I had to get towed home. It wouldn't have been so bad, but I had a bad headache anyway and the tow only made the headache worse. What a pain! I'm on the list for next year's volunteers, so I'll be there then. Keep an eye out for me!

The two ram lambs below are Bart (the black 3/4 Icelandic cross with a white/gray undercoat) and Bullwinkle (a white 50/50 Romney/Finn cross) are my bottle-fed babies. They'll be wethers soon. Aren't they cute?

So, they're already sold to a woman in Goldendale, so they'll have a happy home with her and her grandkids. She's a spinner and a soapmaker, and is a very busy woman. She already has a couple goats, but is selling one and keeping the other and doesn't want the one to be lonely. Not sure how they'll do with a goat, but I'm also not sure how the goat will do with them.

I'm going to be picking up a black mouflon Icelandic ewe lamb in Oregon on June 23, a little less than a month away from now. I'm going to be picking up some items I entered at the BSG (Black Sheep Gathering) in Eugene, OR, and the sheep is in Sandy, OR. One more to my flock of registered Icelandic sheep. I'm also going to enter some items into OFFF (Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival) in Canby, OR, as well into Frontier Days in Walla Walla, WA. This will be the most things I've entered anywhere since I moved to Washington State, so I'm very excited.

I have some Romney cross ewe lambs for sale and their father, Rommie, a beautiful Romney ram with an excellent disposition (calm, centered, sweet--not aggressive) and is a dark gray color (picture coming soon) and they all have nice crimp. Their father, Rommie, had 18 # of fiber sheared from him this year and it's beautiful. Take a look at Bullwinkle, who's a Romney cross, in the above picture to see the crimp. He's as cute and fluffy as they come.

I'm working on several more knitting projects: one a sweater for my hubby in silver gray Icelandic wool. It's self-striping because I spun it from the lock instead of carding into roving or a batt before I spun it into yarn. It's will be just lovely when it's finished. I'm also working on writing up my patterns so I can sell those as well. I've got some new ideas for shawls and things that will sell nicely when the weather cools down again, plus some new toy ideas as well. So, watch this page for more information.

Still very worried about the NAIS (National Animal Identification System) that the government is trying to implement. The government says that it's "voluntary," but we *have to be* registered by 2009. If you have to be registered, then it is not voluntary. How can they use that kind of double speak? Do they think we're all stupid or what? Sometimes I get so angry with the current administration that I could spit nails. I'm fighting it with all the might I can garner, writing letters to WA State governors, sentators, legislators, etc. to get support to stop the NAIS. Unfortunately, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and a few others already have an NAIS-type of system already in place. This is not for the small breeder, but for the large scale operations in the US that they are doing this for...it is supposed to prove that the meat we ship overseas doesn't have diseases. All it's going to do is put control of ALL the breeding and meat into the hands of the large producers and out of the small ranchers and farmers hands. Every time I get a response from Christine Gregoire, one of WA States Governors (who shouldn't be in office in the first place), it's nothing but the mouthpiece for the NAIS saying, no that's not right, you're interpreting it wrong and we changed it being mandatory from 2008 to 2009. Mandatory is not voluntary no matter how they try to word and re-word it! How did we all come to this? Our tax dollars at work or not voting when we should be voting? I don't know, but it's scary as anything I've seen in the last 30 years.

Give me a break...not only do we have to register our animals, but we also have to register our fowl and poultry. That's not going to stop the bird flu...the bird flu is spread by wild birds, not domestic birds. If we get bird flu, it's just a mutated version of the swine flu... That's what viruses do. So, how do they think that registering poultry and fowl is going to stop the bird flu?

Well, I'm planning on continuing to raise and breed Icelandic sheep for sale to other breeders, spinners, weavers, and people who want gourmet lamb/sheep meat. This is the only meat I eat now because I don't use a lot of chemicals and drugs on them and they eat mainly grass when it's available half the year and the other half, they get hay, and they get their sheep minerals and whatever else they need to stay healthy and very happy. Can't you see the little smiles on their little faces? The blue tags in the right ears are their Scrapies tags (another government implemented voluntary program that is now mandatory if you want to sell your sheep) and the purple or green tags are their registration numbers. These are just two of my Romney cross ewe lambs.

I'm already taking reservations for the forthcoming spring Icelandic and Icelandic cross lambs for next year, so that's the only way I can get people the ones they want now. I still have some 2005 fleeces (scoured or raw) left if you're interested. And I have my Romney ram, and the Romney cross ewes and ram lamb left to sell.

So, Have a nice day and I hope to talk with you soon!

A bad thing happened on Sunday morning

2006-04-19T03:59:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone:

My cat, Norphan (abbreviatin for An Orphan aka "Norphan" like in the Pogo Comic strip), wouldn't come when I called her as she usually does, and I waited quite a while and looked for her, but no Norphan. We were doing spring clean up and went from the peach and apricot trees to the Hazelnut and cherry, and there she was, curled up beside the hazelnut tree, but she wouldn't come to me. My Hubby, Lance, climbed over the cattle panel and tried to pick her up, but she cried. He was gentle and brought her to me and handed her over into the cradle of my arms. She snuggled a little, but I could tell she wasn't feeling well. I carried her to her bed in the garage and set her by her water because her nose was warm and I thought she might need some, so she lapped a bit up, then went and curled into her bed.

Lance went back in and checked her over and we think she was hit by a car or something, but nothing was broken. Today, she was walking around gingerly, but moving nonetheless. She did that for about 10 minutes and then went and lay back down in her bed. We have an incandescent light over her area so her water wouldn't free and her food wouldn't be frozen during the winter and we decided to keep it on to help her stay warm. Her water is near her so she can climb out and get some. I put a few drops on her nose and she licked it off, and then did that a few more times to make sure she got some in her. She went and licked up a bit more, then ate a bit of her food. So, she seems to be on the mend.

