Back in the saddle again

After a long, dry spell of very little riding and no schooling to speak of, Russell and I have gotten to "dance" together again this week. Nothing fancy - neither of us are in shape for that - just good, basic "forward, straight, soft and through." I have done all kinds of riding in my life (I've been horse-crazy since birth), but nothing is as satisfying as dressage to me. When it's right, it really does feel like ballroom dancing looks - beautiful, smooth, energetic but effortless. Power and grace. And to think that a creature so much bigger and stronger than me will willingly partner with me in this dance fills my heart with joy and lightness. Of course, when it's not right and you have a bad ride for whatever reason, it can color your whole day the other way. Funny how completely our interactions with our horses can affect us (or is it just me?)!

I have to admit I've found it hard to be motivated to keep up with schooling Russell now that I've taken showing out of the equation. Showing is expensive, so I'll be hanged if I've made that commitment and don't do my best to have both me and my horse ready for it! And if I am consistently working on improving our partnership, I really appreciate the feedback from the judge on the test sheet. But what now, now that I'm not showing? Well, I've always felt a responsibility to my horse(s) to keep them exercised; it's just not right to let them sit and atrophy in mind and body. Besides, feeding and caring for a horse is an expensive proposition; what a waste if you don't utilize what you're pouring all that money into! So I'm making the commitment to get back in the saddle again to school more regularly, for both our sakes. I've always said I want to be one of those gals who is riding in her late eighties, so I'd better keep my abilities and body tuned!

This blog was started for the sheep, though. Oh sure, lots of other topics come up, but I do try to keep sheep and related fiber arts at the fore. I've long thought about doing a dressage blog; maybe now is the time. Chronicling the "dance" with my equine partner may help replace the motivation showing once gave me. If that is the main purpose, then I wouldn't even have to make it public, although dialogue with others who have similar interests is always stimulating. Anyone out there reading this interested in following along?

Like my paddock boots? I have another pair just like them, only the zippers are shot. I love the ease of zip-up boots, but must admit the zippers fail before the rest of the boot is worn out. The local shoe repairman charges something like $35 to replace ONE zipper (and as you can see on the right boot, he doesn't do a very pretty job), so I've been keeping my eyes open on eBay for a replacement pair. Reviewing horse-related products could be another part of a new blog....

Just in case anyone NOT interested in horses is still reading, I'm happy to report that I'm "back in the saddle" in the knitting and spinning departments, too. Yesterday I wound off the alpaca singles and started plying, AND cast on a new knitting project:This pattern is surprisingly fast and easy for such a beautiful result!

What's this? Okay, true confession. Yesterday afternoon I met Rick so Brian could ride with his daddy for awhile, and found myself within a few miles of Woodland Woolworks. Still weakened from the yarn fumes at Sock Summit, I followed the siren call and ended up with this skein of Jitterbug sock yarn in a dark, mysterious mix of greens. (Hey, it was on sale!) As Pioneer Woman would say - "Help me, Rhonda!"

That's it for now at . . .

Birds of a feather

Fascinating feathers

Yup, it's time for another post on the chickens of Boulderneigh, those hardworkin' (or hardly workin') gals who provide us and a select few customers with beautiful, tasty eggs.

Lucy2 (Lucy) is low hen on the totem pole, as evidenced by her pecked head and comb. I watch to make sure it doesn't escalate into real injury, and she seems to recognize me as her shelter and solace. Almost every morning when I open the henhouse door, everybody runs out to see what there may be to eat in the run. Lucy takes this chance to gobble food and water in the henhouse unmolested, so I shut the door again while I do chores so she can get her fill. One morning at the end of chores I opened the door again and she was quickly chased out by Tawnie. I bent over and talked to her soothingly and she looked me intently in the eye - seriously! After I left the chicken yard I looked back to make sure she was okay, and she looked at me, looked at the top of the chain-link fence, looked at me, looked at the top of the fence - and then tried to fly over the spot closest to me! I went back in and picked her up, stroking her feathers and talking to her. She never struggled to get down, seeming to enjoy the protection and sympathy.I've identified her eggs, now that I've caught her laying one; here are eggs from her (right) and Lucille (left), our two Red sex-link refugees from the neighbor's:
Lucille is still in her "hospital ward," which is desperately in need of cleaning. Her head feathers are growing back, she eats and drinks a LOT and lays our biggest eggs more consistently than any of the others, but her limp hasn't improved. I can't keep her in isolation forever, but if I put a hobbling chicken back with the flock, she will probably be brutalized again. Rick thinks she should be put down if she's not going to be able to integrate, but that seems a senseless waste. Any suggestions?

