Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Merinos and Books

Last night I had a very interesting experience. I told you that I was going to go see the Morehouse Farm prize-winning Merino rams. I got to the bookstore early and shopped around some. I needed a new book or four. Remember me saying I wanted to get the Merino book and the Inspired Cable Knits? Well, I got both, plus Mason-Dixon Knitting. All three books are gorgeous and I can't wait to start making some stuff out of them all. I think my first project is going to be the mittens from the Merino book.
If you only get to choose one of these books, choose the Merino Knits. They have classic designs in there that can be embellished in many ways. The lacework is gorgeous, the mittens are adorable, and the wool is incredible. I also got another book last night:
Yep, I have to take the GRE. I've been out of college for over a year now and I don't remember squat when it comes to math or chemistry. Guess I better brush up a little bit on that. Now for the moment I know you all have been waiting for! I present to you, the Sheep!
They arrived in a plain metal sheep pen. They really are inside of there! I had to get one really quick before they started to bring the guys out.
The first one started to come out. All the children who were there were just fascinated. OK, so all of the knitters who were there were more excited than the kids, but hey, these are MERINOS!! Gorgeous Sheep.
This is the book's author, Margrit Lohrer, leading the two fiesty men into the pen where they would model for children and knitters alike. I just kept getting closer and closer. I think I was about to go int0 the pen with the sheep.
Margrit was very nice and showed how the fleece under the rough outer coating was just a brilliant white. It's hard to tell from this picture, but it really was a beautiful white fleece. He'll make some good yarn come shearing time!
And here are Margrit and her husband Albrecht Pichler. He was also very nice. They had to be nice to let a strange knitter come around and take tons of pictures of their rams.
Of course I had to get a picture of me petting one of the rams. DBF, can I have a sheep? Just look at that face!
Mr. Black Sheep was putting on a show for everyone. He was a very deep chocolate color under the outer layer. Margrit said that the sun bleaches their coats and so the true color is always underneath the outer scruff. Oh, and one ram will produce enough wool to be made into enough yarn for four adult sweaters. That's a lot of wool! The Ewes are smaller, so they don't produce quite that much. The rams also have the beautiful horns while the ewes will not. I had shunned spinning until I found out that they also sell the roving on their website! I might have to try again...who knows.
The sheep knew who their owner was, that's for sure. Margrit was pretty popular last night. Between kids and knitters, they drew a pretty good crowd. If you look in the background, you can see that she brought some samples of her work with her as well as some of the gorgeous, sqeezably soft yarn that comes from these sheep.

They brought the most gorgeous varigated yarns with them last night. I think I spent about half of the time squeezing the yarn. I could roll around in the stuff it's so soft. The mittens were just adorable and the lace stole she made is gorgeous. She has the pattern for that in the book. They are wonderful people, they have wonderful yarn, and they produced a gorgeous book. It's called Morehouse Farm Merino Knits. Go out and get it if you haven't picked it up already. You can find it here: http://www.morehousefarm.com/MerinoKnits/RamTour/

You can also buy their yarns here: http://www.morehousefarm.com/KnittingEssentials/Yarn/

Go visit their site. If you scroll your mouse over the ram on the Ram Tour page, he'll bah for you :oP

Oh, I also snagged a picture of the summer shirt I've been working on.


I was so excited about sheep, I almost forgot about the poor thing. It's coming along. I've been working on some cross-stitch as well, so not as much time for knitting it. It'll get there though. Well, I should get to work now.

Knit on...

1 comment:

Sara M. said...

They were great weren't they? (the rams, that is!)