I have 20 sheep, 11 lambs and one more ewe to lamb (1-3 lambs maybe) yet. I have 6 Icelandics (2 ewes, 1 ram, 3 wethers), Finns (1 ewe), Finn/Icelandic crosses (four are 50/50 crosses, five others are 25/75 crosses Finn/Icelandic), a Shetland/Lincoln cross (50/50 cross), a Merino/Rambouillet/Finn cross, a Romney ram, and a Cotswold ewe. We had an error when I bred my Icelandic ram to two icelandic ewes I'd sold last Summer as part of the sale, and the Romney ram got in with the ewes by sneaking in when I got the Icelandic ram out. So, I was surprised to see the long-tailed lambs that all but one ewe (and I also hope my Icelandic ewe, that hasn't lambs yet, was impregnated by the Icelandic ram) were Finn/Romney, Finn/Icelandic/Romney or Icelandic/Romney lambs.

The interesting thing is that last year, my Icelandic ram threw mainly ram lambs with three ewe lambs our of 17 lambs. This year, he has again thrown more ram lambs (2 rams to 1 ewe lamb again), but the Romney ram has thrown all ewe lambs, but one ram lamb. They have the curliest little fleeces as can be with some white, some black and some black with white markings on their ears, faces and/or chests. I'm hoping that Blesa, the Icelandic ewe left to lamb, will have Rocky's lambs (1-3 lambs) and that it/they will be ewe lambs. Keep your fingers crossed.

I have two bottle fed ramlings:Bart is black with white ear marks and a white spot on his butt, and Bullwinkle is pure white with nice stocky legs and sideburns. Both are cute as can be. It can be a pain in the morning though, when I'm trying to get my cup of coffee and there are two lambs yelling: Maaaa, Maaaa...wanting their bottles of milk. I'm a lazy shepherdess in that I keep the bottle fed lambs in my laundry room so that I can feed them in the morning easily, especially when it has been raining with cold winds and I don't wnat to lose them to hypothermia. I take them out in the morning after things dry up some and they romp and play with the other lambs and each other. Bullwinkle has a twin sister our of Rabbit, a 50/50 Finn/Icelandic cross; and Bart is one of triplets having both a brother and a sister out of Madge. Madge is my Finn ewe, and so she had the 50/50 Finn/Icelandic lambs.

I've been spinning up my wool to make some nice yarn. I have 100% Icelandic wool (aka Lopi), some Romney, some Targhee and some Finn. I have some alpaca spun up also in dark brown and cinnamon and a marled cinnamon and dark brown. I now have Al Paca, a white Suri; Eldie, a white Huacaya, and Earl Grey, a Rose grey Huacaya, along with the dark brown, Java, and cinnamon, KoKo, Huacayas. All of them are male with 3 being gelded. Eldie, the white Huacaya has 15 micron fiber. Earl Grey, has 21 micron, as does Java, the dark brown. Koko, the cinnamon has 24 micron and Ak Paca, the Suri has 11 micron fiber on the average. It's hard to know exactly the micron count because it varies over the animals. They are nice animals over all, so I keep planning on having a larger parcel of property to keep things comfortable. We're hoping for 20 acres with water rights.

I'm working on some other projects right now. I saw a beautiful afghan in Spin-Off this issue, so I'm creating a special afghan for a friend of mine as a gift. I'm excited about it, and I'm hoping it will work out fine. It's black, maroon, and gray squares done in the Domino Knitting of Vivian Hoxbro. So far, it's coming along well. I've got 5 rabbits and 4 cats that I'm done knitting and all I have left are to embroider the faces and put some whiskers and tails on them. I sell my hand spun yarn, hand spun/hand knitted or crocheted items at the Farmers' Market. I need to make some money with what I make so I can get the hay and other products I need for the animals and to keep up with the costs of the various things I do in terms of education and guild dues.

I'm teaching a beginners' Spinning class at the local Yarn/Fiber shop called Knitochet in Walla Walla, WA. I'm also teaching a beginners' knitting class at the newly re-opened Hancock Fabrics in Walla Walla as well...this class is beginning on May 6 and continues on May 14. Farmer's Market starts on May 6 and continues through October 28. I get done at the market, then mosey over to Hancock's to set up for the class. I'm hoping for 8 people, but we'll see how it works out. I love teaching crafts to people and have had many classes that I've taught over the years...to homeless children and to people I took classes with in tech school/college. I taught spinning for two years at the Lambtown Sheep and Wool Festival in Dixon, CA, when we lived down there (http://www.lambtown.com) and won several competitions for both knitting/crocheting and for yarn, judged by Stephanie Gaustad both years. People enjoy learning and I had my first male student in that class. He was learning to spin so he could create the yarn his wife would weave with. I thought that was fabulous for him to do such a nice thing for her. Not many men would do that for their wife.

I have been working on some new scarf/shawl patterns to sell at the market, and am working on some exotic wood knitting frames made from rosewood, cherry, purpleheart (very hard as it's grain is so irregular), hickory and oak in a variety of lengths. I also make sets of beaded knitting markers and sets of crocheted markers as well. I make Icelandic horn buttons in sets of 4 or 6. Lastly, I have naturally colored eggs for those who enjoy egg crafts (carving, egg shell mosaics, etc.). The colors I have so far this year are: two shades of blue, 3 shades of green, 3 shades of brown, ivory and a ivory pink. I blow the eggs out after I wash them, then let them air dry. I also have feathers from my Americana chickens, Barred rocks, and Austalorps. They are beautiful feathers... I make and create more products as time goes by, so check in to find out what else is going on.

