Tiptoe through the Tulips

I had an ah ha! moment the other day. My side lawn really needed mowing and I was feeding hay to the sheep because my back field is closed off to let the new grass seed grow. So I made a deal with the sheep. If they would stay out of the tulips, I'd let them have a grass smorsgasbord. I opened the gate and luckily stood aside or I would've been stampeded.


They were very well behaved. I had visions of them running down the road like the old days when they'd break through the electric fence. But they were so happy to have grass that they just stayed and ate and ate. I don't have gates on this part of they yard , so there were many ways to escape. Once one of them got a bit close to the neighbor's yard and I yelled, "Mocha get back here!" She looked up and ran back. I was surprised she listened. I was working in the studio this entire time and kept looking out to check on them. I just couldn't get enough pictures of sheep and tulips. They're both so cute and happy.


After about an hour of nibbling, Brambles had enough and just settled down for a little nap. Sheep and tulips.


When taking sheep pix, more often than not, you get sheep butts. But with tulips, even sheep butts are cute.





Leopold and Mocha and lotsa tulips.










My neighbor's redbud was a great backdrop to the tulips and sheep. I put the sheep back for the night, and let them back out in this area the next day. But they lasted just about 1/2 hour before some wandered over to the neighbor's yard and some down the lane. I told them they lost their privileges and back to the field with just hay.


But I found a solution. Aramin and I fenced in another part of our yard so let them eat the grass down. They were really happy with this idea and settled in for day of munching.

I'm Dyeing To Know

I had perhaps the most bizarre dying experience EVER the other day. I posted the pretty tulip picture first because the others are not so pretty. Anyway, I had a huge day of dyeing, getting ready for Maryland Sheep and Wool Fest. My dye workshop is in the basement and I leave the double basement doors wide open to let the humidity out from the dye pots. Mid afternoon I turned off all the dye pots and went upstairs to print out patterns. I heard our two retrievers downstairs and it sounded like they were wrestling. I went down and shooed them outside. Back upstairs to print. Five minutes later they were down there again making noise. Back downstairs to shoo them out. But Tasman was acting weird, the hairs on his back raised. So I slowly looked around our messy basement and in the far dark corner was a critter. I thought it'd be some sort of rodent. I also smelled this absolutely horrible stench. I squinted my eyes and saw......... a VULTURE!!!!!!! I screamed like a girl and yelled, "Holy Shit! There's a vulture in our basement!!!!!" I ran upstairs to tell my husband who was in the office working. I said, theresafrickinvultureinthebasement!!!!!! He barely looked up and kept type, type, typing. He's not the vulture, rat, bat (yep, we've had em all!) removing guy. So I ran outside where my oldest son was talking to his girlfriend on the phone. I said "You gotta come help me get a vulture out of the basement!" He told his girlfriend, Hon I gotta go get a vulture out of the house like he was gonna go make toast or something. So down we go to Wild Planet to make our basement a vulture free zone. Aramin grabbed a mop and I grabbed a long pole and we poked it a bit to try to convince it to leave the building. That didn't work so well. It took off flying in our 7' tall basement and with a wingspan of about 4', it wreaked havoc. I screamed like a girl again, ducking out of the way. Of course it flew over to my dye kitchen and knocked over a huge jar of dye, spewing green liquid everywhere.


He/she? hopped over to the dye pan and stood in the water. Luckily it was no longer hot, just warm. At this time, I ran upstairs to get my camera. Vulture bird stood hunch backed in the warm water, hissed and lifted one wing to ward us off.




Aramin tried to get vulture bird onto the mop. He/she put one leg/claw on the mop but just wouldn't get on.


It walked over all my open dye jars as I held my breath, hoping that no more jars would fall.
It took off again and got its beak caught in my white yarn. I had to get close and unhook the yarn and it finally got out the doors and we watched as it flew over the apple tree and headed west. Phew! But what about that horrid smell? I grabbed the Oust and sprayed nearly the entire can. An hour later it still smelled so put out a bowl of vinegar. I left the doors open all night hoping vulture bird didn't come back but the stench would not go away. I put out some charcoal thinking that that would do the trick. But days later, it just smells like vinegar, charcoal and vulture. Ewwwww!

