Spring In The Forest

Just behind where we live are some fantastic trails through the forest. I took my camera on my walk the other day to capture some of the things I saw.

The ferns are all growing. They look like prehistoric birds somehow !

All the trees are bursting into leaf.

Some more ferns I passed.

I come to a fork and turn right.

A bracket fungus on the side of a tree.

I met a few creatures along the way, this banana slug for instance.

And a caterpillar on one of the ferns.

I'm not sure what animal would have made these prints, a deer perhaps ?

A lovely flowering redcurrant.

And the view looking up.

I put the rest of the pictures on flickr otherwise the blog might be too image laden !

Bald AND Beautiful

Today was shearing day. One of my favorite occasions, as I'm sure I've mentioned before !

We had a new shearer come from Vancouver Island this year. His name is Grant and here is his website. You can take a look at their Clun Forest and Navajo Churro flock and more info on shearing.

He did a great job on the sheep, despite their small stature which is particularly hard on the back !

Here he is in action with Humbug.

And Marmite is almost done.

Here's Dandelion, just up from the ordeal ! Lovely and clean.

Kirby, our Babydoll Romney wether was determined to finish his mouthful of hay. He seemed to enjoy being sheared.And look at this handsome fellow, Womble our Babydoll ram.

I skirted the fleeces and packed them away in used paper grain bags until I get time to wash them all.

What a great day !

Comings And Goings

On Thursday Simon took the Fab Four, (A.K.A. Lilly, Rose, Snowdrop and Primrose), down to Vancouver to meet up with Leona who was driving them back to Grand Forks.

Here is a picture of them all a while ago at our place.

And here they are up at Leona's. Lilly and Rose are enroute to Nova's up in Fort St John but will stay with Leona for a few weeks. They seem quite content don't they ?

The day before the lambs left though, we had a bit of a shock as Cashew gave birth to a little ram.

Here he is. His name is Willow.

Here are Cashew and Willow on his first day out of the barn.

Kind of odd that she lambed three months after everybody else, but there you are !

The day after the lambs left, Simon flew out for a couple of weeks in the UK visiting the family.

We miss them all !

Rainbow Bunny

I have been remiss in blogging lately. My excuse is that I've been busy moving stuff around the house and setting up my studio room. (How cool is that ! I'll post some pictures when it's looking presentable).

Easter came and went but to celebrate I thought I'd try some dyeing with Easter egg dyes. As well as the angora fibre I wanted to dye, (Saffy) I rounded up a few little odd bobbins I had spun on my drop spindle.

I wound them up on my trusty skein winder.

I also found some llama and grey romney that looked like it wanted be colourful.

Here is what they all looked like after I added the dyes, wrapped them in plastic film and "nuked" them in the microwave. Not that appetizing ! As well as the easter egg dyes, (which were a bit disappointing really, big on packaging, small on actual colour sachets), I used food colouring.

But here is what it looked like when I unwrapped those plastic parcels and rinsed it all.

And the angora.And the skeins. At least they are all one colour now !

April Fools ?

Unfortunately not, but this is what we woke up to today.

I know people in most of Canada will be having a chuckle, but you know us wimpy Westcoasters, a bit of snow, (especially in April) is news around here.

The sheep were mighty surprised when they went out.

Still, they got some extra hay in the dry so they were happy. Here are Cashew, Pompom, Lily and Snowdrop chowing down.

Tika, of course is always happy to see snow. Anytime of year.

Also, for the record, the first hummingbird of the year arrived yesterday.

Today I bet he's wishing he stayed a little longer in the warm. He came to the feeder today though, despite the snow and the wind. Intrepid little guy isn't he ?

Happy Spring !

To celebrate, I took some pictures of the lambs this afternoon. We let the mums out of the pasture for a nice fresh grass munch and the lambs stayed in the orchard.

Here is Rose who came up to the camera.

And Lily relaxing in the sun.

A curious Primrose.
And bookends Primrose and Lily.

We let the Buns out for a bit of a scamper and they got to meet the lambs.

The Buns quite enjoyed the spring weather.

Hope the first day of Spring was a good one for you too !

Dust

Things have been so busy around here in the house-of-drywall-dust that I haven't been able to concentrate on any crafting lately.

All I could come up with is this one very small shoe.

I know a few girls having babies at the moment so hopefully I will be able to summon up the willpower to actually complete it's mate and they will end up on a pair of small feet.

Tomorrow though, (despite the weather forecast for snow), our fine arts group are undertaking a natural dyeing workshop. We are guiding ourselves using this book. I am really looking forward to it. On Tuesday we all got together and mordanted all the skeins. Tonight I just have to soak my 12 and get together some other supplies. The cards are for putting small pieces of everybody's skeins which should all be different colours.

I'm also posting a picture of Mr Cinnamon Buns. His story can be found here, (if you haven't seen it already). Isn't he cute !