If there is anyone out there who's interested in purchasing a Romney ram, he can be registered. I'm selling him for $125 unregistered or $150 registered. He was named Timmy, but when I bought him, renamed him Rommy. He's a friendly boy and was collar trained, and loves to be petted and scratched.

In June/July, I'll have some crossed ewe lambs that will be fabulous in terms of fiber. I may keep one of the lambs for myself just for the fiber. My Finn/Icelandic lambs (50/50) are already sold, and if my Icelandic ewe has Icelandic lambs, they're also sold unless they have a ram lamb. The Icelandic/Romney and Finn/Icelandic/Romney lambs will be sold as they get older...and as I said, I believe the fiber will be nice.

My Finn/Icelandic (5o/50) ewe lambs have nice fiber and felts exceptionally well (which I found out when I scoured some that I cleaned like I did the Icelandic fiber and it felted so easily, I had to scour the second batch even more gentle and I sold out of both the white and the black last year). The 25/75 Finn/Icelandic fleeces also felt easily and are single coated as are the 50/50, though a little coarser than the 50/50.

I'm not entired sure how the 50/50 Finn/Romney fiber will be, but I'll know this fall when I shear again in October. Right now, the fiber the lambs have is soft and crimpy, so I suspect it will be about the same when they're older.

I have some nice, dark-gray Icelandic that will make great rug yarn and if blended with a softer black yarn to help it full... You'll be able to punch or crochet the rug, then wash it gently, it will felt or full to a wonderful comfy rug that will last for years.

Well, have to go for now, Write me if you have any interest in fleeces, yarn or lambs.

It's Lambing time again in Walla Walla

2006-04-10T12:12:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone:

Well, I've recovered (almost) from my cold/flu thing-y and though I'm still exhausted, I'm pretty much back in the swing of shepherdess and fiber artist and instructor. First the lamb news: I've got 11 lambs so far and one more ewe to go and she will have either twins, as she had the last two years, or triplets. I'm so excited. I have 5 ram lambs and 6 ewe lambs to date with two ram lambs being bottle fed babies. They are the cutest little boys, one black cross lamb (Finn mom and Icelandic dad) and a white cross lamb (Finn mom and Romney dad). I'd been putting registration tags on them as well as Scrapies tags, so that's all finished.

I wasn't supposed to have any Finn/Romney or Icelandic/Romney crosses and didn't plan on having any, but I was using Rocky (as in Rocky and Bullwinkle), my Icelandic ram, to breed to two of my former Icelandic ewes in the front pasture, Rommie, the Romney ram, got in with the ewes. I'd never seen Rommie mount the ewes, but apparently he did when my back was turned. So, I may have some cute curly lambs, but they aren't the ones I was breeding for, so I'm S.O.L. I believe they'll go to a nice buyer because the fiber appears that it will be, especially on the Finn/Romney crosses, quite nice with lots of crimp.

One last thing about the Finn/Romney or Icelandic/Romney crosses lambs, they are all long-tailed, so when I noticed that, one of the things you do is dock the tails by banding them...they lose blood circulation and the tip drops off. It sounds cruel, but it's not...it's a sanitation issue to keep their tails from getting full of sheep manure and helps keep them healthy. If there was a way to keep them healthy without doing that, then I would.

All the ram lambs, but the ones people want to have to breed to their sheep, will be banded in a couple of weeks when they're testicles drop. I do not want to have any rams to breed indiscriminately to my ewes. You put a band around the testicles that will do the same thing to them as it did to the long tails. It bothers them for a little while, but for the most part, they seem to bounce around within minutes of banding. It bothered me the first time I did it, but they rebounded to quickly that I could see it wasn't an issue. It's rather like putting tags in their ears. I don't think they have the same pain senses as humans do. I had my ears pierced 3 times (when from 1 hole to 2 holes, then 3 holes, but let the 3rd holes close up and still have 2) and it didn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it would and I was doing fine in less than 15 minutes. At any rate, this is all part of what a Shepherdess or Shepherd needs to do with sheep.

The reason I breed and raise the sheep I do is that they tend to let you know when they're lambing or something is wrong, so all you have to do is listen to them. Domestic sheep do some of this as well, but they are not as protective of the ewes and lambs as the Icelandics are. I researched sheep for over 2 years before I decided which breeds I wanted to breed. I love the Icelandics and the Finns.

BTW, the black cross is named Bart and the white cross is Bullwinkle. When they're bottle fed babies, you get more attached to them and then the next thing you know, they're named. One of the ewe lambs is all black with a white cross on her face and some are all black with various white markings on their faces or their bodies and are so full of pep. They jump all over the pasture looking like little black frogs sometimes. So, it's amazing watching these little lambs move around.

It's been raining like crazy here and the lambs don't particularly like the rain because the ground is wet, so when the feed bins are empty, they get tipped over and the lambs are usually inside of them staying warm and dry. I was so surprised yesterday when I went out to put hay in the bins and here were 4 lambs inside. I hated to evict them from their warm home, but it was a warm and sunny (for a change) 60-degree day and they needed to be out and about. They enjoyed themselves immensely, lazing about in the sun, or playing, so they did just fine. I even put my bottle fed lambs in with them and they all played together. So, it's obvious that the bottle fed lambs are not mentally disabled due to the bottle feeding.

I butcher the culls and the sheep I cannot sell so that I keep the number of sheep down to about 15-20 (my hubby wants no more than 12). I love my sheep adn want to have more acreage so I can raise registered Icelandic and Finn sheep, mainly, but I'll have a few that are different so that I can have a variety of fiber to work with.

