Lambs!

By in Lambs, Oak Knoll Farm, OKF Flock No Comments

All pictures taken by my father. Thanks, Daddy!

Three weeks ago we started gearing up for our first lambing season on the farm. Vet supplies were cross checked, ordered, loaded (by my good-hearted mother while we were out of town) into a big tub and stashed in the feed room. A local shepherd friend came out to crutch the ewes for us, shaving their nethers for easy viewing and clean access to milk for the lambs. He and Megan (above), who used to work with this same flock, reckoned two of them were about a week from delivery, so we piled on extra monitoring and raced up from Portland as soon as Spring Break began for the children, thinking we’d be lucky not to miss the first births.

We checked them day and night for two weeks… and nothing happened. It was a pleasant ritual to tramp down to the barn under a spangled sky, with a full-throated frog chorus from the pond, but there were never any lambs. We peered at their bottoms on Saturday, and although Artemis and Aphrodite were both sporting udders the size of regulation soccer balls, nobody skipped breakfast or showed any intention of going into labor. We glumly concluded we’d better go back for the reopening of school and plan to return on short notice as soon as the girl who feeds them when we’re away reported some action.

It turned out to be a blessing that Manrico the wether had come down with conjunctivitis and an abscess during our stay. We’d pressed friends into service knocking together a pen of wood palettes and old gates lashed to the boys’ open-sided shelter and logged some practice runs for Lark in herding them into our makeshift paddock. (She turned out to be indispensible — nine years of city life doesn’t cancel out a thousand years of breeding, thank goodness.) Talking it over, Adam and I decided we didn’t think it was feasible for anyone without a dog to pen and doctor Manzy, and it didn’t feel right to leave him in need of another day of antibiotic ointment and the abscess incompletely healed. So on Sunday Adam stayed behind with the dog and I drove the kids back to Portland.

We were getting bagels at the local coffee shop on Monday morning when the texts started coming in.

LAMBS!

Two

One was stuck in the trough and is very very weak

And neither can find their mom. Hera is trying but she doesn’t have any milk

One is dying on me.

(This is not what you want to glimpse flashing across your screen as you’re driving down the highway in a minivan with five elementary schoolers.) Luckily, Adam’s quick work with a towel and some Nutri-drench and warm molasses solution was enough to keep the little ewe lamb alive, and Megan swiftly arrived to help both babies get reconnected with their mother and begin to nurse. By the time I’d seen the children off to their classrooms, another ewe was in labor. Ada stopped by my desk to check for news at every opportunity, and just before lunch I was able to report that Artemis had delivered a very large ram lamb and that Athena had turned out to be the mother of the twins.

Adam improvised some sweaters for the babies by cutting off the sleeves of his sweatshirt, as the temperature had dipped back down below forty degrees during the night and the little girl needed help keeping her core body heat up. And after some time Artemis delivered a second lamb, so we’ve got two sets of boy-girl twins!

Actually my mum took this one. Thanks, Mum!

Artemis took to motherhood immediately and washed those babies with a will. Both of hers were soon up and nursing, too.

All this was too good to miss. As soon as school was finished and I’d returned all the children that don’t belong to me and cut deals for drive swaps to clear the rest of the week, I tossed my two back in the car and we hurtled north again through the night. We slept in a motel near the ferry dock and came across this morning under a majestic sunrise. By breakfast time we were cuddling lambs and taking turns to spy on Aphrodite, who’s surely got to knuckle under and produce her lambs soon. Lambwatch 2017 is in full swing! Time to get cracking on some better sweaters.

Playful

By in Ada, Children's Wear, Design, Lalita No Comments

Don’t keel over from the shock, but it’s another pattern launch day chez WGK: introducing the Lalita pullover! Lalita is a Hindi girls’ name that means “playful,” because everyday play is what this sweater’s made for. This design began as Ada’s beloved Rainbow Sweatshirt… almost half her lifetime ago. Remember this wee muffin?

Rainbow Sweatshirt is still in her sweater drawer, looking rather more ragged after several years’ use and rather shorter in the sleeves, but I deployed all my cunning mom-savvy in this design to make it fit as long as possible.

