this weekend

I am officially at the point where I am firmly convinced that there is no way I will finish everything I need to do before I have to leave at noon (at the latest) tomorrow for the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival this weekend.

I have passed beyond the stage where I think I have enough time. That was Tuesday.

I am over cursing having to go into work and spend nine-plus hours away from home, when I could have made such good use of that time. That was yesterday.

I am past making schedules broken down into 15 minute increments that prove beyond a doubt that I have enough time to finish it all, if I just stick to the schedule. That was today.

Now I am just thinking that I will work until I can't work any longer tonight, and really that's all I can do. I think that is resignation.

He wasn't super-thrilled about the pink.

My deadline tonight is Secondo's arrival home from his first-ever prom (yes, he is a freshman; she is a junior; yes, it is Thursday; yes, I know) and then I am done for the day.

Tomorrow will bring my truck packed full of something or another, one way or another, ready to hit the road south.

have wool, will travel

One of the things I struggle with is the best way to package and display our farm's products. Some people seem to have a natural flair for this. I copy those people.

Case in point: Robin's vintage suitcases, which she uses to carry and display her handspun yarn. She totes it into a show, opens it up, and voila! Perfect display, which she claims she ripped off from someone else.

Ever since I saw it, I have been on the hunt for a similar suitcase to use for my little bags of felted wool. A shop in town had two perfect ones, but I dithered too long and they were gone the next time I stopped in. A few weeks later, she let me know that she had more.

Of course they weren't quite as neat as the originals. They never are. Only one was possibly suitable.

Possibly. It is vintage in the way that anything colored harvest gold is vintage, which is not quite as cool and retro as anything from the fifties. With Maryland breathing down my neck, beggars couldn't be choosers.

The shop owner knocked down the price because she hadn't had a chance to clean it up yet. I finally got to it today, because: Maryland. Three days. As soon as I started, the only word that came to mind was, well, manky. Call the Midwife is in season. I am channelling my inner Brit at the moment.

A scrub with Fantastic and a Magic Eraser sponge and it was a spot better. (I wasn't kidding about the inner Brit.)

The inside still needed some work.

Actually, it just needed to have all the fabric bits removed, along with the stray bobby pins. More Fantastic, more Magic Eraser (love those things), a heck of a lot of vacuuming.

The bottom is a wooden piece, but it had broken in half. After aligning the pieces together, I put another piece on top to strengthen it and hopefully hold the broken pieces in place. If you are wondering why I am not using clamps to keep it together while the wood glue dries, it is because my sons have completely wrecked my husband's workbench and I could only find this too-small one, so I was forced to use it as a weight instead.

I have been keeping back this mega-heavy-duty cardboard box for several weeks with this project in mind. It's a wonder my husband puts up with my hoarding ways. A little cutting, a little glueing of burlap fabric to cover the cardboard, some sorting of wool, and now I have my own voila!

Unfortunately I miscounted how many colors I had already dyed, so I am scrambling a bit to fill those last two slots. One has been filled since I took the picture; the other is in the dyepot. I do have three whole days until Maryland.

two if by sea

My middle son, planting potatoes in the newly-cleared garden by moonlight and lantern light and flashlight.

Apparently they had to be planted today, because he cut them apart two days ago, and that's what the directions said.

I could wish that he showed the same dedication to task for things like homework and studying. Though a fifteen-year-old boy that looks up you tube videos on "how to plant potatoes" and then gets it done all by himself, because he picked out the potatoes at the Philadelphia Flower Show, because he had a yen to grow his own potatoes, is probably going to be okay. The report card may be less than desirable, but it is all good.

mercer's babies

Remember way back in November, when Mercer the ram lamb visited Robin's farm to breed her two Coopworth ewes?

Turns out he did a great job. Her first ewe delivered last Tuesday. We were hoping for a ewe out of her, because she was the National Champion Coopworth two years ago.

No dice, of course. Twin rams. Cute as the dickens, though. Mr X is an especially curious guy.

This is his brother, currently no name, and the current frontrunner for "most likely to keep his balls."

We are waiting for the other ewe, twin sister to this one, to lamb, to see if she comes through with a ewe. Our farm doesn't need another ram, but I would like to have those genetics in our flock.

I went up yesterday to help Robin dock their tails and to talk about wethering them. We hemmed and hawed and basically chickened out, so the boys get to be true boys for a bit longer at least.

After we were done, Robin let them out onto pasture for the first time. Mama was thrilled to be back on grass. The lambs have no idea why the green stuff on the ground is important, they have no clue what to do with it, but they understand right away that they are supposed to do something. They'll figure it out soon enough.

woollen roses

One week from today...

I will be at Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.

I can't wait. I love the combination of being with my parents and boys (but unfortunately no boys this year), visiting with people that I only get to see once or maybe twice a year if I am lucky, sharing all our hard farm work with others, breathing the wool fumes created by others' hard work, and spending time with a heck of a lot of people that have the same obsession that I do.

It's an unbeatable combination. I am "in the getting excited" stage. I am also in the "panicking because I am not nearly ready" stage. Today was a day off work, giving me a nice block of time to do something about the latter condition. Things aren't starting to gell together quite yet in the way that makes me feel like I just might be okay, but I did get some solid licks in.

I have been working for a while on putting together these samplers of colored wool for felting, and I finished packing them today.

The fancy egg containers and the idea were given to me by Robin—more on the happenings in her sheepy world tomorrow. They were more work than I initially calculated, but I am crazy pleased with the result.

Up close, they look like... well, you know.

Part of the problem was guarding them from the wool maruader in our house. If I left them unattended for a few minutes, one color or another would "mysteriously" vanish, never to be seen again.

Who, me?

I am not accustomed to having to deal with anyone who has the slightest bit of interest in wool, but I am learning on the job. It does make a nice change to have someone who shares my fascination with the stuff, however.

overdue

I have been told (*cough* thanks, Dad! *cough*) that a blog post is desperately overdue.

Unfortunately we have had a confluence of a heck of a lot of this:

Three days a week, to be exact.

Quite a bit of watching this—made more enjoyable by the fact that the older two are running together, so for once we have a two-for-one deal in the parental points department, but there goes the other two days:

They were both in this race and in this picture. Score two for me!

And a huge FFA science fair project deadline, with a competitor that looked like this right after he finished (ended up he won first place in the state for his division!):

Wearing his brother's jacket for luck. It worked.

He doesn't have his own yet.

Added all together, it means I am rarely by the computer. When I am, my brain is the equivalent of cheap neapolitan ice cream in the weak springtime sun.

I will leave you with a shot of sheep grazing the front yard, taken through a flowering sand cherry with my iPhone, which I had hoped would turn out a bit more artsy-like. We can hope for better tomorrow.

tradition

Boys in their Easter finery.

With a seasonally-appropriate sheep in the background, though I suppose a lamb would be slightly more proper.