TODAY ~ ~ ~

We had a great proddy class in my studio!!! Five gals (two left before I remembered to get the camera out) who are all friends came to spend the day learning to proddy (some already knew how!)and laugh and eat and share their 'stories' (everybody has one, you know)!! Diana was a proddy machine ~ she got her entire sheep done and hooked his head and ears and a bit of background!!! Ann and RosaLee are showing off their progress too ~ Ann and I had some fun ~ are you still talking to me?? RosaLee is a long time hooker ~ I enjoy her outlook on life ~ someday, we're going to take a trip and let her be our tour guide!! Thanks girls for coming to spend the day ~ wish you could have seen Ruth's yellow sheep and Sharon (who is a traditional rug hooker) really stepped out of her comfort zone! When they're finished, I'll post pictures!

Since I knew some would be using fleece, I washed up a big pile the two days before!! If you've never washed a stinky sheep fleece, it's a treat!! My grandson, Luke, was over and thought it was pretty scary stuff!! There's a little bit of everything in the wool (this was sheared right from the sheep) and from all the lanolin, my hands are soft like a baby!!!

This is the nice clean fleece ~ Lincolnshire, I believe ~ when we went to a fiber show in the spring, Heidi and I split two different fleece ~ this is from the darker one. The other is silver grey and also very beautiful. I'm going to dye some of that ~ dyed curls make great little flowers or rainbows or accents in a proddied sheep!

Dirty fleece ~ that's what's in this bag!!!! Such an aroma ~ not something you run across every day!! My friend, Carol, who will be reading this, thinks we are very 'rural' and this will confirm it for her, for sure!!!!!!!!!!!! It takes a special kind of person to wallow around in this!! But the results are beautiful and these girls are really going to love the sheep they hook with their Lincolnshire fleece!!

After the girls left and the kitchen was cleaned and the hooking room put back in order a little bit ~ I packed up some clothes and my son, Tad ~ and we headed for the lake! Sonny has a golf outing today and it's rainy (this is Friday but since I posted the pictures before I left home, it's dated yesterday) so I am going to get some quiet time in hooking and resting. And since none of our lake friends will be here this weekend, it will definitely be a quiet one! It's actually supposed to be in the 60's ~ yuk ~ I was going to get some sun ~ that means more hooking time!! That's a win-win situation, isn't it?

Have a good weekend wherever you are!
Alice