The Weekend!

Much better! After some heehawin', I finally talked my daughter into going with me to Reno; she had changed her mind and wanted to go to the last home foot ball game, it was a hard row, let me tell you.

We didn't get to my friends house until after dark, and left the two corriedales in the trailer till morning when we would be able to at least see which direction they bolted if that was what they decided to do.

Wow, what a place! My friend, you have a beautiful home! (Web page at http://home.att.net/~mimb/index.htm)

I got a tour of the studio that night, all kinds/colors of yarn, rovings, fleece, and felted items. Fiberholic nirvana! A loom here, a supercarder there, a spinning wheel over there, complete with TV, couch and a wonderful view of the mountains. I was impressed at all the different colors that shetlands come in! She had one fleece that was a steely black with wisps of grey, moorit (the shetland world has different names for the red colors), blue, creamy, bright white and on and on.
(After the fact: I asked for a picture, this is obviously in winter, but the same sheep :)


With fingers twitching I ask if she has any of a particular fleece for sale. I feel like a junky, really! Here I am with a yard full of sheep at home, three-four-five or more fleeces and a multitude of roving cluttering up my 'corner' of the living room, and I cant walk away from two pounds of wool!!!

The next morning; after a simple (but tasty) breakfast, we went to get the sheep out of the trailer. There isn't a lot of room to move a horse trailer around in the yard but somehow I managed to back the trailer up right to the door of the barn (which is also a really cool set up!), and all we had to do was run my two pinball sheep through the barn into a pen out back (they are both a bit flighty).

Then we went on the sheep tour. I wish I would have had a camera. I have always loved the northern Nevada countryside, and I love to look at sheep! Shetlands are a smaller breed and they produce a dual coat of wool, with long outer guard hairs and a thick, fluffy inner coat that I now know is fun to spin and pleasant to handle.
That day we went to my first CSSW (Carson Sierra Spinners and Weavers Guild http://www.scs.unr.edu/~ashannon/cssw/) meeting. We went through guild business and introductions and show and tell while sitting in the spinning circle and then had lunch. I love going to fibery gatherings, I don't get enough were I'm at, the closest spinner to me is 45 min's away, the next is an hour and a half!

Sunday!

Now that I am down to two rams, we have two breeding pens. Lazarus, an old style tunis (breeds seem to change all the time, the 'old style' is from 4 - 5 years ago, before the breeders/showers started breeding for straighter backs and bigger frames, a 'craw' item for another post...) in one pen with his five ladies; this is our terminal flock, lambs from these sheep are destined for the freezer but we don't rule out the possibility of the occasional show lamb or replacement ewe.

Carmine, a ram lamb (who right now thinks he has died and gone to heaven) is in with five registered tunis ewes whose lambs are destined for the show ring, but if a lamb is born unregisterable, they go into the locker pen.

As I said in an earlier post, I live for lambing season and cant wait for the next one :-)

The corriedales are now safe in California with their new owners who picked them up last night. They are with the Mendenhalls at the Wool Ranch (http://www.woolranch.com/) where Terry and her husband raise wool sheep, and do it really well!

The last two ewes, a registered dorset and a registered suffolk, will be going to Star Valley this week to be bred to a registered suffolk and we will be picking up a yearling ewe to replace the ewe lamb we lost last week.

SOWISA!