Sarah Jane Humke

Tonight I lost a friend that has been by my side (usually sleeping) for the past 16 years. My sweet Weezy died unexpectedly and painlessly and for that I am thankful. She was born the winter before hurricane Katrina in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She actually lived through the hurricane itself, sheltering in a storm shelter with the family who bred her. She moved to Florida and lived in Apopka for several years with her family, both human and four-legged before moving to England. She lived there for two and a half years before moving to Iowa in 2011. She then made her final move with me to Ohio, where she is buried, in the first days of 2020.

Weezy loved to sleep. Even as a puppy she was more like a cat than most dogs. She would sometimes push the cats out of sunny spots under windows so she could bask in the heat. You could often find her burrowed under the blankets and would sleep between my legs in bed at night when she was younger. As she got older, I worried about accidentally kicking her under the blankets so she got her own bed and blanket to cuddle under on top of the covers. I would usually have a space heater set-up for her to sleep by to keep her warm and undisturbed.

She was a sweet, sweet girl and she will be very missed.

My miniature dachshund, Weezy, is almost 14.  She’s not elderly by dachshund standards, but she’s definitely getting up there.  Like many older beings, she often needs to potty in the middle of the night.  It’s not every night, but a couple of nights each week, she wakes me up in order to go outside at about 1:45 in the morning.

My bedroom is on the second floor, so I usually carry her down the stairs (stairs aren’t good for dachshunds backs) and let her do her business outside.  Weezy isn’t the fastest wee in the west, so it usually takes a little bit for her to let me know that she needs to be let back in.  Now, I know that looking at my phone in the middle of the night disrupts my circadian cycle with the blue light intrusion into my sleeping time.  Awake me is well aware of the issues surrounding phone usage in the middle of the night.  However, this logic doesn’t extend to middle of the night me and I grab for my phone like a junkie needing a hit. My logical brain knows that this is a bad idea but the less evolved part of it whispers, “what if there’s an emergency?” and at 2am, this logic is unassailable .

I’m telling you all of this to set the scene as to why I was standing in the kitchen, on my phone, at 2 in the morning. For some reason, I ended up on Amazon.  And for some other reason, I bought this:

This is me, at work, feeling like a pretty, pretty princess.

No, a tiara is possibly not the most logical purchase that I have ever made, but I guess 2 am Sarah really wanted one.  And who am I to argue?

I had another small package in the mail, this one not from Amazon.  It was from Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co. in Missouri.  I have longed to order seeds from the company for some time as I ADORE their catalog.  However, I’ve never actually pulled the trigger on ordering them as I just couldn’t justify it to myself.  However, my friend Tini in Germany seems to have read my mind (or perhaps we are just of similar minds) and gotten me some seeds from them for my Christmas/Birthday present.

This is not all that she sent me as last week I received these amazing socks in the mail from her:

I have had some excellent mail as of late!

So this happened today…

For those that do not know, I was working on my master’s degree up to 2014.  However, once I finished my classwork, I simply wasn’t able to muster the enthusiasm required to do my research and thesis.  Since time is running out (as there is an expiration on the credits that I have already taken) I have decided to get this degree done.  Even at this point I may need to retake or take a couple of classes to get through, but that’s not the end of the world as the many of the graduate college classes are online or evenings.

I have wanted to get back to school to finish this for a while now, but as they say, life got in the way.  There were always reasons why to not start doing it.  As the clock ticked down, I kept justifying my inaction by saying that I was “too busy”.  Perhaps I will end-up masochistically busy, but I won’t be bored!

A little planning for my next adventure later this year….

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions.  Quite honestly, it’s such a nasty time of the year weather-wise here in my little patch of heaven, that it just seems a tad masochistic to try to suddenly “get in shape” or “lose ten pounds” or “declutter entire life”.  I feel like these types of goals are best set at some other time of the year, perhaps the summer solstice when the daylight feels never-ending.

However, I do like to get my planner in order at the beginning of January.  This year I made a few changes in that area.  First, I bought a larger planner.

I think that this is going to be a very busy year for me thus the increase in planning space.  In addition to my usual duties as the Instruction Coordinator (I just made that title up) for the Iowa Sheep and Wool Festival, I’m also now the Vice Chairperson for the Iowa Sheep Industry Association (that title is legit).