April Showers Bring Felt Flowers

My felt group's April workshop was to make felted flowers. Paige and Grace showed us some techniques using a cardboard cone. Above is the bouquet of flowers they made to show us examples of what we could try to do. The vase was felted in an earlier workshop.


A closeup of their flowers.




Paige showing us how to fine tune the felting of the inside of the flower. Materials included duct tape wrapped cone, bubble wrap, olive oil soap, netting, water.


Two of the finished flowers.


Our finished flowers. Now I just want to make an entire garden of felt flowers!


This is Judy's silk scarf that she embellished with pieces of felt, along with her flowers.

Spring Tour

I haven't blogged in awhile because of extreme dyeing, skeining, kitting, and everything it takes to get ready for a studio tour. Unfortunately the days I chose to dye yarn were miserable for drying yarn. It was 40 degrees, cool and misty. My yarn was spread on every available surface in the house and studio. Mmmmmm, wet wool. It took days to dry, compared to about an hour if it's hanging in the bright sunshine and breeze.


My friend, Ann, made these adorable clothes pin bags. We are huge proponents of hanging out laundry and these bags will just make the chore all the more cheerier.


I have new summer yarns, cotton mostly, some organic. That purple thingie hanging up is my market bag made from sturdy cotton dyed in rich earthy colors. I also had my last shearing sent off to Prince Edward Island to made into yarn.


The twist yarn is called 'Brambles Yarn' (my Jacob sheep), the grey is 'Mocha's Yarn' and the white is 'Sparkleberry's Yarn'.


The bins are filled with color. That's the Baby Surprise Jacket in my Salsa.


My new colorway, Cheer Up.


Sock Hop and Bee Bop, both a superwash yarn, great for socks. The Sock Hop is being used by some in the Sock Madness contest.




A beautiful, thin young girl bought this adorable short jacket that I had felted out of a jacket that a friend had given me. I cut the sleeves and bottom off to make purses and had this cute cropped jacket left so embellished with hand dyed felt cutouts.


A customer (sorry, didn't catch your name) had gotten some of my Salsa and Loopy in the Mermaid colorway and wove this stunning shawl. WOW!




And here is Dorie modeling my Ladybelle Shawl. She had a hard time deciding on which colorway to knit and finally chose this one, Carnival.
So now I'm dyeing like mad, getting ready for the Maryland Sheep and Wool Fest, May 3 & 4. Hope to see you there!

Josephine Goes to Pleasant Springs Farm

Josephine moved to my friend Peg's farm last week. Peg has two older skittish ewes and wanted a friendly sheep to follow her around. They both look pretty happy, don't they? I hated to see Josey go, but my fields are so bare and I know Josey will have a good home. We set Josephine up in her new digs in the barn then Peg and I went to look at her beautiful gardens down the hill. After a few minutes I thought that Josephine's bleeting was a bit too close and I looked up and there she was, out of the barn, running full throttle towards me. I picked her up and we put her in the field with the big girls.


She went from a happy face to a sad face. Those girls were mean! They didn't like any young whipper snapper invading their field and chased her, butted her and made her feel pretty darn miserable. Josey finally found a way out of that hell field (after I had left) and Peg sent me this e-mail later on: "I finally caught her yesterday afternoon and locked her up in the barn. I force fed a bottle warm milk and took her on Pam's leash to the green green grass behind the house. She was like B'rer Rabbit, "Oh PLEASE don't throw me in the briar patch." I plan to keep it up for a week in hopes that she will be my friend and NOT run away. Tough love." And on day two: "Josephine has quieted down already. I took her out on the leash and she is learning to follow me. She drinks from the bottle and sits on my lap quietly. Maybe she will be my friend."


This is the sheep's secondary 'house'. Peg built it herself.


And this is the chicken coop that Peg built. She had a few chickens but the fox got all but the rooster cuz he's too ornery.


This is ornery Poppycock, who can outsmart a fox. They did pull out all his tail feathers awhile back though. That's a bit too close for comfort!



This will be Josephine's new field when the grass turns green.


