This is why I get distracted at chore time.
More Leaping Lambs
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Fifty Lambs So Far
I talked to a friend of mine today and she asked what has happened since I wrote about Marilyn’s fleece in the post about a week ago. Hmmm. I guess it’s been about 40 more lambs here for a total of 50. I think there are about a dozen still to lamb. Here are some photos and you can go to YouTube for videos of lambing and lambs playing.
Meridian Loretta x Meridian Hendrix
Meridian Jane x Meridian Miller
Twin to the last one.
Meridian Jazz with triplets sired by Meridian Miller.
I’m not sure what happened here. This is less than half a lamb at 3.8 pounds. This lamb was up and nursing when I found it and hasn’t needed any help. It’s the smallest lamb I’ve ever had here.
These are 5 of the 6 yearlings that I kept from last year’s lamb crop. They sure look different than a year ago.
Marilyn’s Fleece
Marilyn is one of seven lambs that I kept from the 2013 lambing season.
Here she is with her mom, Hot Lips.
Marilyn was my choice to take to Black Sheep Gathering last year where she won her class. (Hot Lips was Champion Jacob Ewe at BSG when I took her there!)
Here she is at 9 months old last fall. When Farm Club members chose their fleeces “on the hoof” I put my name on Marilyn’s.
Shearing Day.
Marilyn’s fleece looks brown, but those are sunbleached tips.
This is what her fleece looks like from the cut side. Isn’t it gorgeous?
Detail of the staples.
Last week I carded Marilyn’s fleece on my Clemes & Clemes electric drum carder.
Here are the batts ready to spin. Hopefully there will be a post before too long in which I’ll have photos of finished yarn and a project. To be continued…
Loretta’s lambs
This lamb is missing his Jacob facial markings, but I still like these photos. He was on his feet and walking in less than 10 minutes. 
The twin has all the right spots. You can watch their birth in this video.
Mary Had a Little Lamb…and then Another
I have been anxiously awaiting lambs. Athena started us off early by lambing last week, but there has been nothing since. Mary was calling for lambs all morning and she finally got her wish.
Others came to investigate.
I moved Mary and her ewe lamb inside where she had her second lamb, a big ram. 
It will be a busy few weeks.
Too Soon for Spring but…
After I published the last post (a bunch of seemingly unrelated ugly photos) I thought it was pretty stupid. I do have something to tell about how they all relate, but that story will wait until I get around to it and in the meantime I have deleted it. This is a better bunch of photos that I took yesterday on the way to the barn.
First Lamb
Athena lambed ahead of schedule. Unfortunately the biggest twin (12.2 lbs) was dead when I went out this morning. Although it looks as though it was born alive (or at least was full term) there was something wrong with it. It’s belly was full of fluid so I think there was probably a congenital problem with it and it never could have survived.
This lamb is 8 pounds.
It’s obvious who the dad is:
Anytime Now!
Lambs are due in about a week.
This is Sparkle.
Sweetie
Spring
Jazz.
Bella.
Farm Day – help with sheep chores
Our first Farm Day of the year was on Saturday and five Farm Club members helped me get ready for lambing. I forgot to take photos at the beginning but started with vaccinating all the ewes. In the meantime we kept an eye on the two ewes who were supposed to be bred that day so that they will lamb at the fair in July.
There was no question about Miller and Donna, but ZZ left me wondering. He seemed more interested in his buddies in the adjacent pen than he was in Clover although she was doing her best to entice him. I decided that I’d better try another ram so Faulkner was the one. He knew just what to do.
While the rams were otherwise occupied and I had plenty of help it was time to clean the ram pen.
Rusty usually keeps the rams away while I clean so he took his usual position although the rams weren’t there. 
The ewes watched through the gate while we moved wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow load. Those red marks are just from the marking crayon we used as we vaccinated.
After cleaning the ram pen it was donkey play time! Lisa discovered the bliss of brushing a donkey.
Amaryllis had to hold still for me to measure her. She is about as svelte as she ever gets and I wanted to have a baseline measurement for her (670 pounds according to the tape, which is really meant for horses). By the way, I looked up svelte because I wasn’t sure how to spell it. Svelte, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: thin in an attractive or graceful way; and a. slender, lithe. b : having clean lines : sleek. Hmmm. So maybe svelte isn’t quite the right word to describe a donkey.
Catching up in the Shop
I spent the weekend demonstrating weaving at the Sacramento Weavers and Spinner Guild annual Open House. I knew that if I was going to spend two days there I needed to get something useful done. I wove two more of the scarf warps from the Box of Chenille to end the weekend with six new scarves. 
These are three from one warp.
This is a bike that was parked outside the show.
Back at the shop I have been trying to get caught up on weaving jobs. This is part of a baby blanket warp. I cut these off before I finished all of the warp because I had someone waiting for three of them. 
I finally finished these cotton blankets that were on the loom a long time. Some are baby blanket size and some are larger for throws. 
The next project to finish is a custom king-sized blanket woven of yarn that is a blend of llama and wool. I finished getting this on the sectional beam last night and started threading it today. I hope that I can finish it by next week and move on to the throws for this customer.
