Okay, couldn’t figure how to get Daisy on the same post, so here goes!

Lambs!

Saturday, Tom and I got home from the store to find one of our border leicester ewes with twins, one girl and one boy.  Hmmm…there’s only one ram who could be the father: good ol’ Padriac, our shetland ram who has a penchant for jumping fences!  He jumped the fence in with the girls a week before we separated them out into breeding groups, and the math works out!  So, we have twins, little shetland/border leicester crosses, usually a nice soft fleece for baby sweaters, especially.  Great…except….Mama refuses to feed them.  She cares about them, nuzzles them, stamps her feet if you come near, but no way is she giving them milk.  So, I milked her out several times, so the lambs got the necessary colostrum.  Yesterday, I thought the little girl, Daisy, was a goner.  She was listless, wasn’t holding her head up.  But she drank quite a bit of milk replacer anyway, and at 2 a.m. (argh!) when I got up to feed them, she was bouncing around pretty well, so I guess we’re past the first hurdle.  The little boy, Duke, weighs about 6 pounds. Daisy, maybe 5-1/4…somewhere around there.  They are adorable.  Here are their photos, Duke, first, then Daisy!

Last but not least, fleece and rovings!

It is the week before shearing for Sue, the week after for Betty.  This year’s fleeces have yet to be brought into the store.  This year’s rovings haven’t even been sent to the processor yet.  But we still have a decent supply from last year.  Once the new ones come in, there won’t be much room to move in this section. We may even have to expand it!

And here is the Noro wall

Here is the wall of mohair yarns

And here is Margaret, who hangs out there sometimes.

More Store Photos!

While waiting for us to figure out how to load Tom’s photos of their sheep onto the site, I will post some photos of the store:  Here is Henry, the store dog.

Shearing, lambing, and fleece, fleece, fleece!

Hodge Podge is not only a store full of fleece and yarn and books and knitted goods.  Sue lives 2 blocks from the store, and with her husband, Tom, own 80 kazillion sheep…well, maybe that’s exaggerated a bit: actually, they have 56 sheep, about 30 of whom are pregnant, expecting lambs sometime between 3/25-4/15.  There are shetlands, icelandics, jacobs, romneys, corriedales, border leicesters, coopworths, and crosses.  On the 31st, they will all be shorn.  David Hinman will arrive at 9 a.m., as will several friends.  A skirting table will be set up in Sue’s basement, which opens onto a lean-to sort of barn, in which the ewes, at least, will be confined for shearing.  As David shears a sheep, the fleece will be thrown on the skirting table, we’ll pick off the nasty bits (poopy, dirty, urine stained, full of hay) and throw them in a separate bag of “tags”.  The remaining fleece will be rolled up, put in a plastic bag, labelled and weighed.  Some will go to the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival as raw fleece. Some Sue will wash.  Some will head out to Zeilingers or Friends Folly Farm to be processed into rovings or yarn.  There is a section of the store for fleece, and some will end up there.  Shortly, we will post photos of lambs, always adorable! 

Meanwhile, if you are in the shop, you might find Shari’s orphaned all white inbred jacob ram lamb, or just Betty’s dog, Margaret Rose, and the store dog, Linda’s little Henry.  Photos to follow later today.

The Main Aisle of Hodgepodge Yarns and Fibers

Here’s the main aisle of the store, complete with new boxes of yarn that just arrived, waiting to be put away.  It seems like every day there are new spinning wheels, new yarn, new books,  new buttons,  new fleeces, or new rovings coming in which need to be put away.  Big as the store is,  it seems like we’re running out of room.  There’s so much gorgeous fiber out there we want to stock!

A basket of the new Malabrigo Merino yarns

Here’s some skeins of the new 100% wool merino yarns I mentioned yesterday. I want to knit something with the blue/green combination in the front right. Deb likes the one with the rose and browns. Linda likes the light and dark green ones. Looks like this will be popular stuff.