Visitors to the Farm

Once in a while I have a really fun and memorable day here on the farm. I always remember the days I share the place with others - either my students who come to the farm to learn or with friends who have heard about the place. On Monday, my friend Trisha arrived with her twelve year old son Garrett. Trisha has been trying to get here for a while but she is really busy (she is VP at Soho/Vogue Knitting and works way more than humanly possible). It was school vacation for Garrett and he has been wanting to see our animals. Along with Garrett, Trisha was traveling with the one and only June Hiatt - author of The Principles of Knitting. June was doing an appearance at Webs on Tuesday so the visit to the farm dovetailed beautifully. (Poor June - the snowstorm hit Tuesday. I'm not sure how many people turned out. I was going to go down but couldn't because the snow was so awful.)

Garrett was so interested in everything - he helped feed the chickens and collect the eggs. Then he used my antique egg scale to weigh the eggs. He figured out that some of my eggs weighed almost the same as a 50 gram ball of yarn! Quite the difference in size though. I love how kids' minds work.

We spent the afternoon eating soup, talking knitting and publishing. Poor Garrett. What a sport. I think he has been in on many yarn industry conversations though and he didn't mind one bit. June then started talking about "Shetland knitting belts". I had never seen one in action and she happened to have one with her. Man, can she fly on that thing. Little needles, skinny yarn, and very quick stitches.

Garrett was a quick study and learned how to use it too! He is a very good knitter.

June shared a lot of her writing process for both editions of her book The Principles of Knitting. I now have two signed copies? It took June 10 years of her life to write each one. That folks means that this kind and brilliant woman spent 20 years writing a tome for we knitters to have. What a gift! We need to thank June over and over, don't we? June said that the two different editions have totally different information in them

After lunch, I took them to the sheep barns. My biggest concern was their feet! They knew about mud season and were prepared - they had read about it on the blog. Luckily, the ground had frozen again so the mud wasn't bad at all. I got a kick out of one of the pairs of boots they had on -- a bit too shiny for a sheep barn! It's been a long time since I have had such a pretty pair of rain boots.

Garrett mixed up the milk for the bottle lambs and he fed all of them.

The other sheep looked on curiously at the visitors.

After the tour of the sheep farm, I took them across the road to see my brother and sister-in-law's dairy farm - Sunbrite Farm. David gave them a great tour. He loves to talk about his cows.

Garrett asked more good questions. Luckily David's rooster Oliver Wendell Pratt Duprey didn't attack anyone! He is a notorious rooster in these parts.

What a great day we had sharing stories and tales of the knitting industry. I love a day like that! Thanks for coming Trisha, Garrett and June! I hope the snow didn't foul up too much of the vacation!