A Weekend With the Girls

Because I'm not going to have a vacation this year---time and money just won't permit---I arranged to have a Girls Weekend here on the farm. A lot of my friends had scheduling conflicts, so it ended up being just myself, Nyxana, Heather, and of course Ken.

Nyxana couldn't get here from Tennessee until Friday night, and had to leave again around Sunday noon, so our time together was pretty short. But we managed to have a good time and do a lot of fun activities during that time, including making a felted rug out of wool from my sheep.

Friday night, while waiting for Nyx to arrive, Ken, Heather, and I carded wool to for the rug while watching funny YouTube videos. When Nyx showed up, we put her straight to work too. We also had the first official Tasting of the Cordial.

Saturday morning, Heather (our early bird) got up before the rest of us and baked a fantastic batch blueberry scones, by far the best scones I've ever tasted, including the times I visited England and Scotland. Even better, she let me copy her recipe. Yum!

After breakfast, we had our Stuff Exchange. I've been cleaning out all the closets in the house and had a mess of cool stuff---clothes, jewelry, household items, decorations, etc.---I wanted to get rid of that was too good to just throw away, so it was mostly a "Stuff Giveaway" rather than an exchange.

But if we make this get-together an annual event, I hope other people will bring their stuff to exchange too. What could be more fun than a flea market where everything is free and the stuff is from friends who presumably share a lot of common interests with you?

Saturday afternoon, we crafted hand-made books, thanks to directions and materials that Heather brought, with some of my own craft materials added in. Ken and Nyxana had the best results. Partway through stitching the binding for mine, I realized I had started wrong, so I will need to start the stitching over before I can finish my book.

Saturday evening, while Ken made tasty burritos for supper, we girls laid out the wool for our felted rug: black wool with white overlay in the shape of the triple moon symbol (waxing moon, full moon, and waning moon).

Here's Nyxana, putting the finishing touches on the the moon design:


Then we turned on some music and had a good time pouring hot water and dish detergent onto the wool, then carefully stomping on it to begin the felting process. With soapy water on the plastic sheeting that was under the rug, the whole thing was very slippery, so we had to hold onto each other as we stomped, and we had to be careful because the moons kept sliding apart and needing to be repositioned.

After a while, everyone was getting tired and wanted to move on to some other activity, so we stopped even though the felting process wasn't complete.

Ken, Nyx, and I stayed up late on Saturday night talking, so we slept in on Sunday morning. But Heather, the early riser, got up early and made beautiful beaded necklaces for all of us, so we each have a memento of the weekend.

Since then, the rug has since been lying in the back yard waiting to be finished. It's felted enough to hold together lightly, but not enough to withstand any real pressure. I was going to wait until it was dry and then bring it inside to wait until I had time to finish it myself.

But it keeps raining here, so the rug has gotten a little bit of extra felting from Mother Nature in the form of rain and even one 2:00 a.m. hail storm!

Even though the rug is still soaking with last night's rain, and is laid across the back of our pickup truck to keep the sheep from walking (and peeing) on it, our cat Oliver Sudden knows a good rug when he sees it, and isn't about to let it go to waste:

Titan's Big Chance

Now that a week has passed since the main part of sheep breeding season, it's Titan's turn to be let loose with the ewes. As this year's cleanup ram, his job is to breed any of the ewes that didn't get bred by the other rams. Unfortunately for him, I don't think they've left much of a job for him to do.

Still, he's happy to be able to roam free with the rest of the flock for a little while. In a few weeks, he'll be put back in the paddock with the other rams, and the ewes will be a "boy-free" zone until after the lambs are born.

Not much else to write about today. Ken and I drove into Charlottesville so I could buy a new halter for Penny. She's the only one of the fillies still in a weanling size, and she's almost outgrown it. So now I bought her an adult "small." Grace is so large that she skipped the "small" size altogether, and went straight to "medium"---and she's only 8 months old!

While we were in town, we splurged and went to a matinee of the movie The Golden Compass. I really liked it: good storyline, excellent special effects, strong characters, and just an overall beautiful movie to watch.

Top News: Farmer Takes Day Off!

Yes, that's right. Shocking as it may seem, I took the day off today.

Which, when you run a farm, "taking the day off" just means that Ken and I did the chores quickly first thing in the morning, and then drove into Charlottesville for a late breakfast.

After that, we went to a movie. Would you believe that the last movie I saw in the theater was Lord of the Rings? When you're a farmer, you don't get out much!

After the movie, we did my favorite "day off" activity: wandered around in the bookstore. There were oh-so-many new books I would love to have brought home, but I was good: despite the temptation, I didn't buy anything.

The good news is, while we were out, several of my items sold on EBay, and a new potential buyer started inquiring about my filly Libby.

Oh yes: and the cats caught two bats and brought them in the house tonight. They killed one in the bathroom, and released the other to fly around the front hallway, until we managed to open a door and shoo it back outside.

The adventures never end!