New Batches of Wool Rugs

While the garden outside is beginning to grow I've been inside a lot working on getting the wool Joel has been spinning woven up into rugs. The first warp of 5 rugs was a linen colored yarn that I wove up with various shades of grey wools.
Then I tied on a black warp and wove it up with the dark black/brown wools.
Today I started tying on a white warp to weave up with white wool. Looks like I'll have enough wool left over for one more warp of 5 rugs so I'm designing one with stripes of white and various tans and greys as the wools will be leftovers from all 3 batches above. That will give me 20 rugs to start the Farmers Market season. Then I'll get back to working on rag rugs and scarves for the summer sales out at Roche Harbor. I'm having a great time.

In spite of it continuing to be cold and wet instead of warm and sunny (sigh) the garden is beginning to be planted. Joel put out the first 2 flats of little lettuce seedlings today and covered them with row covers o give them a bit more warmth and keep the golden crowned sparrows out of them. Those little birds love to eat small vegetable seedlings.
Then he put in a bed of spinach.
And, to my great delight, the sunflowers I planted in the hoophouse as an experiment in early flowers are staring to come up.

After We Open the Packages

Today both Joel and I dealt with the packages that came yesterday. I spent the day winding rug warps from the new yarn. I wound three warps, one of linen colored yarn which I will use for the grey wools most of which have small flecks of tans and browns in them, one of black yarn for the really dark black and brown fleeces and a white one for the white and light grey wools.
Meanwhile, Joel was outside planting the onion plants.

Boxes of Things To Do

Joel picked up two UPS boxes from the dockhouse yesterday. Above is our 30 bunches of onion plants from Dixondale Farms. that's about 2500 plants. Today they go in the ground.
And a box of rug warp so I can get going on the wool he just spun.

With all this wet and windy and cold weather we have been spending a lot of time inside. Joel has been spinning up our fleeces so I can start weaving wool rugs. He spins the wool straight from the fleece
into skeins and then I wash the skeins. We have a nice lot of really dark fleeces this year. A couple of our sheep have stayed dark after the lamb fleece was sheared. This isn't common as most dark lambs are grey after they first shearing.

When can we eat them?

This winter was so very hard on the garden. I hate to admit it, but we have been buying lettuce at the grocery store. Sigh. But there is hope. Today Joel moved the two flats of new little lettuces from the greenhouse into the cold frame to start hardening off. i planted asters, ornamental amaranths and ageratums in the greenhouse to replace them.
In the hoophouse the peas are coming up. We are trying to grow them there to see if we can thwart the golden crowned sparrows who have decimated the small pea plants almost every spring for several years.
It is warm enough at night for the frogs to start their spring singing I found this one under a board in one of the hoophouses.

It was almost warm today. I went out and weeded the perennial cut flower beds and got wonderfully muddy. It felt so good to work in the dirt. All around the flowers are sure it is finally spring. There's a first little daffodil, one of the February Golds, almost out.
And the forsythia branches are laced with yellow buds and one or two flowers already out. By tomorrow there will be lots of them.
And everywhere crocuses are in bloom. The Varied Thrushes are starting to sing in the mornings and the female red winged blackbirds showed up yesterday. The males have been here since January but the ladies are late this year.

Time to Turn the Soil

It's still a bit chilly out but the season is definitely under way. Joel has been out spading up the first garden beds. This is some of our precious high ground and as it is still rather wet spading it is better for the soil than the rorotiller. Later on when we get into the main garden and get to readying larger areas we'll use the tiller. Meanwhile he enjoys the first turning of the soil by shovel. There is a special smell to soil that is starting to come alive after the winter.
And serious seeding is under way. Broccoli, cauliflower, gai lon, onions, leeks, kale, peppers and tomatoes for the hoophouse. I've planted stocks, yarrow and lupines for cut flowers.