Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Easter Hatchlings

The Nicholas clan gathered in New Hampshire for a fun Easter celebration. Julia loves to visit with her cousins - she saw all six girl cousins and had a great time. Me, I just love catching up with my sisters and Mom and brother-in-laws.

Our family supplied the ham from last year's pig and a leg of lamb from one of last year's lambs. Bringing our home grown products to share with our family is a great feeling. We're the only farmers in the bunch (although most of my family does a lot of gardening). We take a lot of ribbing about our "Green Acres" existence on this here plot of land. I would say we are definitely the odd ones out in that pack. Noone complained about the wonderful meat we brought. There was just a ham bone left for some soup and a few scraps of ham to throw into a frittata. It used to be that when we brought some of our home grown protein to the table, they would all wince and moan - my family is quite suburban. But now they go with it.

We had a totally inconvenient flu thing last week. It gave me a bit of time to work on these nutty Easter placecards. I got the idea here from the wonderful Kids Craft Weekly. I used some leftover wool yarn for the pom poms, and some wool felt for the eyes and beaks. Talk about tedious work - I don't know how they expect kids to do some of this stuff. I know my child doesn't have the manual dexterity for such fussiness - maybe one day. Julia made the grass with a marker on some cardboard for the stand which worked great glue gunned to the cracked egg to hold the little thing up. We ate so many eggs last week so I could get the perfect half cracked shell for these little things.


I had enough leftover yarn to make a batch of chicklets for the nieces. For these I used the Susan Bates pom pom maker in the smallest and next to largest size. A little glue, felt, pipe cleaners for feet and scraps of rick-rack and ribbon and voila. I must say they are quite adorable and pretty life-like.


Now what did I get that Master's Degree in Textiles for? To make wool chicks? Oh my. Isn't it amazing how life leads us in strange circles.

The sheep are hatching again! The yearlings are starting to lamb. Isn't this a nice set of twins. Had a couple more yesterday too.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Adorable chicks! And what a fun gift for your neices!

Sonya said...

I am impressed by the sheer volume of your pompoms. Those lambs are just the sweetest, I love it when they frolic.

Anonymous said...

Knowing your chickens, KN, I am surprised that the chicks were all yellow - shouldn't they have been in some of the exotic shades that you create in the Julia yarn?


Linda

Peggy said...

Adorable!!!! All of it. The little chicks are just too cute and the lambs, oh my!!!! Glad to hear you and yours are better and from the looks of the photo, the snow is leaving as well.

Anonymous said...

kristin ... did you tell that "mama" sheep to smile ... alas say "cheese" for the picture taking ... too sweet ... brings a smile to my heart ... how wonderful to be witness to all this newness of spring!!! ... wishing warmer days were already here ... mille baci ... ina and gumby ... the dog that tante sophie has ...

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