I traded two Finn ewes for a Merino/Rambouillet/Finn cross ewe and two black Merino/Rambouillet/Shetland fleeces in January, and I traded another Finn ewe for a brand new Cotswold ewe lamb this spring. So, I mainly have my Finn/Icelandic crosses, Finns, Icelandics, Cotswold and MRF cross. That's 5 different types of fleeces that I have (not counting the Romney I have this year, who I hope will be gone later this spring/summer). I don't mind making trades and bartering at all.

Does anyone want to buy a gentle, handsome, Romney ram, named Romney? I can get him registered if you want him to be for an extra $25. I can't afford to have any more mistakes with rams breeding that I don't want to breed.

March 23, I sheared the sheep as well as trimmed hooves, put Scrapies tags in, and gave shots for tetanus and such. It helps keep them healthy and you only give it once a year. Rommie gave me a 12 lb-fleece which is amazing for me to see.

The Icelandics and Finns are medium-sized primitive sheep with short-tails. Romneys are large-sized domesticated sheep with long tails (as are all their progeny). It took from 9:30 AM until 3:30 PM on a Thursday and we just finished when it started to rain. I bagged the fleeces and lightly skirted them (skirting is what you do to get rid of the dags, the manure, second cuts, and other bad parts), then put a card in the bag with the name of the sheep on it. I got 23 fleeces and I still have 5 more to scour from last year. It takes a while to scour fleeces (scouring is washing in spinning-ese) and then card them. You can only put so many net bags of fiber into your washer, so the fiber will get clean.

Instructions on how to scour a fleece: You use Dawn dish detergent (least expensive), baby shampoo (if you buy it in bulk at Costco or Sam's Club, a bit more expensive then Dawn) or any of the commercial fleece soap (tres expensive). You separate the fleece into 1/2 to 1 lb sections and place in a net bag. You put 1/3 cup of Dawn (or whatever soap you're using) into a full tub of HOT water. Swish, then add your bags of fiber. Do not put more in the tub than you can push down into the water (probably about 5-6 lbs worth), but do not agitate or you'll felt the fiber. You wash the fiber until the water is clean when you rinse. In the final rinse, you add 1/2-cup of vinegar to bring the fiber back to neutral pH, and you hang it to dry on a wooden rack, out of the sun, with lots of air circulation. Then you place it in a clear, large plastic bag. A fleece will lose 1/4 to 1/3 of it's weight due to the decrease in lanolin and dirt after washing. After it's dry, you can card the fiber by hand or with a drum carder, or you can send it off to a professional fiber processor (and there are a lot of them out there with varying skills and charges to do what you want to the fiber).

I do ithe whole process myself because I enjoy it, but I have a hard time processing as many fleeces as I've had the last two years. In addition, I pick the fiber of vegetable matter (vm) so I'll have a nicer fiber to spin. The processors charge more if they scour and pick the fleeces for you, so most people scour and pick their fleeces themselves, then ship it off to the processor to spin into batts (wool sheets that you can spin, felt or to put into a quilt), roving (an inch thick, loose rope), pencil roving (a 1/4-inch thick, loose rope), or yarn of varying plies (usually from 2- to 10-ply). It saves you time to go through a processor, but IMHO, you lose the individuality of fleece yarn if you do.

I tend to spin from the lock or run it through my Fricke/Strauch drum carder once or twice (unless I want my yarn to look like it's spun by a processor). That way, I get a self-striping yarn which turns into beautiful socks or sweaters.

My alpacas will need to be sheared in May and I'll be doing that myself. I don't want to pay the going rates for the people who tend to shear then around our area. Can you tell I don't like paying someone else if I shear my animals if I can do it myself? The 'pacas all have nice fleeces (a white Suri and Huacaya, dark brown Huacaya, cinnamon Huacaya, and rose grey Huacaya) this year so I can hardly wait to start. I have two other alpacas I will be shearing for a friend in May or June as well, so this will be a good beginning of my practice before I do hers.

I sheared one alpaca for a friend last year and though the job wasn't perfect, I learned a whole lot about what NOT to do. I'd rather have a shearing table, but I don't have one yet, so I have to use alternative means. It will work just fine once I get the practice in with my five alpacas.

My plan: One alpaca will be sheared every two days, so they'll be finished over 10 days time. I'll be putting come Calm Forte, a natural herbal calmative, in their water so they'll be calm enough not to fight me when I not only shear, worm them and trim their hooves. It will probably take me about 3-6 hours to get it all done per animal at first, and once I get the practice, maybe one every 3-4 hours or less. I'll let you know.

My 16 Americana chickens have been laying between 6-13 eggs since March and in January they were laying between 1-5, so their egg production is on the increase. I'm raising Americana chickens, aka the Easter Egg chickens, so that I'll have naturally colored eggs. I'm blowing them out and I'll be selling the empty eggs at the market also. As you can see, I try to use all of what I grow and raise on my farm to make enough money to feed my animals and get what they need to continue doing this.

I also give tours of the farm to school-aged kids (schools, pre-schools, brownies/girl scouts/boy scouts, etc.) on Saturdays, and read them a sheep, shepherd/dess, alpaca, or sheep dog story. It gives the parents a short time to have to themselves as the kids are tired from the tour, so they need to take a short break so they're not overtired before going home. It helps remind me why I only had a daughter (who's now grown) and a stepdaughter (who's also grown). Other people's children I can enjoy and then they go home--sort of like a token grandparent. I love kids, but not ALL day and ALL night, every single day. I had enough of that with my own children...and they haven't had grandkids yet, so I'll keep in practice for that with other people's kids. *G*

The farmers market in Walla Walla, WA, starts on Saturday, May 6, and will go until Saturday, October 28, so it will be a long season this year. I sell my fiber, yarn and various items I make from wool, alpaca or wood, so I have a wide variety of items to sell there.