  • A-line shaping means it can evolve from a swingy tunic to a more standard-length pullover.
  • Exaggerated drop shoulders and a sneaky wee gusset at the underarm give extra ease through the chest. Kids tend to grow longer faster than they grow wider anyway, but this means you can start with 4.5″ ease, as Ada’s wearing it in these photos, and still have plenty of room a couple of years later.
  • Rolled cuffs may seem like an insignificant detail, but I find they transition gracefully to bracelet length without ever shouting “I’m growing out of this sweater!” the way ribbed cuffs might.

Lalita is knit in the round, so the only seams to sew are at the shoulders, where you want the stability of a seam to bear the hanging weight of the sweater. Stitches for the sleeves are picked up around the armscye after the shoulders are joined, and I’ve given directions to work them flat or in the round, just as you like. (I knit the Rainbow Sweatshirt sleeves in the round, but I worked these flat because it stopped my marled yarn from pooling. I was holding together a strand of plain white Cascade 220 with some crazy space-dyed Cascade Alpaca Lace Paints in white-black-grey, and I didn’t like all the black parts hanging together in large splotches. Some folks also hate having to flop the whole body of a sweater over and over while they’re knitting around on a tiny sleeve, and I get that. Other folks would rather visit the town library naked than sew a seam. I get that, too.)

You can also see in this photo that there’s a difference in gauge between the body and the sleeves. That’s intentional. I wanted drape in the garment, but didn’t think the elbows would wear well in a loose fabric. So the sleeves are worked on a smaller needle for a subtle change in fabric structure.

There are phoney seams of slipped stitches at the sides that disguise the shaping decreases and also help the tunic hang straight to show its A-line. The hem is lowered at the back with German short rows (I’ve described how to do them in the pattern, but also pointed to a helpful tutorial online).

For those of you reading here or on Instagram, I’ve provided a coupon code that will get you the pattern at half price during its launch weekend (until midnight Sunday Pacific time): enter PLAYFUL at checkout in my Ravelry shop. I do hope you enjoy this knit — and yes, there are plans for a grown-up version in the works!

Winter Isle

By in Keep Your Hands Warm, Sheep Diversity, Shetland, Traveling, Winter Isle mitts 1 Comment

I’ve been busy! The Madrona Retreat is the best kind of busy for knitters: all that learning, connecting, experimenting, making… maybe a little drinking later in the evening… It’s enough stimulation to tide a girl over for quite some time! This year was different for me. My Madrona mate of nearly a decade had her hands full managing the first inaugural Brooklyn Tweed booth in the marketplace, so I stayed on my own in an Airbnb room rather than at the hotel. I signed up for just one class (Amy Herzog’s Advanced Sweater Modifications; can’t tell you how excited I am to draft my own set-in sleeves!) to keep my experience more mellow, and that left me with buckets of free time. Luckily, there are always friends to meet at Madrona. Kathy was down for Thursday night and Friday—I can’t believe it was only last year at Madrona that we met for the first time. I chatted with llama farmers and sheep keepers and dyers and spinners and (obviously) knitters, many of whom attend this event year after year. It’s the first time Abundant Earth Fiber Mill has had a booth, though, and I’d cooked up something special for the occasion.

Lydia spun a light fingering-weight yarn from the natural colors of Shetland fleece grown on three local farms. It’s a worsted three-ply and very strong despite its dainty appearance. That yarn said MITTS to me, so I made a pattern and Lydia made adorable wee kits. I used part of a Scandinavian pine bough motif, which you’ll often see radiating out from a large floral center to fill the corners in Selbu mitten designs, and paired it with some wild waves from Shetland. Behold the Winter Isle mitts:

Martha was a sport and modeled them so you can see how they look on human hands. The pattern goes all the way around, which means there’s no designated right and left mitt, although the charts are mirrored. You can see that the length is a little longer than many fingerless mitts; I like enough coverage that I can curl my fingers down inside if I’m out for a walk, so that’s how I design ’em. They’ve got a thumb gusset for mobility and comfort (the only way I roll) and a cuff in half-twisted rib. The corrugated rib at the finger edge uses both contrast colors, and the detail of the two-color bind-off never ceases to charm me.

Want a pair of your own? The kits were a one-time special for the Madrona market (unless Lydia decides to make more), but you can substitute any fingering-weight wool and grab the pattern from my Ravelry store (link in the sidebar). You’ll need 110 yards of the main color and just a few yards of each of the contrasts. I hope you like them! I may have to make another pair to keep for myself now, because I’m hearing that winter isn’t done with the PNW quite yet. Snow again this week? Truly? Okay!

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