Road to heaven.

Just a short note, we've been invited to a birthday party this evening. Hubby's niece turned 16 a few days ago.

I went to a retreat on the last weekend in September. It was at the same location as last year, Reykjanes in Isafjardardjup. I'm sure this retreat is here to stay, so to speak. It was great and I started this quilt there. I had cut the strips for it long ago and read the instructions at the same time. So I only glanced at the instructions when I started to subcut the strips. Not good. Lol. I turned everything up side down so the dark fabric is light in my top and the light dark. Also had forgotten that I needed light fabric for another project so I'd pulled all of those strips from the box where this was stored.


So it's a bit busy, but I like it and will finish it before Christmas. Enough said of that. This was a mystery from Iowa Star Quilts and I had fun making it as all the mysteries from Cynthie. (Although it was no longer a mystery when I made it.)

Sorry for the dark photos, the afternoon was cloudy and windy and those were the only photos that were not blurred. Here is a closer look.


I was going to show another project I worked on in Reykjanes, but can't find the photo I took a few days ago and now I also can't find the project. Duh. This clearly indicates that I need to take a firm hand with my sewing room. Lol.

And on a bit embarrassing note... Those sheep that came home today are not the sheep we thought they were.... I admit it freely. I don't know my sheep. Sigh. One was the ewe we thought was still missing, turned out she had two lambs, not one. And the other plus two lambs is from Baer in Sugandafjordur, far from our farm and I don't know if the owner has had a sheep come here before. If you take a straight line on a map there is one big sheep farm between Os, the farm where we live and this farm Baer and also one small sheep farm. Sheep are rather territorial so it's strange that this sheep showed up here. We think she must have gone first to Isafjordur and then to Hnifsdalur before she came to our pasture (Oshlid) or maybe it only went over some mountains and straight to Hnifsdalur. Who knows. I once heard of a sheep with two lambs that went in one summer from a place near Blonduos to a place near Egilsstadir. And that is straight across Iceland.

What happened to my short post???

Sunna.

Good sheep, naughty sheep.

One month ago we had our round up day, or herding or what ever you call it. The law says you have to get all sheep from summer pasture before winter so in September there are roundups all over the country.

It's kind a sad how few sheep are left in our area. Not so many years ago the flock was a much more impressive sight.


Here they are coming toward the common fold. There are common folds all over Iceland. Ours is not very big compared to some (most).


In the front are sheep from us, I'm guessing they know the drill and just want to get it over with. Lol.

Here is DS1 Jon (the bearded man on the right) looking for his sheep.

DD2 Steina has found one of ours.

Here is DD2 Ebba in our section of the fold, taking care of the book keeping.

And here is DS2 Johann doing what is called chatting over the fold wall, because the folds used to be made of stone and turf walls. Some still are (or parts of them) and are preserved as some sort of monuments.

For some this is the best way to observe the sheep.

Now, we got most of our sheep home at this point, but there were still three ewes missing along with five lambs. And that is not good, sometimes it's the herders fault when the sheep don't show up at the fold, but sometimes it's the sheep fault. They can really play hard to get and it's easy for them, considering that the pasture is partly rocky mountain side and higher up there are difficult cliffs. So... we slaughter sheep that don't come home at the first roundup or soon after. In our opinion it's crazy to own sheep that you put your self and others in danger "collecting". Those sheep are naughty, very naughty.

Six of the sheep have been seen repeatedly since the first roundup, but they have been at a difficult location and the weather has been so good (they are much more difficult to herd in good weather, simply don't want to come home) that they were left alone... until now.

It's getting colder and tomorrow we expect some snow or at least sleet. So this morning my SIL hubby went with two of their sons and collected the sheep. It went very well and they brought them home where I and Johann stood before them as we call it and guided them to the rest of our sheep.

Here they are coming and trying to go the shortest way to get in the fence where the other sheep are. You can click on all the photos to enlarge them.


We got to do some running when one of the ewe's tried to trick us and went to the beach and the rest followed. You can see by the open mouth of the lambs how winded they are. They usually don't have the stamina the ewes have.

And here they are fenced in together with the rest of our sheep.

Just after we got the sheep fenced in, Ebba came home from work and came to see which ewes had come home and what ewe is still missing along with the lamb.



We've had much autumn rain on and off for weeks so the ground is getting very muddy. For me, this is always a very irritating time because the mud gets so easily inside the house and lets face it, I'm not much of a housekeeper. Lol.

Tomorrow will most likely be a slaughtering day, the lambs will most certainly go, but I'm not sure about the ewes. One is owned by my SIL son (the one with the blue cap in the front of the photo) so she will most likely live, but the other..... we'll see.

I meant to do this sheep post in September, but we've been having connections problems on and off, mostly on, for so long that I've sort of given up on blogging and blog reading. We had no phone or Internet from Oct. 7 until Oct 14 and I decided enough is enough. Yesterday I read some of the blogs I've not looked at for a long time, lost connection a few times, but stubbornly plodded on, so....

While making this post I've lost connection twice... I'm going to click on "publish post" with the hope that the post will indeed get published and not lost. I hate when that happens. If all goes well I might even try for a quilty post later today.

Sunna.

P.s. We are told we will get a new phone line later (when the tunnel making on our farm land, that I've not talked about here because it just makes me so mad sometimes, is finally completely over) Phew.