New Printer on my Desk…

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Saved up my money from making tshirts and decals with my friend Kathy for her company and bought me a new fancy color inkjet printer.  It’s awesome.  An Epson Artisan 1430…  it will print studio quality prints up to 13 x 19 in size!  And unbelievable images from original art.

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I really want to start showcasing some of my illustration and digital art on cards, prints, and other applications.  I think they are worthy of it, perhaps others might like them.  I’ll have an Etsy shop where I can display them all.  And I’d like to get into making custom stickers…  like folks love for their planners and calendars…  with some interesting original themes, I hope.  We shall see.

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Another income stream is always welcome in our little homestead empire.  Anything that helps to keep the lights on and bills paid, it’s a good thing.

I’ll let you know more, when I get done learning all about it and designing up some lovely things to share!  :-)  I do know it will be under an old company name that I loved…  Kalligraphika.  I used to have a rubber stamp company with lots of beautiful stamps and well, it just ended when the whole rubber stamp craze kind of bottomed out.  All the art images I sold to a lady for her company…  but the name, well, I can use it again.  It is a variation of the Greek words…  Kallos…  meaning beautiful and Graphika, meaning written image, that sort of thing.  So Kalligraphika to me means beautiful images.  :-)  I hope you will agree with that when you can see all I will offer.

 

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Windhaven Lambing…

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I am getting a little excited.  I know we have about a month to six weeks left before our ewes start lambing, but still, it’s very fun to wait for those first newborns.  I can see baby bumps through the heavy fleece of the girls…  all those ladies in waiting are getting a little plumper and it’s not just hay.  I am having a little trouble finding shearers!  Hopefully soon, the weather is getting warmer this week and I like to shear a good month before the mommas are due so it doesn’t put too much pressure on their growing tummies.  Hopefully, this week we will secure a booking.  Apparently, sheep shearing is a lucrative occupation around here and in high demand!

We have eight ewes that are in the maternity group this year.  Sweet Iris, our super mom…  her daughters Emma and Galadriel.  Beulah and Pearl.  Our new Finn ewe, Lydia.  And Bonnie’s big yearling daughters, Willow and Laurel.  Should be an interesting mixup since we have bred everyone to our new Finn ram, Lukkas.  Only Lydia will be having purebred Finn babies…  (we hope twins or more!)  But the crosses are a lovely variety, and I can’t wait to see what happens!  Finn wool is a very close relative of Shetland and they are both similar sized and very related breeds.  The Finn wool is a little finer, denser and can give Shetland a lovely hand and texture.  Since our girls are not fancy or registered, it’s a good thing and we are on our way to developing our own Windhaven signature fleeces!  :-)  (That is one way of looking at crossbreeding!)

Actually, part of the reason that I am making a slight deviation from my beloved Shetlands is that in our area, there are WAY too many Shetland people!  Just down the road a mile or two is a family with a huge breeding group and then there are a lot of them in the lower Michigan area as well.  So Shetlands are not selling well for us.  They make beautiful wool and are wonderful little sheep, but i think I will be moving towards a slight variety to my spinner’s flock.

Finn sheep are known for the large birth groups.  The record is nine lambs from ONE mother!  Finn sheep have litters!  Twins and triplets are an easy thing!  Now my Shetland moms will not necessarily take after their Finn sire, but I have been told that twins should be easy.  We have had about a 50/50 twining rate.  so it might be cool if that gets pushed up a wee bit.  And I would be super excited to see triplets!  Just have to wait and see.  Waiting is just so hard!!!

Well, we could always breed earlier in the fall, but to be honest, it’s just no fun tromping back and forth through the cold and mud and worrying about babies freezing and all.  By waiting until the first week of April, we are pretty sure to have decent enough weather and a bit of lovely green grass for everyone to enjoy!  And it does make for very cute photos, don’t you think?

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