New Wall Hanging

I have just made a new felted wool wall hanging. The inspiration for it is the prodigal son. I love the sculptural quality of the felted wool. I wet-felted the initial picture with different colored batts of wool. Then I needle-felted and stitched to refine and define the picture. I sewed a border and a backing to it, and then prepared a wooden rod to hang it on.
I have just won first place fiber in the juried fine art show at the Williamson County Fair!

Sheep go to the city

I was asked to bring a sheep to a vacation Bible school in Nashville this week. I chose Meadow, a yearling ewe that is friendly to go. After putting the large dog crate in the car, which has to be taken apart to get it in, I drove to the city with baa-ing in my ear the whole way.
This was not the usual VBS. The church is ministering to Bantu children, whose parents came from Somalia and now live in the poorer part of town. The children are from Muslim families and the church does not yet speak to them about Jesus, only about God. They tell them stories about sheep and shepherds and play shepherd games. I shared with them from the shepherd's perspective about keeping the sheep safe from the coyotes, shearing, and using the wool to make yarn. I had the sheep that they could actually see and put their hands on; and Meadow was a trooper. One little boy was especially interested in all parts of the sheep. Many of the little girls were afraid of the sheep. They would jump, that would startle poor Meadow and she would jump; and the girls would fall on the ground laughing. Many of them asked if the sheep would bite!

This girl loved Meadow and did not want to stop hugging her.

French Angora Bunnies available

Well my rabbits have been busy and produced some very lovely babies, including rare red colored ones. All my bunnies are pedigreed and most are show quality. I will be at the middle Tennessee fiber festival as a vendor. I hope you might stop by and say hi. I will have these bunnies available there. You may contact me if you see one you just have to have!


This is Elaine's litter, born 3-23-10, out of a red doe and a red buck. They are: cream doe, cream buck, red doe, red buck, fawn doe, and fawn buck.



This is Esther's litter, born 3-23-10, out of a golden steel doe and lynx buck. They are: Chestnut buck and opal buck.



This is Lauren's litter, born 3-25-10, out of a black doe and a white buck. They are: Broken chestnut buck, broken chocolate chinchilla buck, broken black doe, black doe, broken blue doe, broken blue doe, and opal doe.



This is a red buck that was born 12-19-09.



This is Bianca's litter, born 4-11-10, out of a white doe and a red buck. They are:fawn buck, fawn buck, red buck, red doe, red doe, and red doe.



This is Calista's litter, born 4-20-10 out of a smoke pearl doe and lynx buck. They are: Squirrel buck, opal buck, blue buck, blue doe, squirrel? doe.

Canola Field Painting

I did go back to paint the canola field. Standing in that field of yellow felt electrifying it was so bright. It was fun to use my yellowist yellow!

Flood

This past weekend, we had terrible rains in middle Tennessee. Some places had up to 15 inches over two days. This caused widespread flooding, road closings, bridges, cars, and homes destroyed. Even though we have a creek that runs in front of our house and it got higher than I have ever seen it, we had no significant damage. I give Many thanks to the Lord for keeping us safe.

A Beautiful Field

On my way to Triune to get animal feed, I passed a breathtaking sight. It was a field of yellow flowers that I thought might be mustard. I stopped by the road and while cars were rushing by, I did a ten-minute pastel. As I finished, the owner stopped to get her mail and I spoke to her. When I told her I was an artist and asked if I could paint on her farm, she graciously agreed. She told me the farm had belonged to her grandparents and the field was planted in canola (for canola oil).
A few days later, I went to paint. I got to stand in the field of yellow and it felt electrifying it was so bright.
This is the initial pastel that I did from the road.

Getting the Garden Ready

With a working lawnmower and my tiller, I finally got to work in the garden. I tilled most of it just enough to get the grass and weeds, planted a few things like some lettuce and a hill of squash and cucumbers. I cleaned out the barn where the hay was and brought a bunch of chaff down for mulch. I left a spot where the sweet corn will be. I will till it later. I'm pretty pleased to have some of this wrapped up. I hope to better use my garden space to get more plants in. I also have been bringing my baby tomato plants outside during the day to harden them off. I usually don't get to that soon enough and have rather spindly plants.

Shetland lambs born!

It's been busy here on the lamb front. (goats, too, but this time only photos of lambs) I had nine ewes bred and all but one has had hers. Out of 13 lambs so far, there are 4 ewe lambs and 9 ram lambs. It is disappointing to not get more ewes, but, they are all beautiful and healthy, and colorful. I couldn't have asked for a lovlier rainbow of lambs!

