Sunday seems to be family day here and today was no exception. Daughter Nikki brought the two grand daughters up from Owosso to meet the sheep. Meredith (8) is on the left giving Danny some 'nilla cookies, and Elizabeth (5) is treating Jenny. The sheep are really husband's project (although I get the fleeces) and he wants to restrict their treats 'cause they are a little plump. But he is a total push over when the girls are around.

I'm just about finished with my Journey to a Shawl project and will be posting it soon. Lots of spinning going on because I have a custom order for Jessica in New York. She would like as much handspun of white Ariana as I can spin. Yippee! but I have to spin something else in between or it feels like work and I get cranky.

Passing On Addictions

I guess that my addictions and/or passions are both my love of animals and of fiber arts. My own three grown children are animal lovers, be it dogs, cats, birds, worms, wildlife, whatever, and this passion has filtered down to the two grandgirls. This is 5 year old Elizabeth resting on my good girl, Cassie, and 8 year old Meredith is holding up her first, just cut off the loom, weaving. She thinks her weaving wants to be a pillow. We used up a bunch of my not really nice alpaca handspun yarns for our first project.

I'm pretty optimistic that we may hook our little, always on the go, Elizabeth into our fiber fun. She spun a little yarn on my wheel for the first time yesterday. Before this she just wanted to pedal - FAST. She also wove a couple rows on Meredith's weaving.

I'm alternating spinning the yarn and knitting on my Faroese shawl pattern. I have made enough mistakes that I'm not entering it into the MIAF fiber arts contest this fall. I still am really enjoying the knitting on this so am already thinking ahead to what kind of yarn to spin for my next one. Maybe some of that alpaca/dyed silk that is being made into roving for me......

Abandoned Socks

This is the sock that I'm abandoning to work on my shawl. Did I tell you, the shawl is a blast? I'm waking up in the middle of the night to knit a few rows.

Back to the sock - the match is knitted to the heel and I'm feeling really guilty about starting a new project. All my knitting friends are telling me that it's ok. They have unfinished (UFOs) projects all over their homes. This just doesn't feel right to me. Isn't my sock going to feel neglected and abandoned stuck on those needles in a bag? I'm told that after I have been knitting for a while, I will cope better - and happily, cheerfully, without guilt leave something behind to start a new project.

I'm afraid that I may never come back to these socks. Even though this is alpaca yarn, it's not really nice stuff. I bought it on line because I thought if I really goof on this project, I don't want to use my nice homespun. What I don't like about it: It's not really soft like alpaca should be. It split easily while knitting. And it has guard hairs - yuck! I hate those harsh little buggers sticking out.

This is my dear friend, Beth, who shows our alpacas for us. The pictures were taken while she was waiting to go into the show ring. Beth has her horse, Cord, here at our barn. The brown boy on the bottom left is Orion, and the white guy on the upper right is Pollux. Both boys placed 4th in their classes.

The show was great fun and rather profitable as I sold quite a bit of yarn and knitted stuff. I even managed to get a skein of yarn spun up for my Faroese Shawl. I have decided to use Sivia Harding's "Follow the Leader" pattern. It calls for 1100 yards but friend Cary says it will probably take less. I think I will just start knitting it and spin up what I need as I go along.