I'm making some horn buttons this year which I'll sell for $10-$15 for 4-6 buttons depending on how large the buttons are. I make children's hats and booties for 0-1 yo and some hats for toddlers and school aged children, toys (rabbits and cats are most popular), shawls, scarves, and hats for adults, garden markers, knitting frames and other odds and ends. I'll be selling some plants I grew from cuttings I took from my own house plants and rooted. I put them in cute little containers so they'd be more enticing to buyers.

I'll have some produce (apricots, peaches, nuts, strawberries, etc.) that I grow on my farm and ripens throughout the season. Some I'll dry or freeze for our use here and the rest I'll sell at the market. My garden is going to be bigger this year than last years so I expect to make more from the additional produce.

I'm growing some feed vegetables for my sheep and alpacas (mangels, beets, squash, pumpkins, carrots, etc.) as well as what I'll grow for us to eat. As long as the animals are healthy and happy, that's the main thing.

The plants I ordered from various catalogs are starting to arrive, so I'm excited to start planting them soon. I'm working on getting some hardy Kiwi to grow here. I tried last year, but it didn't work out, so I got new plants this year: 1 male kiwi and 4 females. That's how they come and you need to male to fertilize the females. I'll continue adding to the group as you can fertilize 6 females with 1 male, so next year I'll order another 2 females, then the year after I'll order another set of 1/4 like I did the year before that. It takes 2-3 years for them to start producing. I have 100 everbearing strawberry plants, 4 different types, growing now and hope to have enough strawberries to freeze 25+ lbs for home use, then sell off the rest at the market. I'm so excited...and hope this all works out. I don't think I can sell them as organic, but they are definitely chemical-free as I use beneficial insects rather than chemicals to kill the bugs. Those little parasitic wasps kill maggots and other insects in larval form so they never get to the pest stage.

That's all for now. Hope to hear from you soon.

This is me, Jet: Shepherdess, Fiber Artist and Instructor of Celtic Crossroads

2005-12-30T18:12:00.000-08:00

I thought you'd like to see who I am. I know I don't look the part of shepherdess, but I assure you I am. Between Bud, my dog, and Norphan, our barn cat, not to mention twenty-one sheep, five alpacas, twenty chickens, one rooster, eight guineas, I am a very busy person. I forgot my house cat, Miss Lacey whom I've had since 1994 when she was between 4-6 years old, and predates my marriage to Lance. We had nine guineas until earlier this winter when she, at least I think it was a she--hard to tell with guineas, fell into the stock tank--and drowned--poor bird. Chicken, our only surviving chicken--the only one we named--from last year went broody this summer and hatched two new chicks, a rooster and a hen--beautiful as far as chickens go. Their dad, the rooster, is a beautiful jungle fowl and seems like he's right from the jungle with bright greens, reds and browns with a smattering of yellow and gold hear and there. The chicks look like mom, beige,s light yellows with some dark brown spotting, but that's fine... Not every bird can be as spectacular as the rooster. They're all surviving the winter pretty well and seem very healthy. That makes me happy.

I've been working on scouring my wool all autumn and finished about 5 fleeces. In between fleeces, I've been working on a sweater for Lance, my hubby, as well as working on spinning more yarn from the fleeces I already have scoured. Scouring a fleece is washing them in spinning-ese. It takes a lot of work as the lanolin really has a good hold on the wool, so it takes about 2-6 scourings to get the wool where it is not only clean, but still retains just a tad of lanolin, otherwise the wool has lots of static and I have to add a bit of cream rinse or another type of oil to it so it's easier to work iwth. I've beena busy woman, to say the least. I also went to the Oregon Flock and Fiber Show (aka OFFF)in September. The reason I buy more fleeces and fiber at OFFF is that I like trying to spin different types of wool and because I cannot raise all the different types of wool there are (there must be over 400+ varieties worldwide not including the crossbred sheep who have different characteristics of their parent sheep), I do buy a fleece or two.

I picked up some beautiful steel gray mohair, some lighter gray alpaca, and some dark gray Shetland. I'm reallyu into the natural colors, specializing in grays because they dye so beautifully when I do dye them--the yarn comes out sort of heathery with the color darkest where the white fibers are and the darker fibers still have a bit of color, but you cannot see it as well--very pretty that way.

Here's a small bit of sheep information: Sheltand sheep are considered a type of primitive sheep, like my Icelandic sheep and Finn sheep (aka Finnish Landrace). As a matter of fact, they're part of the same family, so it's nice to have it. Each sheep has a wool even if their families are related, but the wool itself is slightly different whether it's the coarseness, the scales or how much crimpt it has, so the wool's "personality" changes from sheep to sheep and breed to breed. That's what makes spinning such a challenge. You need to understand the characteristics of the wool you have in order to spin it to make the perfect yarn for that type of wool.

An alpaca and/or llama lesson: Alpacas have a finer fiber, llamas slightly more coarse than alpacas, and don't have much crimp at all, though there are some that do. There are two types of alpacas: huacayas and suris. Huacayas have a fluffy, finer and less crimpy fiber, but very soft. It also has lots of static so you spin it before you scour it as alpacas and llamas have no lanolin or oils in their fiber. They keep the static off, as well as bugs, by rolling in dry earth, so they tend to be very dusty animals. Suri alpacas have a fiber that has some crimp and look like dread locks. The fiber is almost like silk in how it spins, but it's still a very lovely fiber, as silk is. It's hard to spin either silk or Suri alpaca, but once you learn the trick of it, it's not too hard. Spinning any fiber, no matter what kind, just takes practice. Alpacas and llamas come from Peru in the Andes mountains.

