Book Signing Saturday - March 3, 2007
Old Wethersfield, CT

This coming Saturday, I'll be in Old Wethersfield, CT for a Book Signing at Sit 'n Knit from 1:00 to 2:30. If you're a local or up for a drive, I'd love the chance to meet you. I'll have plenty of samples of projects from Colorful Stitchery along with some knitwear. Old Weathersfield is about 10 minutes south of Hartford just off I-91.

If you have one of my older books, I'll be happy to sign it for you. Hope to see you there!

Sit 'n Knit
263 Main Street
Old Weathersfield, CT 06109
Phone 860.257.7979

Little Lamb's Tails

We are at a lambing lull - we haven’t had a lamb born in two weeks. I miss seeing the newborns but it is fun to watch the older lambs experience life with the joie de vivre of a five year old. They are eating the haylage The Farmer “put up” last summer along with their mothers. They are also getting a bit of grain which they particularly love. It is sweet and is what I like to call “lamb candy.” It is quite a scene as all the lambs rush to the creep feeder to get some fresh eats every morning. They are eating about 50 pounds of grain a day collectively. There are over 120 lambs so far.

Some breeds of sheep have "fat tails" and some have short stubby ones. When our sheep are born they have long thin tails. We “dock” the tails from the lambs we plan to keep by using a “ring expander” and a special elastic band. It is a quick process and it doesn’t hurt the lamb too much after the initial pinch. The elastic band cuts off the circulation to the tail and it falls off within a week or two. The other way some shepherds remove tails is to cut them off but this can be quite bloody.


Removing the tail of the lambs keeps a sheep healthy throughout its life. In our humid summers, flies are attracted to dirty behinds. Without a long tail, our sheep are less apt to develop a nasty situation called fly strike. We have had this happen a couple times and it is not a pretty picture. The flies lay their eggs on the sheep and maggots develop. A sheep can be dead in a day. Docking the tails is a good thing to do for sheep in this climate.

I guess the children’s rhyme Little Bo Peep can be adapted on our farm to:

Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep
and she doesn't know where to find them.
Leave them alone,
and they'll come home
wagging their "stubby little" tails behind them.

Winter Sunset on our Road

Soup in the Mail

Yesterday in the mail, Julia received these 3 cans of soup from our artist friends George Singley and Yola Shashaty from NYC. It was a late Christmas gift. What a funny gift you say, for an eight year old? But our friends think outside the box - Julia loved the bright colors although she wished it was "chicken noodle." I was happy because it has "show and tell" potential which is always a weekly stretch for me.

How appropriate that the soup arrived on the 20th anniversary of Andy Warhol's death. Before Andy Warhol became famous for "pop art" he worked as a very successful graphic designer and illustrator. His technical skill as an illlustrator was amazing. It seems he did very well financially and was incredibly sought after for his illustrations. Just recently his earlier work has been featured on cards, calendars and more. For Christmas, Julia bought me an Andy Warhol "shoe" calendar. The girl has got razor sharp shopping skills telling her dad that Mommy just had to have this. It is a really cheerful and glittery calendar and I love the fact that she picked it out specially for me.

Last fall, Julia and I watched two night special on PBS about Andy Warhol on (as I recall) American Experience. It was fascinating to see where he came from (Pittsburgh immigrant family) and where his talents took him (world wide fame). Although perhaps things got out of control (it was the times), he had such talent --- movie making, silk-screening... the list goes on and on. Recently at the local Brattleboro Museum of Art, there was a great Warhol show that we visited a couple times.


Our recent fascination with Andy has been fueled by a kid's book called Uncle Andy's which I bought for Julia. It is written and illustrated by his nephew James Warhola and it chronicles the trips that James and his six brothers and sisters, mom and dad took to visit Uncle Andy in the big city of NY. The memories that the man had are wonderful as are his colorful paintings. It's amazing how much positive influence an older aunt, uncle or friend can have on a young child. James turned his talents and his uncle's encouragement into his own career as a children's book illustrator. Wouldn't Uncle Andy be proud?

