I just finished a painting for my youngest daughter’s birthday.  I have never given her a painting before and she doesn’t know what my paining style looks like, so I was afraid to show it to her in case she might not like it.  Then she would feel obliged to hang it whenever I came to visit!  I brought it to her house on Sunday and presented it to her, she seemed to like it and we figured out where to hang it.  Here’s a pic of the finished work:

I don’t use purple much in my work, but it’s her favorite color.  I think it turned out pretty well.

Spent all day yesterday and the day before washing my newly acquired fleeces.  It took me a long time, partly because it was the first time I’ve cleaned a fleece.  They were much dirtier that they looked before they went in the water, I had to wash them three times and rinse them repeatedly.  Now I know (if I get a chance to acquire a fleece for free) there is no such thing as a free fleece.  I was lucky the weather was beautiful so it could be dried outside!  Out of 6 lbs of fleece I got 4 lbs. washed this weekend.

Buddy really loved the raw wool before it was washed, he wanted to roll in it and then take a nap on it.  He thought the smell was absolutely divine.

Jacob and Romney fleece drying overnight in studio.

I did spin a small amount just to see what it would look like, it was easy to spin and looked pretty good.  Now I have to figure out the best way to process the wool.

I did quite a bit of spinning over the weekend too:  this is a pic of the yarn I spun.

It looks pretty good if you don’t undo the skein.  Then you can see it’s a little overspun.  Also finally finished a shawl I’ve been working on for a while, I had to rip it at least halfway out because of mistakes in the last part of the design.  The pattern is by The Spun Monkey.

I have been knitting and crocheting leaves to embellish the top of the shawl, not sure how that will actually look, and will need lots more leaves.

More later!

I bought a fleece at Sheep and Wool, I’ve never done that before.  I was walking around in one of the buildings and came upon the most beautiful white, brown and black fleece.  I found out it came from a Jacob sheep, a rare breed.  Each bag of fleece in the booth had a card on it with the name of the sheep, and a little about the sheep.  I bought the fleece from a sheep named Sassy, who just had her first lamb this year.  Her fleece weighed a little over two pounds.

Here is a pic of a Jacob, they are beautiful animals and can have up to 6 horns.  This sheep and her lamb live at Poplar Spring Farm, in Maryland, where Sassy lives.  Last night I started washing the fleece, with some trepidation, as I’ve never done that before either.

This is some of Sassy’s fleece drying, I still have a lot to wash.

Here is a pic of the finished fleece.  It turned out nice and fluffy, I was afraid it might felt.

I don’t know why I am so fascinated by the story about this fleece, but I am.  Haven’t decided how to spin it yet and whether to separate the brown from the white fleece.

Here is a pic of recently spun yarn (not from Sassy) I think I’m finally getting the hang of spinning.

I I was recently inspired by a book I purchased about spinning art yarn, by Lexi Boeger.  Janice Rosema is featured in this book wearing an amazing shawl made from cotted(semi-felted sheep fleece) wool and crocheted leaves and other things.  I was already knitting a shawl pattern (monkey wrap shawl) from another artist featured in the book:  here is a link to the Spun Monkey on Etsy.  So I a bought a booklet of crochet patterns from Janice’s Etsy shop that explained how to crochet leaves and started making them to embellish my shawl.  I also crocheted some flowers and other designs.  Not nearly as easy as it looks!  As always, there is a learning curve, which I never expect and always leaves me feeling frustrated.  I am still trying though and my results are getting better. Still not liking what I’m seeing tho.  Will keep trying.  The shawl also has some big mistakes so I will be ripping the last part out and correcting them.  Oh well, I’m a sloppy knitter.  Need to work on that too.

Finished this one early this week.  It had been sitting in my studio unfinished for a few months.  I was looking at it last weekend, and suddenly knew what I had to do to finish it.  The size is 19″ x 19″.  I plan to go larger in my next paintings, before this I wanted to wait until I felt more comfortable with the whole process after not painting for so many years.

I think I can credit my recent class with Flora Bowley for the ease I feel now when painting.  She reminded us to trust our intuition and just let the painting happen without thinking about what we are doing so much.  I have been doing that and also painting with my hands some instead of a brush, with seems to be very effective.  Besides acrylic paints I also used fabric and a little bit of sheep’s roving.