Quickie

Last week I took a field trip. I went to Foxfire Fiber and Design/Springdelle Sheep in Shelburne. Beautiful, and just down the hill from there we used to buy beef occasionally, until we got a much more local beef source.View from Patten Road south into the valley. My mother's family farmed in Buckland and Leyden. (Anybody local heard of Avery Farm? Or Avery Field at the Leyden Elementary School? That was us). I love to go up the hill and look around. Barb Parry has a beautiful farm, and some lovely....
sheep. Slightly smug, because I had just said "I don't like white sheep. I love colors." I have a fondness for Jacobs, and Black Welsh in particular. Then this group of white ewes got so amusing that I now love white sheep. I think she knows. And there is...Crackerjack - guard llama extraordinaire, who I am told allows lambs to jump up on his back when he's resting. File that under "things I'd love to see"! And, best of all...YARN!! Yummy yarn for me to swatch and design with - but more on that later, right now I am trapped beneath a project of gigantic proportion. You'll see tomorrow or Sunday...patience. On the way back down the hill I stopped at...Shelburne Falls Coffee Roasters on the Mohawk Trail. Like Starbucks only...NOT EVEN CLOSE. WAY COOLER!! I bought a latte and some Toasted Coconut Creme Decaf (fave) and a children's book, signed by the illustrator. I love SFCR. Love love love. Then the mail came and I got...SMOOSHY!! This is my first Smooshy and I love it. It's not going to work for the planned project, so I ordered some Bearfoot...but I will find something for this, I am sure. Normally I seek patterns from the yarn - I swatch and it speaks. This time the yarn needs to suit the pattern. Then I finished...socks I can only call Wavy Gravy. The yarn is Red Heart Heart and Sole and the pattern will be available from the Knit and Crochet Daily website. I will post a link when it's available. because there is just so so much going on in the yarn, I went with a simple wave pattern that allows the stripes to do their job. Washed and blocked this is a great every-day sock yarn. Machine washable and dryable, always a good thing, and in vibrant colors and stripes. Then we had a visit from...
JACK! Jack is a French Bulldog owned by a friend - the same friend who grows our beef. I did farm chores for them last weekend while they went to see the Red Sox play in Toronto. Jack is not like the Beagles and the Akitas. He gets to come and stay in my house, not at the boring old kennel. He was very happy to leave the kennel and come home with us, and more happy when he found Girl was here. Even Boo liked Jack. I think he's adorable, and funny and a lovable, wonderful character with great temperament, and he spent lots of time staring at Mr. Wonderful - "You're a guy. I am a guy too. We're guys together, right??" - which was just hysterical. Problem: snorffling. Loud, endless snorffling that gets worse with excitement. Even when resting in his crate? Snorffle. Melissa did not love the snorffle. He also about gave me a nervous breakdown when he went after the cat. I went after the cat too, yelling "MEL!! Do not blind the show dog!! DO NOT SCRATCH HIS EYEBALLS!!!"
More soon, promise. Right now I need to crawl back under the big pile of Berkshire Bulky I am working on, before Kathy catches me blogging and not knitting furiously on her eventual felted bag - which right now is just HUGE!