Birds, birds, and more birds

Last week I was at one of my favorite stores in the world – Essentials in Northampton, Massachusetts. The store isn’t big by any means but they have a great mix of products – stuff for the kitchen, notecards and wrapping paper, rubber stamps, kids clothes, a esoteric selection of books including craft and cookbooks, beautiful upholstered furniture, custom invitations, and way more. It has a spacious, airy feeling and the merchandise mix changes frequently so there is always something new to look at. A couple years ago, I taught a couple embroidery classes there. Their clientelle is of all ages and the people who work there are so warm and friendly. It’s hard to leave without buying something.

I ran into Colette the manager – I love to talk with her because she is witty, funny and has a great eye for trends both current and upcoming. She’s the one who set up my embroidery class and she frequently does craft classes of her own. She's very nice to my daughter Julia too. I mentioned to her that I felt like everything I was seeing lately was beginning to look the same. It’s beginning to baffle me – perhaps I just shop and look at stores and magazines that all are featuring the same darn aesthetic. I’m becoming a bit bored with it all. If I see one more white kitchen with stainless steel appliances I think I am going to lose it.

The conversation turned to the little bird motif that is just darn everywhere. I asked her what it was with the birds? I mean, yes, they are cute – but do they have to be on everything? She told me that whatever they bring in with a bird on it flies out the door immediately and she doesn’t see the trend stopping. So should I give in and design an embroidered pillow with a little bird on it? Should I write a book on knitting birds? Just joking.




A few days later this flock of birds was in our yard at sunset. They kept flying up and scattering, then landing again in a neighboring tree. There were hundreds of them. The light was just lovely giving them an almost golden glow. I think I will just stick to looking at the birds outside for awhile. I've got too much other stuff to do anyway.

What’s the next trend? Anyone want to guess?

Saturday Night at Our Sheep Farm

Listening to nature

What a Valentine’s Day. We woke up to blizzard warnings and although I wouldn’t say we had an official blizzard we sure did get the snow. I love a good snowstorm - staying inside nice and warm while the fluffy white stuff piles up outside. Julia and I kept our Valentine’s card production going with more glitter – this time mixing in a bit of pale pink. The Farmer braved the wind and snow a few times to drive to the farm to take care of feeding the sheep.



The snow, after it was all done, was more than a foot deep. We had a little discussion of what each of us thought about the snow. I waxed poetic about the beauty and snuggliness, the warm fire, and the chance to bake and create on an unexpected day off. A chocolate heart shaped cake was definitely on my agenda. Julia was upset she was missing the real Valentine’s Day with her classmates and The Farmer was worrying about his sheep. Most little lambs aren’t that tall and so they can easily become buried under a lot of snow. Usually they have the sense to seek cover in the barn. We’ll won’t know until the snow melts.


I know most people look up the weather on a computer or television. We are old-fashioned enough to have a “weather radio” – it’s much easier for us – push a button in the kitchen and listen to the experts. Then we wait and see if they are correct in their predictions. For this storm though, we didn’t need to listen to anyone but our animals. The cats were all plunked down inside not crying to go outside – even Lily Pons, our calico who usually graces us with her presence for a couple hours every four days. The sheep were all packed into the barn anticipating the upcoming storm. It’s amazing the sense that animals have. Most humans have lost their natural instinct. We knew we were in for a big one because we listened to our animals.

Five years ago, we wintered 13 ewe lambs here at our house in the field below. (For those of you who are new to this blog, we have our sheep barn five miles away from our house at the farm where Mark grew up.) We thought it would be fun to have animals here in the winter to take care of and look at through the window. When our sheep aren’t here, it gets kind of lonely – there isn’t a daily reason to walk through the fields, or feed or converse with a furry creature (boy, am I sounding like a nut now). The winter was rather uneventful and mild. By March, there hadn’t been much snow and the ewe lambs had grown nicely. But we weren’t home safe yet. A blizzard was predicted and we waited to see if it would really materialize. The lambs were fine but we were a bit concerned because they had no shelter. This isn’t a bad thing – for years we didn’t have a barn and our sheep always survived.


We got up in the morning and the snow was coming down so hard, you couldn’t see a thing. It snowed and snowed and snowed until it was over two feet deep. When it finally stopped, we looked for the sheep. All 13 of them were gone – vanished. The Farmer was perplexed. He looked everywhere at our neighbor’s houses and in their garages and barns. With over two feet of snow, how far could they have gone far.