About me personally, I've had severe chronic head pain since Dec. 2, 1993, after the MD and the hospital botched my brain surgery by leaving me with a cerebral spinal fluid leak for 3 days. They had me on my back for about 18 days, so I spent a total of 21 days in the hospital...not good for the muscles or my exercise program, so when I got out, I felt quite weak. At any rate, the MD who did the surgery would not prescribe me any pain meds but Tylenol 3 and that never touched the pain I had. On a scale of 0 being no pain and 10 being as much as you can handle without being dead, I had a level of 10, so all I could do was lay in bed and throw up if I wasn't in the emergency room where they'd give me a dose of Tylenol 3 which didn't work. So, I'd go home and throw up everything they'd just given me. I never thought any one could have that much pain and still be alive. I felt so bad and needed the help, but they just didn't seem to care. I suppose the neuro-oncologist and the hospital thought I was going to sue for malpractice, but that was furtherest from my mind. I just needed relief from the pain. I complained often enough that the MD who did the surgery suggested I see a psychiatrist, who suggested I learn some hobbies and things to help distract me from the pain, but all the things they suggested, I was already doing and then some.

I also lost my job because I worked in the academic section of the hospital (the University of WA Medical School, BTW, and worked for the Chair of orthpaedics). I was there every day except when I was so ill from the pain I couldn't stop throwing up, and I was there trying to learn a new job because it was part of their ploy to distance themselves from me to get me to quit. They moved me from the office I shared with the Head secretary in the Chair's office to a windowless cave. They said I needed to work for a new physician and do all the same work as before I did for the Chair (Resident's Resaerch Days, the LeCocq Lecture in Orthopaedics, etc.)--so I had 3 times the work and learning a new job, in addition to losing all the perks I had. I felt so betrayed, especially since everyoen who was my "friend" decided that they couldn't even talk with me. I felt it was a scheme on their part to get me to quit by overloading me, but I hung in there until I got the flu from someone. I was so ill, I was off for two weeks, then they *strongly* suggested I take permanent medical leave. Nice of them, wasn't it? At that point, I didn't see how I could work with the amount of pain I was in, so I complied. I was so happy I had chosen to get as much disability insurance from work as I could get without paying much extra and so I get 60% of what I used to earn.

I am so glad I was managing an aparment building while I was working at the university and saved some money--not much, but it helped put away a small nest egg--without it my medical bills would have put a real crimp in our lives. My daughter and my former spouse helped me manage it when I couldn't do the work, but it worked out fine for a while. So, between my SSDI and my private DI, I was able to keep a roof over our head and our lifestyles didn't change much except for the severe, chronic level 6 pain once I was on the patches anyway. Before the patches, I was always in bed and throwing up so that was when I needed their help the most. I cannot explain how frightened I was about not being able to take care of my daughter. That was the worst thing about the pain and not being able to work. I loved my job a lot and I've always loved working--that was the second worst part, and I lost all my friends from work--that was the third worst thing, but it was better to lose people who weren't really my friends, than it would have been to keep them around and lost them when things got really bad, if you know what I mean.

I wasn't receiving the help I desperately needed, so I found another MD in a city about 1.5 hours away and he did some acupuncture, which didn't help me the pain, but did relieve some of the stress the pain caused me, After seeing me for a few months, he suggested I see an MD at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, WA, at their Pain clinic. They prescribed a few things, some worked, some didn't, but the one drug that finally work was a transdermal patch called Duragesic, generic name, Fentanyl. It worked better than the other drugs they tried (Percodan/Percocet, morphine, methadone & about 20 other drugs), but without the many side effects the other drugs had and it actually helped the pain, so I finally had a chance to have a drugged but decent life. I had an 8-9 yo daughter to take care of while I was in pain, in bed, and tossing my cookies continually--not much of a life there, was it? At any rate, once I got on Duragesic, it didn't work like they said it would. You're supposed to change the patch every 3 days, but it didn't work that way for me. I had to change it slightly over every two days because then I'd be in withdrawal and in pain otherwise. Not good at all.

The MD never did take any responsibility and he's now the Chairman of Orthopaedics at the UC-SF. I had a career track going and I was going to school nights to get my secondary degree, so my whole life got side-tracked while his went on to "stardom" in the medical field. Yes, I am still just a tad angry abotu what happened, especially seeing he never admited he made a mistake nor did the hospital, but for the most part, I try not to think about it because it breaks my heart by how much I lost and the price my daughter had to pay because of it.

My current husband, Lance, has stuck by my side since before we got married. After we'd been friends for about a year after meeting on Match.com, he invited me down to stay with him for 5 days while his daughter was in Hawaii with his former spouse and my daughter was with her dad at his family's home. About two months before we actually met, we were starting to have a deeper relationship.

The reason Lance asked me to visit him in Southern California (aka SoCal) was because a man I was seeing, who had proposed to me three months earlier, dumped me. He said it was because he felt a woman should be more acquiescent to a man like in the Bible, and didn't like the fact that I had both male and female friends, so he ended it. I was hurt, not as much as he thinks I was, but I figured that would happen after his Grandmother warned me about him and his ways. She didn't want to see me get hurt and we're still friends to this day. It was great because Lance and I had been growing to love each other over the time we emailed and talked on the phone, so when he proposed to me after dinner while dancing to Ottmar Leibert's Nouveau Flamenco, I wasn't surprised. I was a bit afraid and asked to give him his answer in a few days, but it was a yes and I flew back to Seattle with an engagement ring on my finger. I'm not a diamond sort of woman, so my engagement ring was a pretty large amethyst with a slew of small diamonds around it. I love my engagment ring though it's not traditional and it's perfect for us as we were both born in February.