I have plans in place to ramp-up my little woolly business.  I’m not breeding this year, so no fun photos of newborn lambs this spring I’m afraid.  But I am planning on a few new products to sell and, as always, lots of raw fleeces.

I’m going to be traveling a fair amount this year.  There are going to be a lot of weekend trips and at least one long and involved one.  I’m not going into details now, but lets just say June is going to be hectic and October is going to be exciting:-)

I have done some things that I haven’t shared on here.  One was that I made new feeder for the sheep.  It divides the pen into two so I can have the lambs on one side (where I can keep an eye on them a little better) and the adults on the other.  This also ensures that the little ones aren’t getting pushed out of the food by their larger mamas and older siblings.  It’s not perfect, but it works okay for what I need.

I also did some knitting….

The hat is from some mystery yarn that I purchased at Heartland Fiber Co. at their Halloween party and the mitts are from that mystery wool yarn and a green mystery wool yarn from the deepest stash.  The hat pattern is Barley by Tin Can Knits and the mitts are loosely based on this pattern.  Yes the mitts are a bit… off.  Personally I feel that this adds to their charm.  Also, I used up both the yarns leftovers making these.  I lost a little at yarn chicken and as a result the thumb of one hand is a tad smaller than the other.  However, they get daily wear and, quite frankly, it’s not like they are going to be walking the catwalk in Paris or anything like that.  It’s far more likely that they will get pooped-on by a chicken!

Currently I am working on an infinity scarf for my oldest niece.  I let her pick out the yarn.  We made an evening out of it.  I took her to Hobby Lobby, JoAnn’s, and Micheal’s in order to pick out the one that she wanted.  We also went to Chick-Fil-A for supper and hit up Culver’s afterwards for dessert.  She had gotten to wear a scarf that I made her mommy last year for Christmas and really wanted one of her own.  This one is going to be a smidge more washable than her mama’s.

Yeah, she’s definitely my niece!

When I finished reading this book today, I experienced a range of emotions.  First I was excited that someone had done such a fantastic job writing about the modern wool industry.  Much of what is written is supremely pessimistic as it is only looking at statistics and the history of the wool industry (which, admittedly, is fairly depressing). Stephany  Wilkes takes a very clear-sighted look at what is happening right now in the industry and the people in it.

Then I was little sad that the book was done.  It’s a very recent release, so it’s written about events into 2017, so it’s not like she stopped writing about her life randomly.  However, I wanted more of the story!

Finally there was an emotion that I had trouble naming for a little bit but then it hit me, I was jealous.  This is the book that I would love to write.   Raw Material: Working Wool in the West is an extraordinarily well-written book about what it’s like to actually get your hands dirty working with sheep. Stephany details what exactly it takes for wool to get from the back of a sheep into your socks.  Her descriptions of shearing school were so spot-on I was laughing with relief that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.  Her writing of the fear and trepidation that you have holding the shears for the first time made my stomach clench a little remembering my own experience.  The whole “why the hell am I doing this?” range of emotions that first night after you have sheared and are utterly exhausted in a way that you have seldom been in your entire life.  The burning and aching of muscles that personal trainers have never worked, let alone left shaking and jellied, like shearing the first time does.  She looks at the obstacles to modern, local, wool production with a very clear lens.   Even shepherding, which she doesn’t do, is looked at honestly without excessively romanticizing it.

Stephany does have a few detours in the book.  One is a chapter on natural dyes and their production.  I don’t begrudge this chapter in the least because chemical dyes are really toxic and it was fascinating to learn what work is being done to re-start production of natural dyes on a macro scale again.

Another detour was about carbon mitigation using sheep.  She explained what is really a fairly complex scientific system in easy-to-understand language without dumbing it down.  A lot of folks in certain “animal welfare” and environmental circles like to point the finger at livestock production as a major source of the worlds ills.  Anyone who has actually looked into it has seen that it’s primarily our dependence on fossil fuels (which make a lot of the “vegan friendly” fabrics that some groups like to promote) that are the issue and not sheep farts.

I would like every single person who does anything with wool to read this book.  I don’t care if you are a knitter, spinner, or outdoors-person who wears wool base layers.  Read. This. Book.  I don’t care if you buy it or request it from your local library, go get it and read it.  Stephany Wilkes has done for wool what Michael Pollan has done for food and that is she has exposed the human side of it.