He began snowshoeing – all through the fields and woods. He covered miles on snowshoes and grew thinner and fitter. He found old settlements deep in the woods that he didn’t know existed but he couldn’t find the sheep. Our neighbors began looking out for them too. It became a giant mystery.

Weeks went by and we pretty much gave up hope. We figured that either they had fallen through the ice into the glen down at the bottom of our mountain or that the coyotes had gotten them. The snow stayed and stayed and stayed.

About four weeks later, there was a knock at the door. It was the neighboring dairy farmer and his son. They had taken their tractor up into their woods where they had a spare parts junkyard. (Farmers are like knitters - they never throw anything out just in case they need it to fix a project or a tractor.) There they found the sheep. They had been there, deep in the woods over two miles from our house for all this time. The snow was so deep they were unable to plow their way out. They had eaten the bark off all the trees and eaten snow for water. One had died and a bear had eaten it but the rest were okay – skinny – but okay. The sheep followed our neighbors down to their farm on the packed tractor tire tracks. I couldn’t believe it. I thought we would never see them again. I took Paisley, our Border Collie, up the hill and we brought the sheep back home.

We’ll never know why they left or when they did, nor why they traveled that far. When did they leave – before the snow began? Perhaps they were seeking shelter. It will always be a mystery. Luckily, we had a mostly happy ending. We also decided it is best we don’t keep any sheep here for the winter, until we can afford to build a proper shelter.

Thank goodness this storm has been rather uneventful.

A Happy Valentine's Day to You!

I’ve never been much for Valentine’s Day – thinking it as some kind of holiday the American card companies dreamed up to keep their businesses afloat in those long winter months. (Although I do fondly remember those cards my grandparents sent from NY State signed ---- and ----; it took us years to figure out who sent them – such intrigue for a five year old). And since I just love dark chocolate - I don't need much of an excuse to indulge.

The Farmer and I have never even exchanged cards. We usually celebrate with a nice meal (which I cook) and some flowers (which he sometimes remembers to buy). When Julia entered pre-school I found the Valentine’s Day Celebration frankly another annoyance of extra stuff to do for an entire class of kids I didn’t know. I guess you could call me “scrooge.” But as time has gone on, I seem to be getting a little more used to all the hoopla of hearts, candy (not easy for a kid who is diabetic), and general insanity. This year, we went full force all weekend with lots of glue, red glitter, pink paint and wood hearts from the craft store. We also made lots of goopy cards we mailed Monday with that pretty new “love” stamp from the post office. I swear whoever buys this house one hundred years from now will find red glitter in those cracks in the floor.

Commercialism aside, I can’t help but think about all of you who have been reading this blog since I started it last March. I wanted to send out a special Valentine message to all of you – I know most of you only by your “blogger profile” names and blogs – which is just the oddest thing. And the strangest thing is I know there are plenty of you out there who are too shy and busy to comment - maybe living in some far off place in the world. This internet thing totally astounds me! I thank you all for reading. This bloggy world is still one I am getting used to. But it’s fun to learn about other's lives and I hope you are enjoying all our antics and adventures in stitching, farming, and lambing.

Here are a couple of Valentine’s I made up for you. For your Stitching Friends, click here to find an embroidered Valentine on the Colorful Stitchery Stitchalong blog.
Share them with your sheepy, fiberish, and knitter friends – pass on the fiber love.

And thanks for reading. Happy Heart’s Day.

For your Fiber Friends, I worked a little magic in Photoshop on that cute lamb with the white heart on his side.


For your Knitting Friends, I knit up a pink heart!

Lamb Antics

I get such a kick out of watching the lambs grow. Their behavior totally reminds me of children growing. First they start testing things – straying away from their moms for a few minutes. They’ll cry out with a “baaaaah” and their mom will answer from across the barn or field “baaaaaah” back. It’s amazing how they can find each other again – and quickly. The little lamb will punch at its mom’s udder, take a quick drink of milk. Then a couple minutes later, they will again join their gang of friends and they’ll all hang around together for awhile until they need another snack.

They also become amazingly athletic and acrobatic and are as quick as lightening. They can jump up in the air on all fours - I've heard it called "spronging" and it is the perfect description. Last week, Marcy asked me if the lamb-pedes had begun. Well, Marcy, they have - tonight when I arrived at the field there were about 35 lambs racing in a pack in circles around the field. The Farmer says they do it every evening at around sunset. They must know that their day is over and it will be time for a night's rest - only to begin again in the morning.

