In with the (sort of) new

Here's a smiling girl you haven't seen much of lately.  Our girl Pippi is happy and healthy and spending her days out in the big pasture with her mom, Strawberry, and the adult ewes.  In a few weeks I'll need to do a group shuffle to bring the pregnant ewes into a field adjoining the barn.  Our first lambs should be arriving around the first of March and the Lamb-Cam will be reinstated by mid-February.  The lamb crop will be small this year.  After agonizing about it for weeks, I decided to keep the work load a little lighter and only bred six ewes.  I kept nearly all of my ewe lambs from last spring that were sired by the Wensleydale ram.  I don't usually keep back so many lambs, but their fleeces were so outstanding, I wanted to keep them all.  I couldn't stand the idea of not having any babies born this spring, but also know I am approaching the limits of my energy levels.  I'm really glad to have made that decision now that I'm dealing with this rotator cuff injury.

(the wonder of organization - how long will it last?)

A few days into the new year, I decided to Organize The Yarn.  Ugh!  It was not such a fun couple of days (yes, it took a few days).  In the studio, I'm lucky to have a laundry/storage room to keep washed fleeces, processed roving and bins (many bins) of yarn.  Some of it has been in the stash for years and a lot of it is handspun yarn that might be considered "vintage" by now!  Amongst all that yarn and fiber were also lots of UFO's (unfinished projects).  I was in the right frame of mind (ruthless) and made some hard decisions about whether I would ever finish some of those things or should I move on and not look back.  The keepers are in a bin and rest were frogged,  re-skeined, washed and either belong to someone else now or are awaiting a new project.  It feels so good to walk into that room and be able to see all of the floor and the tops of the washer and dryer!

I'm happy to report that I'm making some progress with my new resolve to "Finish What I Start".  You know how those financial advisers on television always say start with the small things on your debt list?  Well, I've applied that strategy to tackling my knitting project backlog and it's working for me!  I've started with hats and mittens and these are the ones I've completed in the last week.  I'm still knitting on a few other projects, but have managed to not cast on anything new, which has been the most difficult thing of all (and my history of succumbing to that urge is why I have such an abundance of UFO's).

(Several boy hats, a little girl hat, a barn hat for me and some recently frogged handspun)

So, what's happening at your house these days?  New knitting, old knitting, no time for knitting?