SHOW TIME!

Once again it is the wool season...at least for most people.  I like wool year round, not always to wear but to also have felted items to use and other things.  However several people do no care to purchase wool when it is ninety degrees out...imagine!

My sister has been busy knitting some lovely hats and fingerless mitts and leg warmers and cup cozies and all other kinds of wonderful and beautiful items.  Below are a few pictures of things that we make and take to the shows to sell.

 My sister has become quite an accomplished knitter...my knitting is quit simple.

I also do a lot of felting.  Above is a felted scarf laying on top of some felted pads that I made.

I enjoy felting, you are just never quite sure how some things will turn out.

The above picture shows the felted cat toys and the felted soap and felted toy balls and felted pads and the muslin sachet bags with aromatic organic lavender from California and more knit hats and pincushions.

Here is picture of some of my natural-colored handspun yarn along with some newly dyed locks for the puffs for fiber art projects and needle felting.  Also shown are some felted wine bottle cozies...the bottles empty of course!

Tomorrow we are off to North Branch in the rain and soon Stone Lake...catch us if you can....

THERE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE ANY LAMBS THIS YEAR!

Somebody forgot to tell Eva no lambs this year!

Her little brown girl and her little white girl!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Merry Christmas to all family and friends from the Sheepcote!  These cute acolyte/choir boys were something that our mother had years ago and we saw them every Christmas.  I did not decorate for Christmas much this year, how does it creep up on us so fast?  A couple of weeks ago however I cleaned out the pie safe and washed all the pottery and glassware inside it and here were these guys waiting to see another Christmas.  So they have a nice place on top of the pie safe for a couple more weeks.

I feel for everyone getting blasted by the snow, even though we all need the moisture.  This is a small shrub I have outside the kitchen window looking snow covered a couple of weeks ago.  It continued to snow a lot after this picture and we ended up with over 14" of snow at home.

This is a cute little guy I found at a local shop, thinking how I can make guys like this for our sale.  It may be the only snowman around the place this winter, you just never know.

Happy New Year Everybody! 

The flock that NEVER gets out!

These are some of the sheep ornaments that I make using pipe cleaners and wire and my sheeps wool.  They are a little time consuming to make but I almost always enjoy how they look, sometimes about as mischievious as the real ones out in the yard!  However the ones in the yard usually have their eyeballs pointing in the same direction, not one up and one down!

This one looks like it might be a little confused.....like about where to go and if it is lunch time yet.

This one has the same quizzical thing going on, but not as bad. 

I love how fluffy they turn out and I use the colors of all my sheep so there are also grey and black and fawn colored ones. 

We have about (3) more sales happening before the end of the year.  You can catch up with us and get a flock of these cuties at Delano's Old-Fashioned Christmas where we will be located in part of the senior center in downtown Delano on Sat. Dec. 1st.  I am also hoping to take in the Shepherd's Holiday down in Mankato and have a sales table there. 
Happy Thanksgiving all and the sheep whispered to me that you should all enjoy your TURKEY!
Peace.

TURKEY DAY!

These were our "teenagers".  They are the first successful hatch of Royal Palm turkeys that we raised from the breeding pair that I had purchased the year before.  Thankfully someone came to their rescue and they did not have to become Thanksgiving dinner for anyone. 
Happy Thanksgiving to You! 

Bowling anyone?

I have recently been spinning some really super bulky/chunky wool for some neckwarmers that i would like to make.  I knit a lot with multiple strands to get thickness but this time I am going to try it with chunky two-ply. 

I was using just the natural colors from the sheep.  I put the pop can in the pic so you get the idea of the size of these balls of single ply.  My husband asked what I was going to do with those?  "ply them together, what else?"  I was able to get such a large amount by spinning the singles on my Ashford Country spinner and then I plied them together on that large wheel.

So I finished them off on the niddy noddy, gave them a wash to set the twist and they end up like this.

Color gets kind of washed out because of the flash.  I can hardly wait for them to finish drying to see if I can actually make something attractive from this yarn. 

We have three more shows to do with the one at North Branch, Mn in little more than a week and then the first Sat. in Dec. is the old-fashioned Christmas festival in Delano, Mn and also the annual Shepherds' Holiday meeting for the Minnesota Lamb and Wool Producers organization down in Mankato.  Since I cannot be two places at once... tried that the other day and the water that was running in the bathroom sink commenced to run out the sink and all over the floor!.... my sister will be the vendor at Delano.  We had a very nice sale at Dassel-Cokato and this will be her first sale without me along and I know she will do just fine as she knits most of the items anyway and what wonderful things she knits.  Hope to see you soon.

MILL CITY FARMERS MARKET

We had the great opportunity to be a vendor one Saturday at the Mill City Farmers Market which is located down in Minneapolis in the milling area which once made Minneapolis great.

 The day was not real beautiful but all of the foods and products available to consumers was wonderful.  I had attended it one Saturday a few years back and was pretty impressed by it and especially the location and the history of it and it certainly does not hurt to have the Guthrie Theater right next door to it.

We were actually located down in an area where the train cars accessed the milling area years ago.

You can see lots of the other vendors in this picture with the huge mill silos in the background.  There was a Pillsbury mill across the way that I should have gotten a picture of but forgot.  The area we were in was under that lean-to area which you can kind of see behind the blue-topped canopies.

Here my sister sits during a quiet moment before the rain started I think. 
I love the history of this mill and thinking about the farmers that grew all the wheat that came by the traincars full to this building for the making of flour and then of course the flour being shipped out to feed the world.

There is a cool museum and store there that tells the story and some of the old mill ruins are there and it makes for a great place to tour and take some neat pictures.

I think they are hoping to continue the market inside the museum area this late fall/winter.  I am sure you can get the info on the web site.  We had a real nice time there.