I didn't realize they knew how to dance - but this one definitely does.

A Natural World

A couple days ago, I was awakened from a deep sleep to a crazy cacophony made by my two guinea hens and twenty chickens. The poultry live in a ramshackle coop about 100 feet from our house – on the bedroom and kitchen side of the house. I flew out of bed to look out the window and saw a very large, blondish colored coyote pacing around the pen. I ran downstairs and sent Phoebe, the older border collie, outside. I threw on a coat over my granny nightgown, tugged on some barn boots, and got Nessie out of the dog crate she sleeps in. I grabbed a broom and the two of us joined Phoebe outside.


My normal method of scaring a coyote is to yell “go away.” It is usually dark out and the coyotes are usualy aways away from the house. We only hear them – we can’t see them. They usually quiet down and take off after I scream like a crazy woman "GO AWAY COYOTES" and feel like I have protected my outdoor animals. But this day was different – it was 5:30 in the morning and this fellow didn’t want to go. The chickens were too interesting.

As the dogs got closer to the pen, the coyote decided to leave. Nessie is definitely the protector dog around here, even though she is younger. Both dogs ran down into the field after the coyote, Phoebe lagging behind. Nessie barked like she should and kept following him across the road. I stood there watching the two of them. He stood along the edge of the woods for a while and then vanished into the trees.

When you raise farm animals, you have to live with nature. Coyotes, hawks, raccoons, and possums are a fact of life. We try to protect our sheep and chickens as much as possible but the simple fact of the matter is all these animals have to eat too. And sometimes they eat our livestock. I think my chickens are relatively safe right now – they are in a pen with fence dug into the ground. There is a woven wire fence on top to keep out the hawks who think chicken is a tasty treat. Free range is one thing - free food for coyotes is a totally different thing.


We have lost many a lamb to coyotes over the years. Some years, there will be an aggressive pack living near the sheep. There have been years we have lost 15 lambs in a week. It turns my stomach to come upon such carnage. The coyotes usually don’t take the lambs away and they eat only parts of them. A couple years ago, we were losing lambs left and right. Out of frustration we bought Jeremy, our guard llama. Knock on wood, if Jeremy is around, our losses have been zero. He is a nice calm animal and pleasant to be with. He likes people and is low maintence eating the same food as sheep do. This lambing season is his second and he seems to be enjoying hanging out with all the little lambs.


This morning at 5:22, there was a large, loud pack of coyotes making a ruckus outside. I couldn’t see them from the house and they went away soon enough. I’m pretty sure that blonde guy brought his friends back. We’ll see what happens.

And now for something totally different

I'm taking a break from all the sheep talk today for fear of boring my readers!

You can’t do what I do in my professional life nor have done in the past (as a marketing person for a yarn company) without being sensitive to current fashion, color and print trends, and media frenzy. I know that this is who I am and probably will be for a long time. (I haven’t had an official full-time job working for a “real company” for six years now - where did the time go?) I am obsessed with type styles, labels and advertising design – all the things that go along with marketing a product. I look at books with a different eye than most (I assume). I examine the lay-outs, the book design, the illustrations, and the type choices.

I’m pretty sure that you think I am bordering on the insane. How can this woman living on a farm amongst the chickens, the sheep, the coyotes, and the trees give a hoot about type, color, and more. God knows she can barely get to a nice store without spending a fortune on gas. Well, you might be correct but hear me out.

It amazes me how many ugly packaged products there are in this world of ours. Take a little walk down the grocery store aisle and do a little market research – it’s where I do lots of mine. Big companies just don’t get it. They aren’t thinking about how the packaging of a product can sway someone to buy their product over a competitor’s. Most of them need to open their eyes and try a little harder. They should hire a designer with a little style and have them transform their hum-drum product into something appealing and pretty that I would want to buy.

As a designer, because I look at everything I see everyday with a critical eye, I know what I like. This is my own personal opinion and you may not agree with me. When I design sweaters, especially my colorwork sweaters, I usually start with a plain piece of graph paper and plot out my own little patterns that I then turn into a swatch. I pick out the colors and the yarn, knit it up and hope an editor somewhere might like what I did enough to buy a design. Last fall I made this swatch – I call it an “undulating dot” motif. I thought it was nice and organic and took my knitting out of the angular look that is so easy to keep doing to death.


