Art News - Here's a picture of some polymer clay creations I've been working on.  They're fresh out of the oven and ready for painting as soon as they cool down.  The peacock and lion head are magnets.  The bored mermaid is a tiny little sculpture.  I made some hooves and noses also.  I need the nose for the water dog I've been needlefelting.  That's been at a stand still for a couple of days due to this need for a nose.

Ranch News - We've been busy with the hay and sheep this past weekend.  We got all the hay stacked and tarped over by where we feed.  It took 3 trips with the big ole flatbed that our great neighbors let us borrow.  My husband and son did all the work while I drove around getting close to the bales.  Thank God for my family.  That was some hard work.

My husband and I sheared our first sheep finally.  We still need to shear the other two, but we felt the heat and the stress was too dangerous to continue.  Wingtip looks so small next to Pedro and Raymond now!  He loves it and I know he feels great.  At the big sheep farm I work at seasonally, I've helped herd the sheep to the shearers, but I've never actually sheared a sheep before.  All I can say is I am totally amazed and incredulous that the shearers at the big farm shear thousands of sheep during the season.  I wanted to be sure that Wingtip's first shearing was not a bad experience, so I was very careful and slow with him.  It took us almost an hour.  I'm sure I'll get better with experience of knowing the sheep body contours and the blades capabilites.  Those shearers shear a sheep every 5-10 minutes with no second cuts (swiping an area that was already cut and leaving short fibers in with the fleece which cause problems when spinning).  Wow.  They are amazing.    We've hand sheared our llamas for years now.  They are totally different than the sheep, though.  This is the first time I've used mechanical shearing blades, also.  I've groomed our dogs with clipper blades for years.  But, the shearing blades are even different than those.  They need to be since the wool has "grease" aka lanolin and is so much thicker than like a poodle coat.  We stuffed a 50# feed bag with all the wool we took off Wingy.  Next we "skirt" the fleece, wash repeatedly, then card and it's ready for sculpting!  He's our white sheep, so there's lots of white wool for me to work with.  He does have brown markings on his ears and nose like a wingtip shoe, thus the name.  But, the blanket is all white.

Yesterday while looking for flowers to cut for a vase, I came across a baby bluebird just learning to fly in our front yard.  My stealthy hunter cat was looking on, so I put him inside and watched the baby.  It was so cool.  Both parents were there encouraging him as he flopped around and finally managed to lift off the ground for short flights. 

My poor dogs are constantly trying to alert me to every possible thing and I am constantly telling them to be quiet-squirt bottle in hand.  But, yesterday, to their amazement I went to find out what they were barking at.  Turns out there was a frog in our backyard.  I've never seen one like it out here.  It was bright green with dark green stripes.  It was totally relieved when I scooped him up and put him in a safe cool shady area outside of the backyard.  I later found a dead frog of the same sort near where I found him.  I wonder if it was his partner and he was heroically keeping the dogs at bay from it.  That is so sad!!  I wish I had checked out the scenario earlier!!  It is SO bizarre that there are so many frogs out here in the first place.  We are on the high prairie plains of Colorado.  We never hear a frog until it rains, then the night is filled with frog songs.  I wonder if they go dormant or something underground and are able to wake up and come out once we have the right humidity.  If so, there are tons and tons of frogs out here sleeping under the dirt under our feet all the time.  Weird.