May 16 watch out lots of sheep pictures!

Today Amanda and I got a break from our studios, Johanna, the Textile Centres director, took us to her farm. They have 230 Icelandic sheep, mostly ewes and this is the time of year that they have their babies. The sheep are kept inside to have their lambs, what cute little lambs they are. We saw lots of small lambs, some right after they were born and watched Johanna pull a lamb out of her mum, she was the second lamb and was turned around and would not come out. So here are a few pictures from today’s fun, no pictures of lambs being born in case you were concerned.

The ewes are in large pens but once they give birth the mother and babies are moved into a separate pen to get to know each other. Once they get a bit bigger and stronger they are moved to a fenced area close to the barn and then when they really get big they get the run of the farm. Come the end of June these sheep and sheep from many other farms are trucked to the high country, about an hour and a half from Blonduos where they spend the summer foraging for themselves. At the end of the summer there is a big roundup when all the sheep are sorted, you can’t seem them but all the ewes have ear tags and the lambs will as well to make figuring out which sheep belong to whom relitively simple.

Johanna then feed us wonderful treats and we talked out all sorts of things and got to hear about some of the past projects that have been completed while folks were at the Textile Centre. Then it was back to the studio to see if I could complete what I stated this morning. These starfish had both been laid out last night and did not take too long to finish. The first one is a ruffled starfish.

I like him, when I was laying him out last night his colours reminded me of the A& W root bear. This next starfish has morphed into more of a sea creature thingy.