Mad dyeing and racking wine.....

On Wednesday I heard that I've got a stall at Saltburn Farmer's market next Saturday, so I had a trip out to see my fibre supplier, where, not only did I get some more Alpaca, Jacob humbug and merino mix tops, but also a quantity of merino wool, which this afternoon I rainbow dyed.

I'm going to ball this wool up and make it into packs for people to knit their own scarves. I've yet to take some pictures of the scarf to be knitted, which I'm still knitting, then type up the pattern, before putting the kits together! Easy I have 6 days to get it all done!!!!! Haven't decided what fibre I'm going to take with me yet.
The other thing we've been doing today is racking off the sloe, bramble and bullace wines. They have all settled out and have quite a bit of sediment in the bottom of their respective fermentation jars. The sloe wine, is going to take some maturing, it's quite tart and reminds us both of very immature elderberry wine, you can taste the tannin from the fruit. The bramble wine is still quite sweet, but a lovely deep red colour and you can certainly taste the brambles. The bullace wine, or should I say Damson wine, tastes the best, still a little sweet, but already showing it's potential as a wine, which one of our neighbours says "is not one to be drunk standing up!" And we have 5 gallons of it!!!! At some point we could have a really good party!!! Or it will help out with Christmas presents next year.
This week the weather has been either wet or dry with wind. The sheep are not doing too badly with this wet weather as they have access to some shelter and it isn't really cold. We've had a couple of frosts, but nothing too serious. Finn has now covered all the ewes, he's covered Beatrix, Beniece and Ariadnne for a second time. Beatrix and Berniece are always covered twice. Finn covered Ariadnne the first night he was in with all the ewes and we suspect that she was at the end of her cycle, and in his inexperience covered her. But now we can safely say that all the ewes that have "red bums" are now pregnant and we should start lambing around the 3rd April and finish around the 27th, a normal lambing period for us. Not bad considering the problems we had with Spotty Dog.
Well I'd better finish now and get on with my knitting as I can't do it whilst watching Top Gear!!