Shepherds' Spring Farm

I have finished my flowers but I don’t think I am finished with the picture.

The last time I had gotten this far

I started adding flowers, thinking that the branch end would be the last to open, I started with a darker colour and fewer threads to make buds. I made smallish french knots.

Next, I went to a lighter shade of pink and a few more strands for the next size-up flower buds

For the next group, I used my final pink colour but added in a few strands of the darker colour. I should have probably used half and half because the darker pink didn’t show up as much as I hoped. I did these at home so you got 4 progress pictures.

Today while I was at the market, I finished, with the lighter pink being for the bigger flowers. I decided to try colonial knots instead of french knots. I am not sure I wrapped them all the right way band I added some extra wraps around the needle to bulk them up a bit.

I liked the way they turned out. I am thinking maybe I should add a little bit of yellow to the middle of the bigger flowers to make them look more open. I also think adding some green flower buds might be a good idea too. So that is next, and hopefully, I will make it before the end of June.

And now just because they are cute, the 2 ducklings that visited our booth this morning. they belong to the Farm and were out for a walk with their youngest.

I have started adding flowers to my branch. It is slow going as I am still fighting my cold but it is started, so that’s something.

I started adding the purple backgrounds for the flowers. I took a picture partway along.  I remembered to take pictures before finishing so everyone should clap…… or something. LOL

Taking the picture made me look at it more and wow, dead straight

So I went back and poked them into a more organic shape.

Next was the stems and that’s as far as I got. I am not sure about the blank space bottom right. I can’t decide if I like it or not.

And just for fun, sheep and lambs. theses are bad sheep who escaped in the rain and decided to eat the grass between the two houses on the farm. They are not very good at being sneaky. This was a little earlier in the spring. They are out in the pasture during the day now.

And some cute Lambs

After thinking about the flowers for my branch (here’s the last post if you missed it https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2023/05/13/tree-branch-progress-and-shopping/ I decided it would be better to do a sample so the colours could be seen better than in the pencil drawing.

I grabbed an offcut of a fulled sweater to use for the sample. It’s a bit lumpy but it should work for this.  I have already decided I wanted a purple background to the flowers like the hairiness you see around some flowers.

I thought orange would be the best idea for the central stalk of the flower. I had a lighter and darker orange so I did some of each to see how it looked.

Then it was time to add flowers. Someone on the last blog post said to try gradient colours for the flowers. that sounded like a good idea. I am using embroidery floss the stuff that comes as 6 strands.  I started with a darker colour and smaller knots at the top. Then I added a lighter colour strand and made a little larger knots. Then just the light colour but more strands and bigger flowers.

It’s not the best knot-making. On some, I just couldn’t get the knots to line up in neat rows. It’s probably the stitches of the sweater, you can see it’s fulled up quite lumpy.  I am leaning toward pink. The yellow is nice too.

And now as promised some lamb pictures. We have 3 sets of twins and t singles so far.

Also last year you might remember that we had a bottle lamb named Storm.

Here is what he looks like now. He is a messy eater as you can see.

I forgot to share the finished first-quarter tree so here it is.

After some final fiddling with the width of the trunk and shadow and adding a little red bird for interest, I decided I am done with the winter tree.

Next is spring so I have to figure out what kind of tree I made. I wasn’t thinking of a particular tree when I started the experiment in making a tree. Here is the original tree experiment post. https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2023/02/22/an-experiment-thinking-about-the-year-long-challenge/  After doing some picture searches I think it is most like an Oak tree. The other option was a Maple but the bark on a Maple is quite grey and Oaks have much more brown and textured bark. Naturally, neither of these makes the kind of flowers that pop into your head when you say tree in bloom. They make droopy green (sometimes red) tassels. Maples make maple keys and Oaks make acorns.  What kind of tree do you think it is?  I may decide it is a fantasy tree so I can make blossoms anyway. What do you think?

The other exciting thing Jan told you about too. I got my Package from Georgia (Russian Federation whether they like it or not).

Here are some unboxing pictures.

I was surprised it was all assembled. Jan had some assembly required with hers. The other fun thing is it is purple and has a cute little bee. It has 4 what look to be size 36 felting needles in it. It holds 4 of them.

Purple and a bee are all very well but how does it work? It took a little experimenting on how where to hold the machine in relation to the felt surface to get the best felting. It worked well but it is hard to engage all the barbs on such a long course needle. We decided to switch out my big needles for one of the smaller crown needles. This also helps with a comparison of Jan’s machine to mine as hers only holds one.  I like it. It is bigger than Jan’s and I like hers too.  I like the Chinese one the least. A lot of that is the way you hold it. It is a much slower machine and we all know that patience is not one of my stronger qualities. One thing I would recommend is that you get an awl or sewing stiletto or something similar to use to hold new fibres down so you are not getting your finger so close to the machine. Unless you have long talons like Jan for doing such things.

In this last picture, you can see how much ( the white fibres) gets punched through when you fully engage all the barbs of the large 36 triangle needles and how big the holes are even when you only engage the first barbs( yellow fibres).

You will get to hear about the rest of the testing later. Jan is making a chart and doing some analyzing of data. Better her than me. 🙂