This is Bear.

Can you tell by looking at them what they’ve been doing?

Yep, rolling around in the mud, fighting.  What started out as a  playful romp, for some inexplicable reason turned into a tussle!  Thankfully, they didn’t do any serious damage to one another.

What to do?

Well, the idea is to find Blizzard another home!  He is only a temporary resident here.  A few Saturdays ago, I got a call from the guy who owns the Dairy Queen here in Farmersville.  He said that he had picked up a male Great Pyrenees off of Highway 380, and he wondered if the dog was one of mine.  [You know you live in a small town when people know you by your dogs.]

He went on to say that the dog had no collar or tag.  All of our dogs have collars and tags, but still, I’ve seen Bear slip his collar, so at the time, I couldn’t be sure the dog wasn’t one of mine.  I asked him to hang onto the dog until later that afternoon when I finished teaching in McKinney and could come take a look.

Once I saw the dog, I knew he wasn’t one of mine.  However, he couldn’t stay with Mr. Dairy Queen, and had to go somewhere, so I loaded him up in the Suburban, brought him home, and named him Blizzard in honor of the man who found him.

MudBud and Bear checking out the newcomer

Despite the sign I put up at the feed store, no one has claimed him.

So here we are with an extra dog.  Did I mention that he is an INTACT male?   I have him scheduled for surgery, but the first appointment I could get at Cause for Paws is still 3 weeks away.

In the meantime, Blizzard’s life here is a mixed blessing.  He does just fine as long as he stays on Bear’s good side.  There’s no telling what causes a playful romp to become a fight, but they are apparently sorting it out.  We have put Blizzard in the backyard on numerous occasions, and he always squeezes through the gate bars to get back out into the barnyard with Bear and the girls.  Life out there can’t be too bad if he keeps going back!

We are crossing our fingers that we have found a home for him with friends who are moving to a place nearby in March.

Let’s hope he stays out of Bear’s way until then!

This is the new pasture that was created by dividing an existing large pasture that is north of our house.  Our early bird 2012 Shareholders paid The Welder’s bill to make the fence possible that created this pasture, and we couldn’t be more thrilled!

A generous benefactor also paid Willard’s bill for plowing and the seed, and now we’re crossing our fingers that the wheat continues to grow into wonderful grazing land for our fiber animals.

Don’t you love it when a plan comes together!?

I have some new yarn that I’m carrying in the Farm Store.  It’s really fun stuff – - handspun sari silk yarn from India.  I have it in a beautiful deep red, as well as gorgeous multi-colored skeins.  I also have some really cute shawl patterns to go with it.

This yarn is hand spun by women in India, and although they do a great job taking what is basically “waste” silk threads from the sari industry and turning it into this brightly colored yarn, it has one problem.  It’s overtwisted.

You can see from the picture that even when it’s relaxed, it’s not relaxed at all!  Here’s where it’s great to have friends.  When I was showing this yarn to my spinning group this past Wednesday, they suggested that I ply the extra twist out of it.

That’s pretty much what I did.  I ran the yarn through my wheel in the plying direction, holding it out from the wheel about a yard.  This took some of that extra twist out, and I am now left with a much more workable yarn.

This is the same skein, but without the extra twist.  There is still enough twist left in it to hold it together as yarn.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison with another skein.

Yep, it’s good to have friends, especially friends who share their great ideas!

Linda arrived this morning and helped me troubleshoot the loom.  Without going into a lot of boring detail, it just wasn’t working right!  We moved some pegs, re-leveled a few things, and got it working.

Once the loom was set up, Linda started weaving.  I showed her how to weave her header, and Kate showed her how to weave the loopers.

By the end of the day, Linda and Kate had both woven looper rugs.  It was a LOT of fun, and quite an accomplishment for Linda who had never woven anything before in her life.

I’m sorry I didn’t get any pictures of Kate weaving.  There was just too much going on that required my involvement, and then the darn battery ran out on my phone.

I hope you can tell what fun we had from the pictures I was able to take!

I slogged out to the newly planted fields yesterday. Although there was some standing water, they didn’t look too bad.  It seemed the plowed earth had done a better job than the unplowed earth of absorbing the water.

The water isn't standing so badly beyond the fence where the land has been plowed

For a while, a north wind blew, swaying the limbs of the Weeping Willow tree in the front yard.

Despite all the mud, and my worries about my seed, it is good to see the pond fill up.