We celebrated the day he proposed before I had my surgery on Dec. 20, just in case. With outpatient brain surgery, I wasn't sure if I'd even be alive or not and I wanted some happy for him to remember me. I wasn't being pessimistic, but more of a realist because in life, you never know what is going to happen. I went in for the first surgery having a tumor taken out and look at what happened, so I wasn't taking any chances. I called my daughter and told her I loved her and the same with my stepdaughter. I have two really good kids, you know, and a very wonderful husband that I'd never give up for the world.

So, life is good, and with any luck at all, when the surgery heals in a couple weeks, and if the pain has departed even 10%, I'll have the best Christmas and New Year's present a woman could ever have. If you're ever around Walla Walla, on Highway 12, you might see our sheep and alpacas in our front pasture amongst our apricot, peach, and trees.

Please pardon any typos this time around as I'm still recovering from my surgery. Thanks. Have a very happy New Year, Bloggers. I hope you get what you want for the coming year in terms of goals and such. Hugs to you all!

Tours, Stories, Fleece, Fiber, Yarn and Pet Hair!

2005-11-06T07:04:00.000-08:00

We give tours of the farm to people who'd like to see the animals and what we do at Celtic Crossroads. Most people enjoy seeing the animals, petting the friendly sheep, and maybe an alpaca. Your children can feed the alpacas by hand because the alpacas love small people and they pay more attention to them than to larger adults. The animals seem to understand that the children do not intend to harm them, so they stand back and watch, or come up to them and sniff them, which is an alpaca's way of greeting other alpacas.

If you're in the area, please bring your children, nieces or nephews by and let them hand feed an alpaca or bottle feed a bummer (that's what sheep people call lambs who's mom's have deserted them) lamb. It's quite an exerience for children to be able to feed the animals by hand or with a bottle. They like the idea that they could become a lamb's mommy and they like to talk about it.

Each year, we have different lambs, alpacas, and other animals, so let us know if you're coming to visit. We have story times for the children and can talk to the parents about "adopting" or buying animals. Spinners also can adopt lambs/sheep and in return for paying for their feed, will get the entire fleece for their own use.

I have some Icelandic wool for sale in charcoal, light gray, ivory, and white, and some Finn wool for sale in black and white from our spring shearing. I shear my sheep twice a year or their wool is too long to work with or to go through a carder. Fall shearing is coming up very quickly and I will have more wool as soon as the weather dries up. Then I will have raw fleeces in a Shetland/Lincoln cross (charcoal), some Finn/Icelandic cross (white and black), Finn (black adn white), Icelandic (dark through light grays, white, ivory, brown) and Romney (light tan). I also have some cinnamon and dark brown alpaca fiber for sale. This spring, I'll have Huacaya alpaca fiber in Dark brown, cinnamon, white and rose gray, as well as Suri alpaca in white. Contact me before it's gone.

If you're interested in yarn for knitting, crocheting, weaving, dyeing or felting; I have some available in a variety of colors in wool (white, browns, grays and charcoal) and alpaca (white, cinnamon, and dark brown). I can dye it in the colors of your choice or you can buy your own dye and dye it yourself.

Finn, Icelandic, Finn/Icelandic-(F/I-) cross wool, and alpaca felts easily. They can dyed in many colors or you can leave the fiber in their natural colors, then felt it into dolls, masks, characters, or anything you can dream of for yourself, your kids, or your friends. Though the Finn and Icelandic wool and the alpaca fiber felts very easily, the F/I-cross wool felts like a dream.

I do custom spinning also. If you have any long-haired cats or medium- to long-haired dogs (it's the undercoat that I spin) that have clean coats with no matts or vegtable matter in the hair, and if you have quite a bit of their hair, I can spin up some yarn for you with that as well. If there's not enough for a large project, I can also add some other fiber(s) of a close or matching color, blend it with your pet's hair, and there will be enough yarn for a hat, scarf, mittens, purse, and/or pillow. Cost will vary depending on what type of fiber is used to blend with the pet's hair and how much hair you give me from your pet.Let me know what you want or need and I will give you an estimate.

Hugs,
Jet

Busy, busy, busy

2005-11-06T04:46:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone:

Things here at the Farm are very busy. Between the animals and the house, the garden's been taking up tons of time, which is why I haven't posted since May.

We have a new puppy named Bud, if I didn't mention it. We also got a new cat, Norphan, who will be our mouser around here. Bud was neutered and Norphan was spayed about 1.5 months ago to keep from making or having babies. Miss Lacey, my eldest cat who's a tortoisesheel Persian and will be 16 years old in February, had a hematoma on Wednesday, so I took her to the Vet for surgery. Now her head is half shaved and her right ear is flopping down and I highly doubt it will be upright again. She's very embarrasshed by the whole thing, but she'll survive.

We had to start buying hay in July because of the drought we've had here in SE Washington. We could only water every 3rd day so the grass didn't get enough water to thrive, but they're doing okay. I traded two registered Icelandic sheep for 2 alpacas this summer. I was going to buy two angora does, but that didn't work out, so maybe next summer. We'll see how it goes. The alpacas I traded for are both male: Al Paca is a white Suri and Earl Gray is a rose gray Huacaya. Now I have two brown Huacayas: a cinnamon named Koko and a dark brown named Java; and a shite Huacaya named El Dorado whom we call Eldie. All in all, they're good boys.

I also sheared an alpaca at Detour Farm just down the road from us so that he wouldn't get too stressed out in the heat. I only sheared Eldie once last year, so he was only the 2nd that I sheared. So, this spring 2006, I will have 5 more alpacas to shear and gain a lot in experience, plus a couple of llamas as well. At $26 a head to shear from the regular shearer, I will have gained quite a bit in savings by doing it myself. Our sheep shearer doesn't do alpacas, but this year he's going to help me learn to shear sheep because he's going to retire. He was supposed shear the sheep on Halloween, but it was raining like the sky broke, so as soon as we have two to three days of dry weather, he'll be by to do my rams and ewes.

