Lambing, sun, chunky gloves and Karen's alpaca

No Tai Chi last Monday. An ewe decided to threaten delivering her lambs about 6 days before her due date, by going around nesting - staying apart from the flock in her special area of the paddock, being restless and pawing the ground - so had to stay around that morning. However, she took her time and didn't deliver the twins until evening.
Here she be:

This all looks very mangey in the dark photo but she is a shedding sheep i.e. I don't have to shear her so she doesn't look her best this time of year - in fact she is a star - very good mother who delivers and minds her twins each year with no assistance from me. By contrast, another ewe had triplets and this did require assistance from me. One of the lambs was not getting born so had to be extracted by me with some force and it turned out he had an imperforate anus (i.e. no ear hole, just a cul de sac) which led to a swollen belly making it very difficult for the ewe. Sadly, there is no reasonable treatment other than fairly major surgery for this condition so the little ram had to be put down humanely to avoid his suffering unnecessarily. After him came the third lamb and she was and is fine.
So by now just 5 of my little flock have had lambs in the nice weather - 4 with twins and one a single.

I finished off a pair of fingerless mitts made from some fairly coarse fiber I dyed and spun some time ago.
It seemed a bit weird having these winter warmers drying in the hot sun:

Also spent some time making a light spindle (with the help of OH) which I like a lot as it spins well when rolled on the leg but is very light.

Karen's Alpaca.
A very nice and generous lady who lived for some time in the west of Ireland returned to the US last year , leaving me with a great kitchen appliance (magimix) and a bag of black alpaca. The alpaca was the result of her combing or carding some fleece she got here in Ireland and I think she spun the longer fibers. Although there was much VM and neps and the fibers are short, I could see why she didn't want to discard these left-overs as it is exceptionally soft and silky. I wasn't sure what to do with it - so I drum carded it into a batt - but it still had lots of neps etc. I was going to blend or felt it but somehow found myself spinning it on the Ashford traveller - making a fairly thin single and then Navajo plying it into a bulky (8 - 9 wpi ) yarn.

 Ashford Traveller 12:1 ratio from drum carded batt and Navajo played

 Removed more neps as I spun.

3 oz.

Must out to the filed to see if there is any further lamb progress.


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New MacBook and bracelets

Well, after the misery of administering intensive care to my two old computers I now really appreciate this new MacBook Pro. So nice to look at and running so smoothly. Luminous keyboard is also appreciated. So I expect an easy time at the keyboard for some time to come, 'though the old iMac ows me nothing after 15 years, the Dell laptop - -- as my Border Collie would say "Grrr".
Another birthday gift - and possibly an even better one - is this pair of beaded bracelets, made by my daughter Jen's own hands:

I Love these !

Between computers.. waiting for an update.

I've a backlog of photos to add to my blog - but there's no point attempting to add them as my current computers are - well, out of date. Time has at last caught up with my old iMac (10 years old +) and the piece of s... that is my Dell laptop didn't get any better for it's 4 years either. The latter is like an ailing patient that needs constant attention - with backups and updates and chasing malware and sorting the registry. It simmers in the background now as it does "no one knows what" in the background as I type.
Actually, after copying all the files I wanted to keep, cleaning the hard drive out and reinstalling Vista (not worth going to system7) it did zing along for a short time like it hadn't done before - I suppose it was freed for the first time of the burdensome proprietary stuff it was obliged to carry - but sadly this didn't last for, as the system and application updates came in, things went west and all the remedial tasks began again.

Hoping to acquire a new machine in a week or so and fingers crossed it will just work obediently - for a while anyway.
Meanwhile, here's a bird sanctuary I visited recently in Wicklow, sent from my aged phone camera:

Rufus in a tree

My efforts to trim one of the hedgerow trees seemed to intrigue red cat Rufus.
Standing on a ladder I sawed away with a curved hand saw when suddenly he appeared, mounted the tree, arrived on the saw blade and sat there intil I moved it a little. He then proceeded to the adjacent slender twig-like branches and balanced there throughout the rest of my efforts to saw through and remove the thicker center branch. When I dismounted and dragged the branches away, he stayed up there, on the cut surface of the branch, for an hour.

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Two multnomah-type shawls

The small one:

This is the smaller version using yarn I spun from one of my sheep's fleece and dyed it, mainly with food colors.

This is the bigger version. I dyed some roving I got in the UK and edged it with some undyed fleece of my own. It's nice and warm but I still have to remove bits of kempy fiber .
I've dyed some more roving I got there in multi-color - not sure how I'll spin it yet :

Thinking of a thick woolen 'though how that will mesh with all the colors I don't yet know.

Bye for now.

Where was I 'till now ?

So where have I been for nearly a month?
Batteling Windows Vista that's where.
There aren't enough derogatory adjectives for that little beast - grrr. Someone said using it was like riding a bicycle into mud!
It's working again after much investigation, searching, deleting and reinstalling - yet it will soon begin acting up again no doubt. Disturbing was it to find Windows 7 residing along side Vista in the "Help me with.." search results. Time for a new Mac (former one secunded by offspring).

During my first exercise class in a long while, I found my floppy hair quite a nuicence - blinded me every time i rose from a bend, tried to see the teacher or twisted my head to one side. Either I get a more thorough hair cut (which I avoid as I find it required more commercial attention than a medium one) or I find a means to hold the hir off my face.
This one from Ravelry patterns, Blue Leaf Headband by Adrienne Krey has worked out well for me using 3 strands held together of Old Maiden Aunt handpainted merino bamboo 4 ply .

This does the job nicely :).
Oh just got a grumble from the computer - better quit while I'm ahead - pun?

Castletown Helix scarf and little mats

 This little helix scarf was lost for a while (hiding under the clutter in my son's apartment) then was found - and completed. It's knit from the BFL that I hand dyed and fractal spun last year - some details on a previous blog.

Little mats woven on the rigid heddle. Hessian warp and hand spun wool weft.