Combing Cashmere Goats

Since it is just now the beginning of Spring, it is time to harvest cashmere. Cashmere comes from goats. Almost all goats have an undercoat that they grow for the winter. Cashmere goats are simply goats that have been bred to have long enough fiber to spin. The goats may be sheared, but then you also have all the hair I prefer to comb the cashmere while it is shedding out and before the hair starts coming out, too. I use a variety of rakes and combs and may comb the goat 2 or 3 times until I get most of it. You see the photo of the combs and a bag of cashmere, the process of combing and in the third photo how the goat looks with one side combed and the other side not yet combed. This is a labor intensive process with a fairly small harvest. That is why real cashmere is valuable. Much of the cashmere made into sweaters these days has an amount of fine sheep's wool in it. That is why you may be able to get a "cashmere" sweater for cheap.

New Pastel Paintings

With the unusual amount of snow we have had here in Tennessee, I have gotten some nice references for paintings. I hope you enjoy these.

Spinner's Retreat

The Natchez Trace Wilderness Park was the location of a spinner's retreat last weekend. What is that??!! For those of us who are crazy about wool, yarn, spinning, and fiber animals, it was a time to get together and share, eat, learn new techniques, and dye wool. It was very enjoyable as we made new friends and caught up with old ones. I even got to play my pennywhistle with Magda, (who is from Holland and plays the accordian) and Anna, who plays the fiddle. Sharing our knowledge about our techniques and lifestyles is important. Galyna from the Ukraine shared that in her country, people have forgotten what a spinning wheel looks like. They were not encouraged to keep the skills and crafts alive and people are forgetting how to do them. She tells us how happy she is here in this country because she is able to do all these things.

With the cold, snowy weather we had, I did two things: I painted indoors and took photos outside. I purchased the tulips and painted them before they drooped too much. I guess that's what tulips do in a vase.

I also took advantage of the unusual snow here and took oodles of photos. This pastel was done from one I took of the horses covered in snow.

Pastel paintings

I worked a little more on the painting I did a few days ago. I've realized that when you paint the skyholes (where you see the sky through the trees), it is a bit darker in value than the sky. I think I have improved it.

I've also learned that I have to take photos of my artwork outside. With my particular set up, this is the best way. The previous post, I had tried to take it inside because it was raining.

Here is a painting I have been working on for a while. I painted it from a photo that my daughter took. I keep going back to it to work on things I see. It's good to let a painting sit for a while. I see things I don't see at first. I think this is the final version. By the way, these paintings were done with my own hand made pastels. I think I am getting a good collection of colors.

Angora Bunnies for Sale

I have enjoyed my beautiful French Angora rabbits for years. I have shown them and won prizes with them. I now am offering babies for sale. They are $35 each and come with a pedigree. The bunnies in these three litters are not too closely related to breed together.

Here is a lovely litter of bunnies out of my champion buck, Leonardo. The mother is a golden steel. They were born Dec. 19th. There is a squirrel buck, a chocolate agouti buck, and a broken squirrel doe. She has a very nice pattern. I personally love the squirrel color.

This litter is the one that I posted about last month, the bunnies that almost died of the cold. They were born Dec. 19th, and they are beautiful now! This is a fawn buck, a cream doe, and a chestnut buck. Their father is a red, and their mother is a black. There is a red in the litter and an copper agouti that I am keeping for now. These bunnies could throw reds.

This litter has two does and five bucks. Born Dec. 4th, they are all a very good cream color, almost fawn. Their father is a good blue cream (tort) with very thick wool and their mother is white.

I've been dyeing, ( but not dying )

It takes quite a lot of time and effort to get my wool prepared to send off to be carded, but I finally got there. First there is all the washing and selecting and weighing, and then dyebath after dyebath of Shetland wool and angora. I like a 75% wool and 25% angora mix. I like to put similar colors together, such as turquiose and blue, and navy, blue and violet. When carded, this makes a depth of the color, in that it comes out almost iridescent and you are seeing the different colors and not just one flat color. Incidentally, this is the effect one strives for when painting in pastel. Instead of blending, adding one color over another makes for a much more interesting sparkling effect.

winter painting

With all the snow, I took the opportunity to take some photos to use for paintings. Nope, I just can't get out there and do plein air when it is this cold! ( It's been in the teens and 20s ).

Anyway, here is a pastel I did on a new surface- multi-media art board prepared with aluminum oxide grit. I think next time I will use the smoother side of the board; but this was an interesting experience. Also, all the pastels I used are my handmade ones.

Preparedness rating: mediocre

We have had colder than usual temperatures for our neck of the woods. This means taking hot water out twice a day for the animals. It also means burning lots of firewood as our propane heat would have to run a LOT to keep the house comfortable. So we needed to cut some more firewood. There is plenty of it out there, lots of dead trees. So, today having the troops home was a good day to do the job. However, the kerosene heater would not run well to heat up the tractor which didn't want to start in the cold. So, we had to use a handpulled wagon to transport the wood. But we got the idea that we could use our living horsepower to help with the job. Gitano just could not handle that scary wagon that he was expected to pull. So, the three of us together pulled the wagon. One thing I know I need now is some insulated boots. I did wrap some wool around my feet and that did help. We did get enough wood for a few days and got a lot of exercise.