The farmer's life

From Irish Clover

We attended a canoe trip outing with our fly fishing club this weekend, and Little Clover even manned the canoe giving me time between white knuckled gripped rides down riffles to fish every now and then. The weather was beautiful and the scenery breathtaking, solidifying my desire to be further away from the city and to find a retreat on a nice expanse of land near a river.

The pull towards land has been strengthened not just by my fly fishing hobby, but by my knitting hobby as well. Most knitters will toy with the idea of spinning. Once you've fallen in love with yarn and all its wonderfulness, you may find yourself touched by curiosity around the making of yarn. Some people will cross over and actually become spinners, and spinners will almost always have at least one fantasy of owning sheep. Being a spinner, I've had this fantasy. Mine includes several sheep, a few bunnies, and at least one alpaca. This week, I got a small taste of my idyllic pastoral dream.

While at the stables for Little Clover’s weekly riding lesson, I offered to help Mr. Soprano with the horses. He grabbed a halter and lead rope to bring one in from the pasture and I grabbed another. A few minutes later, as I was strolling through the wrong pasture, I heard him call my name. I ran out of the pasture towards where I was supposed to be only to find a horse running at a gallop directly towards me. I held up my hands and said "Whoa!" The horse proceeded to run right past me. I turned and proceeded to run after the horse. At this time, I thought, “Thank goodness I changed out of my heels.” This thought was followed by, “Thank goodness I was lazy and didn’t put on my Wellies,” which was then capped with, “Oh my god, I am soooo out of shape.” The much more appropriate, “How the heck are we going to wrangle up the horses?” finally found its way into my thoughts. After 15 minutes of chasing and wrestling horses (yes, I did my darnedest to wrestle a horse, albeit a juvenile one), we finally managed to enclose the horses into a barn and get them roped up.

After this little taste of farm life, I’m perfectly content getting my yarn the old fashion way, online or at a yarn store.

From WIPs

Above is the Tudor Grace scarf pattern. I’m knitting it with my own handspun, which impressed Italian. He asked how I got the yarn to stripe, and I really wished I had an intelligent answer instead of the “I have no idea” I gave him.