About a month later, I saw an ad in a decorating magazine for a box of Kleenex tissues. I looked at the ad, remembered my swatch, and remarked to myself – isn’t it amazing how patterns and trends go around and around? Patterns seem to come out of the air as I am designing and then I'll see a very similar thing done by someone else a couple months later. It's really a job to be original - especially now with all the information being thrown at us constantly.


In January, my sister and I were in a Rite Aid drugstore in NH and what did I find but these totally groovy, oval tissue boxes. I bought both of these and then remembered my swatch and the ad. I was totally overjoyed with my $2 purchase. First of all – I actually liked the patterns on the boxes – they would fit into my home and were nice to look at as opposed to most tissue boxes. I think the “ugly tissue box” syndrome is why there are so many crazy crochet patterns out there for “tissue box covers.” I should have bought more of these pretty things – considering its cold season and we do run through them like crazy.

Maybe big companies are catching on and will begin making better looking and labeled products that I will want to buy. I’ll only hope and pray.

Winter Lambs

Lambing in January in New England isn’t ideal. It is usually very cold and blustery. This year it has been mixed but now it looks like we are in for a spate of very cold weather. Acquaintances I run into on the street always ask me why our lambs are born so early in the cold. I thought perhaps my blog readers might be wondering the same. So here you go – more than you probably want to know about sheep breeding.

Sheep are seasonal breeders. Unlike many mammals – cows, goats, humans - a sheep can become pregnant for about five months out of the year. The ewes become fertile in August as the days become shorter and they cycle every 21 days for about five months. (In nature there is always exceptions. Some breeds, for instance the Dorset, can be bred "out of season" and will produce lambs year round.) The gestation of a sheep is five months. You need only one ram to “cover” many sheep. As a shepherd, you can chose when to put the ram into the ewe flock and then semi-control the lambing season. They say your ram is “half your flock” and it’s true. The genetics of the ram will produce certain physical and genetic characteristic of its off-spring. So the idea is to chose wisely for what you want to do with the lamb crop.

The Farmer has another full-time business which is busiest from March until October. To fit into our other real life, we have to have lambs as early as possible. That is the simple reason we lamb in January – not the most pleasant time of the year. Our rams go into the flock in August and the breeding gets going quickly. There are all kinds of fancy ways to “tease” the ewes into coming into cycle including “teaser rams” (castrated rams). The Farmer keeps his sheep operation as low maintenance and simple as possible – so that we stay married. Suffice it to say, there is always something to be done and the whole thing is far from simple – it’s a way of life.

This year, we used an older Romney ram (who will be retired soon), a crossbred Romney Shetland ram (the offspring of one of our sheep that got in with a rogue Shetland ram from a pasture nearby), and a new black Dorper cross which came from Emily Yazwinski in Deerfield. We can tell by looking at the lambs that the Dorper cross ram was definitely the dominant father of the flock. We probably won’t keep him very long (maybe one more year) but so far, his lambs seem strong and fast growing.


To further fit in with our other businesses, the majority of our lambs will go to market in late March and April when Easter is near and the price of lamb is the highest it is all year. We will keep some of the choice twin ewe lambs out of our better mothers. I know this will burst a lot of your bubbles, but that’s farming. All it takes is a little simple math to determine that if you have 150 sheep, soon you will have 300 (assuming a 100% lambing crop – ours is usually 125% to 150%), then 600, and so forth. The simple fact of the matter is you can’t keep and feed all these critters. So we save the best and move on.

We started with sheep in 1980. We bought four beautiful Romney ewes from Robert O’Brien in Tunbridge, VT. We found a Romney ram locally named Zeno and the first year, we had three lambs. Not a very good lambing ratio. Neither The Farmer nor I probably ever thought that all these years later, we would still have sheep. We do, and we can’t imagine our lives without the animals. Along the way, we have taken many a class and seminar to learn more about “the proper way to shepherd.” We probably have all the sheep books on the market. We have met many a memorable old-time character who have shared their wisdom. We’ve grown to love the talent, enthusiasm and help that a Border Collie can add to our day and life. This suburban girl from New Jersey could never have dreamed that she would know so much about animals and sometimes share a bathroom with them. It’s fun to share this life with our daughter Julia and to see her excited about the babies and the process. It is also nice that she knows where food in general comes from.


