A Very Late New Comer!!

Welcome to Darla!

Darla, an Icelandic ewe lamb, was born here Monday afternoon as a result of a unscheduled breeding at Stony Meadows Farm in January/February. I bought her mom, Candice, (pictured with her) uncertain of whether she was pregnant as a yearling.

As you can tell, Darla is teeny tiny! She was most probably born prematurely. Since her mom's milk had not come in, she needed some colostrum. I fed her frozen colostrum from my neighbor's dairy goats for two days. Her mom didn't understand about nursing her lamb, so we had to be a bit forceful with Candice once her milk did come in. Then Candice became a nursing mom.

Now Darla thinks it's time to eat some hay... and she's only 3 days old!!!

Icelandic Sheep have many, many different colors and color patterns. To me it looks like Darla is Mouflon and white spotted. But I haven't learned enough to say for sure. I'll leave it to the experts to determine! One thing's for sure: this breed is born with lots of long curls of fleece!!!

Candice's long fleece has grown since April 8th!

Here are more pictures of total cuteness!!

Family of Elephant Sculptures

Please visit this link to see the entire post about my recent Elephant Family sculptures.

http://farmgirlarts.com/2012/06/elephant-family-love/

Welsh Corgi

Here's a link to one of my recent sculptures:

http://farmgirlarts.com/2012/02/welsh-corgi/

Thanks!

Southeastern Animal Fiber Festival!!!

To see my blog about this go to:

http://farmgirlarts.com/2011/10/southeastern-animal-fiber-fair-time/

Sitting Kitty: Cat Sculpture

This kitty was commissioned for Mother's Day by a daughter. The kitty's name is Bonkers and she had a habit of sitting in a most "unladylike" position. 

Buddha-esque or Yoda, maybe?

Here's Ms. Bonkers herself. A big girl with beautiful gold/green eyes.

Getting those full jowls and the double chin were essential to capturing her character.

Dog Portrait: Bryn (chow/collie mix)

This was a gift to a teenage daughter on her birthday from her parents. Was fun to work on this dog because I know everyone! Looking at the photos today, if I could change anything it would be to add more hair around the head/neck area.

Left ear up, right ear down.

Several layers of dog hair carded in with dyed Suffolk wool to get the dual coat look and texture.

Funky tail curl over the back and darker shorter hair on back.

Tail and underside have longer fluffy hair.

This is Bryn in real life.

Elephant Sculpture: "The Matriarch" is in the House!!!

Some 80 hours, 14 ounces of wool and many wrinkles  later, photos of the Elephant Matriarch follow:
(Ginny Weiler, Photographer)

 

She measures 8.5 inches tall x 13 inches long (trunk to tail). No armature was used. All wool!!

Imagine a 14 ounce pile of fluffy Suffolk down wool needled tightly into this shape.

The tusks were the hardest part of all!

I loved adding the wrinkles here, trunk, sides, back legs, flanks, ears, etc.

The Quarter is there just for scale.

The After SAFF

It's taken me this long (over a week) to recover and write about the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair! Whew!

Of course I spent almost all of my time in the barn with the sheep and primarily the Jacob Sheep and other Jacob breeders.

This is the class of 2010 Jacob Ewe Lambs as we're leading them in. Eight total.

Here are the judge's top 5 placings. Wiggle Hill Diva and I are 4th and proud of it! Noah and Farmgirl's Eloise are 7th. Eloise was good with that but Noah would have liked the money that comes with higher placings. The winner was Never Winter Parfait shown by Zach Staines.

On Saturday, the Juniors showed. Noah and FarmGirl's Eloise took first in the Jacob Ewe Lamb class and the Jacob Fleece class. Noah showed Perfect Spot Chelsea in Jacob Aged Ewes and took 1st -- stiff competition, too... NOT, she was the only old lady in the class! Eloise went home with Linda Bjarkman to join her Patchwork breeding program.

Here are the Jacob breeders and friends having dinner at a wonderful Mexican place Friday night after we've unloaded and fed our sheepies. There were two unexcited young men, the one on the right and the one hiding from the camera on my left. They were only slightly more excited once they had their prize money. We talked about bloodlines, fleeces, rams, parasites -- your typical dinner conversations. I learned so much!

All the fiber in the sales areas was beautiful, too. Especially the Alpaca fiber that Jenny Bennett from Harmony Wool Alpacas had for sale!

I had so much fun with my new and old shepherd friends and the sheepies!