Whose are you?

Welsie appears to be molting, which could explain her drop in production. None of the others are looking bedraggled, but I am seeing more feathers in the coop and yard so it may just be a matter of time before more look like they are running around in just their undies.

Brian's favorite chicken has always been Morgan, the grey Easter Egger. Here he is trying to give her some grass, and getting frustrated at the other hens for snatching it away. I thought Morgan was a gentle spirit until I saw her attack Lucy a couple times. I suspect she is second to last on the totem pole and is just taking advantage of the fact that there is now a lower-ranking hen.

To end on a different note - or should I say covering:
That's it for now at . . .

If you can come up with an appropriate title to this post, you're doing better than I am!

Yesterday morning, just as I was ready to help Brian practice his violin, I noticed bugs on the floor. Lots of them. ANTS. Little black ants, marching in a line from the guest bedroom to the entry rug and then angling back to the kitchen island. EEK! We have never had any sort of a pest problem in this house since we built it over six years ago, and I was NOT happy. More like creeped out. Itchy. Very itchy. Does anyone else get like that? Sometimes Rick comes home and disrobes in the garage because he's been working on a lice-infested horse. Even though his clothes go directly into the washing machine and he goes directly to the shower, I get very, very itchy. Anyway. I killed and wiped up every single ant - that, of course, entailed hanging around for oh, eleven years to catch all the late-comers and stragglers. During a lull in the massacre, I ran upstairs and googled "Help! Little ants!" and then added Terro liquid ant killer to my shopping list. By the time we left home, the battlefront was quiet....

Getting the mail on the way to town was the perfect antidote, though, because a very distracting - in a good way - envelope awaited me. It was from New Zealand, and contained the pattern for the vest I've been coveting. I didn't want to ruin my euphoria with fear of failure, so I haven't looked closely at the pattern to see if I can manage it. Leave me my delusions....

At the end of a long string of errands, we planned to eat supper out and go to a free outdoor concert at Linfield College. But it started to sprinkle a wee bit, and then a bit more, and by the time we finished supper it was definitely too soggy to sit on the grass and listen to Caribbean music. Drove by the campus just in case; the stage was empty and the sound equipment set up earlier and covered with tarps was gone. But you know what? I'll gladly give up a concert for a little precip! We got ONE day with rain in the whole month of July - one. I had forgotten how delicious the air smells when it rains after a dry spell; last night I think all the plants were extra fragrant in gratitude for getting the dust rinsed off. Walking past a border planting on the way back from doing chores, I could smell both lavender and thyme; sublime.
Of course, when we got home a line of ants was marching back and forth again. I served up a couple stations of sweet Borax for the little buggers, and although it is taking great restraint to allow them free access to my home, I know they must indulge and carry the poison back to their nest to end the infestation. Infestation. Even the word makes me itch.

That's it for now at . . .

I guess I'm blue

Family visit: wonderful. Sock Summit: awesome. My current favorite color: apparently blue!

What a way to get inducted into the world of serious knitters! Sock Summit was my first-ever fiber/knitting convention, retreat or class. Classes and workshops are offered at Black Sheep Gathering and the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival, and of course at my LYS (local yarn shops), but I am too busy with sheep at the shows and too busy with life for the LYS classes - or even such things as "knit nights." But Sock Summit was so close and sounded like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I carved out some time to attend with the blessings of my understanding family. Wednesday night I thought I'd better look over the Sock Summit schedule along with reviewing the requirements for my class, and realized that my Thursday class ended at noon, and the marketplace didn't open (for students only) until 4:30. I just could not kill four and a half hours to spend two more hours shopping instead of spending time with my family, so I offered to pick my sister up from the airport at 12:30 (instead of her husband driving up) and head home.

It was a good thing I left in plenty of time Thursday morning, because I missed my exit and added several miles to my trip. But I arrived in time to register, pick up my pre-ordered swag (Sock Summit button and knit light) and look around a bit before my class. The Portland Convention Center is beautiful inside and out:As advertised, the registration desks were set up under the dragon boat (off to the right in the above photo), with the marketplace set up in the exhibit hall behind.

