the book garden

One of my all-time favorite stores, The Book Garden, is just a few miles down the road from us. The name derives from the fact that it is a combination used bookstore and florist. To all of you who think this is somewhat of an unusual union: I know.

But the more time I spend around small businesses, the more I have come to realize that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work for everyone. The owner has gotta live with it, intimately, so the business better fit into his/her lifestyle and interests. As our nation advances toward completely homogenized status -- it seems you can find a strip of McDonalds-Walmart-RiteAid-Barnes & Noble-Home Depot-Kohl's-etc. wherever you might go -- I have come to realize that there is absolutely no fun in that particular model. And I have also found that the only real way to show your appreciation of out-of-the-box unique stores is to support such businesses with your dollars, on a frequent basis.

How else are we going to stand up to all the blandness and blahness?

So I try to do just that with the Book Garden, as much as possible. I have converted my kids to think it is a cool place too, because that's what you get to do when you have kids. Brainwash them, until they eventually rebel and refuse to read anything that isn't on a iPad.

The interior is very unprepossessing but amazing fun to poke around in if you are a cheapskate triviologist (OK, I made that last word up) like me. Secondo and I wandered in on Saturday and hit the mother-lode. I'll share the treasures I found tomorrow.

april down, may to go

Here I am, true to form, celebrating the completion of my April sweater:

Details: 3TimesChic, in a cotton/acrylic blend (reputedly with some repurposed soda bottle content) purchased from Little Barn at Rhinebeck in (I think) 2007

I had a devil of a time with the seaming, which is why I tend to avoid sweaters that require use of the skill (or my lack thereof). All three sweaters done so far this year were knitted in the round with minimal seaming required. I was folding laundry last Thursday when it hit me that I was folding laundry as an avoidance tactic to not face seaming. I made myself march upstairs, pull out the darning needle, get down to work and I produced: this pathetic shoulder seam.

That was supposed to be the right side. Out it came. I tried again and produced a slightly more attractive seam, but this time with a not-so-attractive hole.

Sigh. The third time finally looked acceptable and by the time I made it down the sleeves (wondering the entire time why I had not converted to pattern to knit it in the round), I was getting fairly proficient at it.

I sucked it up and finished this afternoon, thanks to my lucky sweater-finishing earrings (thanks Marta!). They have worked every time so far.

Now onto May... I am a little slow out of the gate on this one, but I busted out my new ball winder this afternoon (thanks Mom and Dad!) and got down to business.

mother's day minefields

I am always a little wary when the boys come home from school with free-style missives in time for Mother's Day. As is the way with all children, you never know just what they are going to say and chances are very good that you would have preferred a little less brutal honesty. The cynical side of me suspects that this is a highlight of the year for teachers, a little payback dirt for all the lip they've had to take from parents throughout the school year.

One year, Primo's third-grade teacher sent home a book of poems written by all the children in the classroom to their individual mothers. Now, she was not a mother and probably could not appreciate the pitfalls of such an approach. It's one thing to know that the teacher knows what your kid said about you, but it's another thing entirely to have your kid's words broadcast to every other parent in the classroom.

I was extremely relieved to read my poem, which went:

My mom is very nice.
Very nice and helpful.
She helps us with all our jobs.
She is very loveable (sic).

Much better than this one:

My mom is sweet like chocolate
and sour like a lemon.
She loses her mind sometimes.
But we love her and that's what matters.

And I can't imagine that it was a very nice Mother's Day for the poor woman whose child wrote only this:

Sometimes I never get to see my mom
because she is always on trips.

Nor for the child, I suspect. I should note that the next year, the teacher was transferred to the computer department. I do not know if there was any connection.

This year, Terzo came home with the following list. The first part were the set questions, and his answers are after the colons.

• Likes to play with: me playing board games and knit.



• Likes to eat: spinach and all sorts of food.



• Likes to drink: wine because it's her favorite.



• Likes to go to: all sorts of restaurants because she eats a lot.



• Likes the TV show: she doesn't watch TV that much.

Joan commented that I obviously don't have that much time for TV because I am too busy stuffing my face and then drinking wine until I pass out.

Happy Mother's Day, to all you great moms (and godmothers and aunts and guiding forces -- you know who you are) out there!

every dad needs one

For all those little kids who are learning the art of hitting a moving ball... and their patient parents... I present the indispensable ball dog:

The video quality is a little poor (and I apologize about the wind noise), so in case you can't fully make out the batter's gear:

I think the footwear may be the key to his hitting success.

belated thanks

A few months ago (ack!!! has it really been that long?), Saille nominated me for a beautiful blogger award. Although it may appear otherwise by my failure to mention it on this blog, I was tremendously flattered by the nomination.

The problem is that to accept the award, you have to do a few things, and we all know how I am on follow-through:

1. Thank the person who nominated you on your blog (see title of post);


2. Link to the person who nominated you (see beginning of post);


3. Copy the award and paste it on your blog (see above);


4. Nominate seven other beautiful bloggers (see end of post); and


5. List seven interesting things about yourself.

And therein lies the problem.