Peg has rehabbed this very old (1760) log cabin into Pleasant Springs Farm B&B. She was featured on Home & Garden TV years ago. The cabin was totally covered in vines and briars and really falley downey. She did a lot of the work herself, hiring a local carpenter for the really heavy stuff (like jacking up the cabin and laying a new foundation). Peg and Dave, the carpenter, had it out once though when she wanted to use pig hair for the chinking like in the old days. She had gotten the pig (dead), scraped the hair off it and wanted to mix it with clay. Dave would have nothing to do with it and they had a spat. Dave won and there is no pig hair in the chinking. But Peg does some old fashioned type crafts. She hand spins wool from her sheep, dyes it and stocks the shelves with her lanolin rich yarn. She also makes soap, grows a myriad of flowers for scent, color and eating, and builds most anything she has a fancy for. She is my idol and she's taught me everything about sheep, yarn, dying, spinning and knitting. She's also an author, with two new books coming out in May. One is about women wearing two hats during WWI, working the fields, raising children and doing whatever it took to keep the family going as the men were away at war. The other is an historical book about a local city, Germantown.
So, Josephine seems to have settled in and Peg is happy to have a lamb following her around.

March Calmness

Spring is my favorite time of year. Most people around here like autumn the best but spring brings new life and warmer weather and more time outdoors. It does mean more outdoor work too but I see that as rewarding and (fun)! Toiling in the garden, spreading mulch, fixing fencing, new outdoor projects, all good stuff. Folks complain about mowing the lawn but that's my down time. I'm sitting down looking at the views as I go round and round the yard and I find it relaxing.


But I'm REALLY relaxed sitting in 104 degree water. This is what I see while reclining in our hot tub. We've had the spa for 7 years now and I'm in it at least twice a day. It's wonderful for these old bones, especially after mountain biking or working in the garden.
The maple buds are bursting forth and the sky is cerulean blue and the birds are all a-twitter. The birds don't know I'm here (either that or they see me as no threat) and I love watching them flutter from branches to the birdseed I cleverly put 5 feet from the hot tub. Recently I've had a large woodpecker stop by, shooing away all the smaller birds to get to the feed. Two mourning doves (they're always in pairs, I call them love doves) come around all the time and I enjoy their interactions with each other.


But all is not quiet and peaceful and chirpy when Big Galumpus shows up. Casey and Tasman love to visit when I'm taking a soak, coming to say hi and hoping for a pet.





They visit for a bit, then start wrestling on the deck and have to be shooed away so I can relax.

Get Your Easter On

Some folks dye Easter eggs, but at Dancing Leaf Farm we color our sheep. That's Picadilly in the blue, Josephine in yellow and taking backstage is Leopold wearing pink. They're checking out the spring colorway, 'Spring Has Sprung.'


Since spring keeps popping up for a day or two (then retreats to let winter give us another blast of frigid weather) I've wanted to dye some happy spring colors.


Plenty of roving to sit and spin some Easter egg colors. I've been spinning more lately, setting my spinning wheel up in the sunroom where I'm surrounded by 3 walls of windows offfering pretty field views.


A mess of color.


Here's the sheep growing the wool. I got them a new hay feeder that they love. Kip of Kiparoo Farm made it and it really saves the hay from being wasted. At $7 to $11 a bale, one can't afford to waste any. When the feeder was delivered they were curious and all came over to see what it was. Maybe it was a rubber-againster, or a play gym for the lambs to jump in and out of. But when I put the hay in, they finally got it and surrounded it and were very content munching away.


Sparkleberry turns to me and tells me "Thanks so much!" I tell her not to talk with her mouth full.


While I was taking pics of the new feeder, Bodacious, the single lamb from Dewberry, was totally intrigued with my bright orange crocs and wouldn't leave my feet alone.


I gave Josephine a kiss on her cute face. I do this a lot. One day awhile back I was visiting my friend who lived next door to a herd of goats belonging to her neighbor. One very friendly goat always came over to the fence to say hi and I walked over and gave her a big kiss on her white face. I always have bright pink lipstick on so I left a perfect lip smacker. I wonder what the farmer thought when he fed the goats that night.






I'm going to start taking photos of M&M Bakery in Cumberland. They always have a kitchy window display honoring the seasons or a holiday.


So enjoy your Easter sweets and have a great day and let's hope that spring comes to stay.