I harvested strawberries, peaches, apricots, raspberries, and apples this summer. This fall I've already harvested about 5 pumpkins and 10 squash from my garden patch along with tomatoes, onions, shallots and elephant garlic. Next year, my rhubarb will be ready to harvest so I'll be able to make plenty of rhubarb/strawberry pies fwith my everbearing strawberries and the 5 rhubarb plants. I also will have gooseberries and currants. Oh, my English walnut trees have been dropping nuts like crazy. I can hardly believe it. I have 3 large boxes just full of nuts and there are still a ton on the ground, so I'll be out again picking them up.

I had a slight accident two weeks ago, though I didn't cause it. Lance, my DH, was massaging my right foot and he pulled on the foot a bit too hard and subluxed my cuboid joint. So, I wnt to the Podiatrist the other day to find out why my foot hurt so much and they told me that had happened, and it will take a few more weeks until 1) it pops back into joint or 2) it heals. If it continues to hurt by the time two weeks are up, I have to see the other podiatrist in the office and he'll try to put the joint back in, and if that doesn't happen, then I get to see the chiropractor. I can't believe that just a too hard a pull could cause so much pain and hurt. I guess my DH doesn't know his own strength. He's a good man otherwise, just has to be a bit more careful with my poor little feet.

My daughter was molested when she was 4-5 years over a period of 9 months. I made sure he was caught and had to go to jail (sentenced to 60 days, but only served 40--got off for good behavior--nice that there were no kids around so he could behave) among other things he was sentenced to. I didn't bring a civil suit against him because I figured when my daughter was old enough, she could bring a suit against him to make him pay for what he did to her. The suit was filed about 1.5 years ago, and it was settled a month ago. SHE WON!!! I'm so happy for her, not because she got some money so she could afford to go back into counseling and back to school, but so she could get her power back and get on with her life. It wasn't easy for her to come tell me what he did to her, and it hasn't been easy for her since it happened. I had no idea what to do for her, so I helped her the best I could. I did know what she was going through because of the rape/molestation by my family (mother/maternal grandmother from just born to 9 yo, my stepfather from 13-15 yo), so I wasn't going to let him get away with what he did. Now that she won her case, this will make it easier on her all the way around and if she sees him anywhere, she's not going to feel like he can still get at her. He threatened her that if she told anyone, he'd kill not only her, but me as well. And I was in love with this jerk...though I didn't date for 4 years after she told me what he did because I couldn't look at a guy who had kids at a park and not wonder if he was molesting or raping his kids.

So, this year has been both good and bad, but for the most part, very good. I hope that next year will be even better.

Hugs to all of you!
Jet

Another Day, Another Animal

2005-05-15T14:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the day I did my errands: groceries, burned out heat lamp bulbs, letting the chicks out to free range, etc. When I went to Albertsons, there were two 10-12 yo girls who had free kittens. Talk about a smash up marketing job: the boy kittens had blue ribbons around their necks and the girl kittens had pink ribbons around their necks and were so cute, you'd almost have to take one. Most of thepeople in the store were talking about how cute those kittens were, but Lance and I had talked about getting an additional cat to keep the mice, moles and gophers away....in other words, we needed a barn cat. So, I brought the female kitten home and she is, for the time being, living in the garage. Once my house cat becomes deceased, we won't have any more house cats....too much cat fur to clean up all the time.

Lance named the kitten, "Norphan," as in an orphan in slang and is from the POGO cartoons from when we were both kids. We still like to look at the couple of POGO cartoon books we bought over the years and enjoy the political and other humor in it. So, Norophan is her name.

About 1.5 months before that, we got a "not-so" Great Pyrenees puppy, a male who was the runt o f the litter, whom we named Bud. He is such a love, but will never get to be as tall or heavy as a standard sized Pyr dog even after he becomes an adult. His legs are too short, his muzzle and head too big for his body, his tail's too long, so he'll never be a show dog--we love him just the way he is. Plus, he'll be a wonderful source of dog hair for me to spin when he blows his coat in the spring.

This spring, we had 16 lambs (5 died). We have 7 ewelings and 4 ramlings, 4 of the lambs are Finn/Icelandic cross lambs and the other 7 are registered Icelandic lambs. They are as cute as a bugs ear though. Bud loves the lambs (for dinner--kidding) and plays with them...they leap over his head playing keep-away with him as he tries to play with them like they were puppies. But he is learning and, as I said, he loves them. He is still afraid of the alpacas though--we still have three, but that's fine. El Dorado will be gelded this autumn when the flies die down.

The farmers' market in Walla Walla starts on May 21 for those of us who sell there. I've had a couple of people purchase more products from me over the winter/early spring (yarn, a custom-made scarve, toys) so my products are becomign known. It's so exciting to be able to have people want to buy yarn and other things from me. I did the Waitsburg Jr. Livestock show in April and I'll be doing the 2nd Annual Dayton Festival of the Arts in Dayton for the second time as well as doing spinning demos at the Mall (January) and at the Walla Walla Labor Day weekend festival (Frontier Days) at the county fairgrounds in Jim Nelson's booth. Jim's our resident sheep shearer and is looking for someone who can pick up some of new people in the area who need their sheep sheared. He's really busy. His booth at the fair has over 50 types of wool, Alpaca, Llama, mohair and angora fiber, and it's won for the last few years as the best booth of the fair. He's good.

My now 21 yo daughter came to stay with us and we had a great time. She's gotten to be quite an adult and I'm proud she is as strong and knowledgeable as she is, especially since she had a hard life already. She's making it and that's what counts.

Well, take care for now and I'll write again later.