My class, "Hip Hems for Him and Her," was educational and fun, thanks to our excellent and amusing instructor, Stephen Houghton. (Yes, I'll admit it; I saw the instructor's name many times before the actual class, and it still registered as "Stephanie." How is that for gender stereotyping? As for “orientation” stereotyping, well, you'd be spot-on.) I took the requisite five mini-balls of yarn and needles to cast on five different hems (although we only had time for four). Before diving into the hands-on part, Stephen had each of us answer a few questions as an ice-breaker. Wow! The group included two from the Washington, D.C. area, one from New York, one from Pennsylvania, one from Arizona and one from New Mexico, with the rest from Oregon, Washington and California. It began to dawn on me that the demographics of the attendees of this event were a vendor's dream! Of course, anyone who found out I was leaving right after class and missing out on the opening of the marketplace thought I was out of my yarn-lovin' mind. I did stick my head in the doors to smell the fiber fumes and snap a photo before leaving for the airport....
Not to be deprived of a once-in-a-lifetime shopping experience, I was done with chores, showered and out the door early enough Sunday morning to hit the marketplace when it opened at 9:00 a.m. I really didn't need anything and had no shopping list, just a short list of must-visit vendors: the Sock Summit merchandise booth, Enchanted Knoll Farm, Woodland Woolworks, and the Royale Hare. Why those? Well, the first one was for a Sock Summit t-shirt. I hadn't ordered one ahead of time, but when I saw them while picking up my swag, I loved the colors and decided to get one if they had my size left on Sunday. They did, in several colors. I was really drawn to the faded red one with black trim, but EVERYone I asked thought the blue one looked better up close to my face. From then on, blue (and its close relative green) was my destiny. But back to my short list of vendors. The other three were all about bloggers: Enchanted Knoll Farm is run by Farm-Witch and her family, and she is the most amazing blender, dyer and spinner (with a razor wit, on top of it). I decided that if I was to indulge in just one fiber fix, it would be from her. In the absence of anything blue, I was bewitched by these sparkly "Peeper" batts:
Woodland Woolworks' owner has a blog, too, as well as horses, and is just an all-around nice person. Plus, I think I'll always be attached to the place from which I bought my first spinning wheel. So I stopped by and gave Diane a hug. The Royale Hare is where blogger Romi's badge was hanging out, so I stopped by for a photo. I put on a very sad face, because there were no nickel north- or southbound sheep pins to succumb to in my fiber-fumes-weakened state. Oh well, more money for fiber! And since I had told myself that I wouldn't buy another of Romi's gorgeous shawl pins until I had a shawl to pin, I started shopping specifically for shawl yarn. I wanted some color, but not so much that it would have limited use. I looked at every single booth in the marketplace (not necessarily in-depth), getting my hands salt-scrubbed and moisturized in the process (resulting in the purchase of this Lo-Lo Bar)and then started through again. One advantage of shopping on the last day of the event was the sales, and a stack of bins with a "buy one, get one free" sign caught my eye. There I found the perfect yarn for my shawl - Rio de la Plata sock yarn in green/blue/violet/rabbit(it's darker than this; the "acquisitions" photo at top is more accurate), and a couple skeins of sock yarn.The one on the right seduced me with its lovely hues, the one on the left with its auto-Fair Isle patterning. The colors of that one don't "sing" to me, but they were better than the others and should look good with jeans.

Then it was off to find a seat among the 1800 or so knitters who registered for the Luminary Panel (second photo at top). I snagged a front-row seat off to the left and sat there in my handknit socks listening to people talk about their classes and chatting with the friendly strangers on either side. As 2:00 approached, the excitement in the crowd grew. When the doors opened to usher in the panel, you would have thought a group of Hall-of-Fame rock stars - or at least heads of state - had entered the room! Some of the names were familiar to me, and some weren't, but still I caught the thrill of being in the presence of knitting greatness.From left there were Lucy Neatby, Cat Bordhi, Deborah Robson, Anna Zilboorg, Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, moderators Tina Newton and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee,Meg Swansen, Barbara Walker, Judith MacKenzie-McCuin, and Nancy Bush. They were warm, real, often funny (or in Stephanie's case, ALWAYS funny) women who were inspiring to listen to, not just as knitters, writers and designers but as women. At the end of the panel discussion, we all sang Happy Birthday to "Saint Elizabeth," since it was the 99th anniversary of Elizabeth Zimmermann's birth, and EZ's daughter Meg Swansen cut the birthday cake (more treats were offered in the foyer).
Oh, and someone was handing these cute little freebies out as people were leaving!

All told, it was an incredibly rich experience; I'm so glad I got to be a part of it! Of course, Sock Summit wasn't the best part of the past week. It was so good to see my family, to visit and laugh, even if Brian and Jackson thought everyone was here just for them. :-)

Now it's catch-up time at . . .