The week started with a grim, wintery feel outside:
Moody, bare Chinese elm trees against a cloudy sky.
But now look!
Crocuses, yay!
There are quite a few bulbs coming up in the three beds we have them in. They all need to be watered, because we still haven't had any rain or snow, but they're coming. Hooray!
We have some spring inside the house, too. A. cut some apricot branches to force inside.
The first one to open.
And now there are more. (It's very hard to get a picture of them, though.)
Speaking of flowers . . .
This past week was homecoming spirit week at school. It was a cruise ship theme this year, and we did pretty well finding appropriate clothing for every day. I was, however, kind of stymied by the day when they were supposed to wear "tropical tourist" clothing. We are not a tropical clothing sort of family. Poppy had a dress she could wear that had flowers on it. One boy wore his older brother's palm-tree-printed swim trunks (over his jeans). But the other two boys had nothing appropriate at all.
I mentioned this to A., and he said, "Too bad we don't have any white T-shirts. I could paint tropical flowers on them."
Oh, really? HOLD THAT THOUGHT.
I found two old, stained white T-shirts for him. He got out his watercolor paints* and . . .
Perfect. So handy having an artist in the family.
Our shearer came out on Thursday morning for a slightly earlier than usual shearing. It was windy and cold, but the actual shearing takes place in the shed, so it was bearable.
First one down.
Nice fleece.
They always look like goats to me after shearing.
I was dicing mini bell peppers for our Fat Tuesday jambalaya and scraping them off to the side of the cutting board as I finished each one. Look what I accidentally created.
A slightly wonky heart. Fun.
And last, this is a mayordoma month for me. I stopped in at church on Thursday morning to make sure I had turned off the heat after our Ash Wednesday Mass (I had), and was delighted by the light coming in through the windows.
Especially the pattern on the aisle.
There you have it! My life, snapshotted.
* Watercolor painting is his new hobby. He's really quite good. He mostly paints small greeting cards with flowers and birds.
The flowers on the t-shirts look beautiful! Just as nice as the cards. It's cool how he picked up a hobby that's different from his usual tasks.
ReplyDeleteLight in the church- great photo!
Do you sell your fleece? Do you have trouble with your sheep being cold after shearing?
ReplyDeleteLove the natural light in the church. I'm so thankful we are reaching the point of having light in the evening again.
We do sell the fleeces, mostly to crafters. The sheep don't get cold. They don't get sheared to the skin, and they do have shelter.
DeleteI particularly liked the card that the whole family sent me! Mary in MN
ReplyDeleteThe painted shirts are beautiful!
ReplyDeleteLinda
Do you have to process the fleeces at all? Or do you just cut them off the sheep and pack them up and the purchasers handle the processing?
ReplyDelete-Taryn
We don't process them at all, except to remove the obviously nasty wool (mostly belly and rear wool) at shearing before we roll the fleece up and put it in a plastic bag. They are shipped just like that. The listing for them is very clear that this wool right off range sheep, and it will have plant matter, etc. in it. It still sells, though, because it's priced much lower than similar Merino wool with some of the work done already, and there are plenty of people who will do that work to save a couple hundred dollars or more.
DeleteLove the painted shirts A did.
ReplyDeleteWhat happens next with the fleeces? Are you in charge of the marketing or does the shearer take the fleeces (I assume purchase them from you?) and take it from there? What is the approximate value of a straight-off-the-range fleece (if you know, and don't mind saying)? We have a couple neighbors who each raise flocks of several hundred sheep, but they're raised strictly for meat. The animals are sold and shipped to the ethnic meat markets on the East Coast, where there is much more of a demand for mutton than here in the central U.S. Our neighbors call theirs "hair" sheep (to differentiate them from "wool" sheep -- apparently the structure of the coat is completely different), and because these don't have a valuable wool coat, they're never shorn.
ReplyDeleteA. has an Etsy shop where he sells them. He charges a flat $100 per fleece--as opposed to a price per pound, which is more typical--including shipping. That's very cheap for an entire fleece, but we have no other use for them, so anything he makes is profit. He ships them straight to whoever buys them.
Delete