I have this photo of our first four sheep and our little sheltie cross Haida in a special frame. Who was to know that Alfy, Putney, Frieda, and Addie would be the beginning of this bit of livestock on our land. We barely ever name a sheep now – although The Farmer seems to be able to identify by sight many of them and tell me how many lambs they produced last year. All I can say is, if you follow your dreams – you never know where you will end up nor what you will accomplish. We aren’t rich in monetary ways but we feel wealthy in ways many people could never dream of.

A Holstein Sheep?

Is this patchwork lamb too much? Talk about cute? We’ve had four lambs this year that are spotty. They resemble David and Debbie's Holstein dairy cows across the road more than our ewes and rams. This is our first patchwork ewe - which means we'll keep her. She's quite good looking - isn't she? I know you are going to ask me about the sheep breeds we have soon - so I'll be giving you a run-down of that within the next few days.

This one has a heart on his side.

This ram lamb has lovely mottled white and black patches.

The chilled lamb story continues

Note: Read yesterday's post before you read this one.

When Julia arrived home from school, she was thrilled to see two little lambs in the bathroom. This year she is much more interested in what’s going on with the sheep. Lambing before was just the time when Mom and Dad were distracted and she didn’t get as much attention. Both lambs were resting comfortably but still not acting as they should. At this point, they should have been up, making noise and acting hungry. We added a heating pad to the box and hoped for the best.

Weak lambs usually can’t suck on a bottle. We use a fabulous tool we call a “stomach tube.” Basically it is a large syringe with a rubber catheter tube on one end. The tube has a small hole in it. It makes feeding a weak lamb very easy. First you fill the syringe up with some lamb formula. Then you stick the tube down the lamb’s throat until it stops. You then plunge the syringe slowly and the lamb gets milk without even knowing it. It has saved countless number of lamb’s lives around here.

The Farmer “tubed” the lambs to feed them and then we hoped for the best. By evening, both were up and alert and no longer cold. A feeling of success swept over our odd family. Now we had two bottle lambs to feed. This means a big time commitment along with the expense of buying lamb formula. (Lamb “milk replacer” comes in a 25 lb bag and costs about $40.00. Basically it smells like infant formula. When I was feeding Julia with formula since we had complications and no success in the natural way, I always shuddered when I had to pay whatever high price I did for that one pound can of Enfamil knowing that you can purchase lamb milk replacer for so much less. Don’t worry, I didn’t. But it sure does make you think)

In the middle of the night, The Farmer got up and fed the lambs again. He returned to bed saying they looked good. It made me feel better that there would be a happy morning sight. Indeed, we did find perky hungry lambs. And they were even able to suck from a lamb nipple which makes feeding much easier.

Two days later, after dropping Julia off at school, I arrived at the farm finding the usual mass panic. More live lambs and one dead one. The mother was frantically pawing the dead lamb. It always makes my heart break when I see this. She clearly had fabulous maternal feelings and it was sad that her lamb didn’t make it.

After a while, The Farmer decided to try something we have never had any success with in over 25 years of raising sheep. I went up to the house to pick up the stronger black bottle lamb. When I got back to the barn, he had skinned the dead lamb and the distraught mother was in a pen by herself. We tied the skin around the black lamb with the cold, still wet pelt. Then we put the lamb in the pen with the ewe, stood back and hoped. Within a minute, the mother was licking the amniotic fluids off of her dead lamb’s skin. The little black lamb with the funny coat knew just what to do. She headed right to the udder and looked for food. Within a few minutes, the lamb was nursing and the mother seemed like she would accept the lamb.



We kept the odd couple penned up together for a few days. When we felt comfortable that the mother would take care of the lamb, we let them free to run with the rest of the flock.

The next day, a second mom lost a baby, only this time it was her second twin. The Farmer amazingly knows which one of his sheep is a good mother from year to year. I don’t know how he does it – they all look pretty much the same to me. We decided to see if she would accept our second bathroom bottle lamb and she did.

Natural maternal instinct surely is amazing.