Sad News

Sad thing happened this week. We lost our ewe Dehlilia. She was 1 month short of lambing due date and started aborting the babies. We work and were not home to help her so we came home to find her gone. The sheep had not yet been sheared so we sheared her before dealing with the remains. About 3 pounds of usable wool. I will have to find something special to do with her fleece. I will miss her a lot. She had a lot of spirit. I will miss seeing her and her lambs, something I was very much looking forward too. We suspect she had been carrying triplets as she was quite large.
We have become very watchful of the remaining ewe "Snow" She is now checked at least 3 times a day with one of the checks being in the middle of the nite. She got put in the barn and "Buddy Boy" is missing his "girls" very much.
Snow got her shearing today. I did it myself and it is far from good or even OK. But it is off and she is more comfortable. We had been waiting for a wee bit warmer weather to do the shearing of the sheep not so much for them as for us. ten to twenty degree weather is not fun to work in. So today being a lot warmer and off of work we got the ewe done. Buddy Boy will have to wait. It's a lot of work to shear a sheep. I give a lot of credit to those who do this for a living. They don't make enough I am sure.

Our weaving group team has been meeting to plan our Fleece to Shawl compitition shawl. We planned a test warp and finished weaving it last weekend. A supplemental warp plan. We still need to decide on the details of the real one, like color and pattern of suplimental threads. We may use some of the wool from my sheep. I took samples of all three about a month ago. Buddy Boy's fleece worked up the nicest with the least amount of trouble. I am going to keep Dehlilia's fleece so it is out. We are planning on using silk from silk that one of the other team member raises for the supplementary warp. We want to use lots of color so this should be fun, fun, fun.