Over the course of the last two months, at odd times in my day (mucking out the barn, rinsing dyed roving, folding laundry), my mind has returned again and again to what I could possibly list about myself that anyone would find remotely interesting, apart from those "fascinating" tid-bits that you already know. This has been the biggest hold-up to my formal acceptance of this lovely award. I am still no closer to coming up with these seven items but I feel that waiting any longer to accept would make me appear even more ungrateful than I already do.

So without further ado, here is my I-have-no-idea, maybe-you'll-find-them-interesting-despite-my-best-efforts things about me:

1. I wanted to be a vet from about age 10 on.


2. I failed calculus my first semester of college; so much for vet school.


3. I still kept on with my biology degree.


4. Then I went to law school; so much for biology (though in a round-about way, that's how I know Saille).


5. I met my LSH during our senior year of college in Anatomy & Physiology lab, so the biology degree came in handy after all (in our meet-cute story, that is; get your mind out of the gutter).


6. I practice quite a bit of veterinary skills these days thanks to the happenstance of sheep and other farm animals in our lives, so in six degrees my life came full circle.


7. I only had two wisdom teeth.

Reading this over, I realize that it is more of a life story than interesting facts sort of list, with the exception of the last item, which isn't particularly interesting.

Thank goodness listing seven beautiful bloggers is quite a bit easier -- so much easier that I listed eight!

1. Lapsus Calumni
2. Lakeshore Textiles
3. Ruit Farm Web Journal
4. Hatchtown Farm Journal
5. Crazy Fiber Lady
6. Resting Under the Pine Tree
7. Karmic Imprints
8. Zarzuela Knits and Crochets

you'll have to take my word for it

We have been moving the ewes-n-lambs group around a lot so far this year, just because of how things have worked out. Our pasture groups aren't organized where I want them to be yet, I have the littlest lamb to feed morning and night, sometimes the little ones need the shelter and sometimes they don't, yada yada.

All this moving has meant that Dusty is getting a lot of practice -- more than ever -- in shifting sheep, and this has made a big difference in his working behavior. Less throttle, for sure. More listening as well, with fewer corrections needed for aggregious out-of-control behavior (chasing, nipping). More open to suggestion, and checking back with me to see what is needed. I was surprised to see that commands we have been using in other contexts -- "wait" (by the door, before being invited in), "easy" (be gentle with the boys while they're running around), "with me" (stay by me when we walk to and from the bus stop) -- are translating into his working vocabulary.

Trying to capture this so I could show the greater world his improvement, however, has been nigh on impossible. Something always goes wrong. Take this typical video, where he is pretty much on task and then gets distracted by his soccer ball (don't miss my sigh of frustration at the end):




So today I enlisted Terzo's help, so I could try to direct Dusty while someone else manned the camera. The pasture with board fencing has the richest grass right now, but the lambs keep popping through the fence and wandering around the back yard, into the barn, around the trailer (and practically into the patient parking lot), etc. Every few hours a patient will wander in to my LSH's office and ask if we know our sheep are loose, and my LSH will shoot me A LOOK, and that's my and Dusty's cue to go put them back in.



The lambs are getting the idea that the appearance of the dog means they need to go back in with their moms, right quick. As you can see, Dusty needs do little more than show his face and they go home, wagging their tails behind them. Actually, I apologize, you can't even see that despite my cameraman's best attempts to run to keep up with us, because they scooted under the fence as soon as they saw the dog headed their way.

So yet again there's no concrete proof of how he is doing, apart from his frequent looks back to me to see if he is on task and wait for further direction. You'll just have to take it from me that every so often he manages to look like a real sheepdog in action.

the maryland lowdown

On the way to the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival last Friday, one of Secondo's friends texted him, asking him why he got to leave school early. (Bad grammar, I know, too tired to fix.) Secondo said he was going to a sheep and wool festival. When the friend replied, "What's that?" Secondo said he would have to try and explain it on Monday. It was just too difficult to cover in a text.

Indeed.

Same goes for my preparations, it seems, seeing that my last post was almost a week ago. I am dead tired from the weekend; a difficult trip down, a lingering cold and the excessive heat all weekend just sucked me dry. The easiest way to explain lack of posts seems to be a series of before and after posts.

Before packing a few pounds of dyed roving (from left to right: Pin Oak, Jersey Tomato, Hydrangea and Clematis):

After packing:

Boards before repair:

And after, thanks to my friend's loan of her laminating machine (it is my new favorite machine, almost displacing our crock pot in my affections)

Sample skeins of yarn (and roving needed for another skein) before being finished:

After, in their place in the breed display -- I spun four of the six skeins last week, the purple roving was plied with grey roving in the skein on the right:

Breed display before judging:

And after:

Yep, two ribbons. We won first in our division (wool breeds) and grand champion for all the breed displays there. Not too shabby for our first time at that festival and the best part of all: I have gotten the set-up down to a half-hour, thanks to the tinker-toy like arrangement of pvc piping augmented by zip ties. I am adding it to my list of things that I am good at that aren't worth a darn thing in real life.