Icebox Cookies

Day 138: For want of anything better, today I am going to share with you my mother's recipe for "Icebox Cookies." Please note that these are called "Icebox Cookies" and not "Refrigerator Cookies" because they come from an era when powered refrigerators were not the common household appliance they are today. Foods were kept cold in an icebox which had to be replenished with ice on a schedule determined primarily by local weather conditions. The iceman came 'round to the door like the milkman, bearing his wares for a fee. Our household was one of the modern ones, keeping up with the Joneses with an electric fridge, but the name "Icebox Cookies" was destined for posterity. The dough, chilled so it can be sliced easily, makes these cookies simple to prepare. The mapleine gives them a unique taste, so close your cookbook on the "refrigerator cookie" page and try these instead.

3 cups sifted flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup shortening
1 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. mapleine
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup walnut or pecan pieces

Cream the shortening with the brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, mapleine and vanilla. Sift flour with baking powder and salt. Add flour mix to moist ingredients and combine thoroughly. Add nut pieces if desired (pecans are my favourite for this). Divide dough into two parts and roll each into a log. Wrap each log in wax paper and chill in the icebox/fridge for at least four hours or overnight. Preheat oven to 400 F. Slice dough into thin rounds (a little thinner than 1/4"). Place on ungreased baking sheets and bake for 10 minutes or until the edges start to brown slightly. These are a crisp, yet tender cookie, and dunkable if you wish.

Varied Thrush

Day 137: This morning, I have a flush of thrush, probably half a dozen who dart quickly out from the sheltering branches of the contorted filbert to grab seed scattered by the other birds, and then back again before I can train the lens on them. Like the Towhees, they seem to prefer feeding on the ground, at least when there is snow. Also like Towhees, they search for food by digging their front talons into leaf litter or soil and then hopping backwards to turn it up, sometimes using their beaks to assist in moving larger leaf debris. Peculiar to the western states from Alaska to southern California, Ixoreus naevius is alone in its genus. The first half of the binomial ("Ixoreus") means "mistletoe," and refers to the fact that Varied Thrush eat the berries of that plant.

Snow Birds

Day 136: The term "snow birds" has been a source of confusion for me for many years because when I first heard it, the speaker was referring to the group of people who head south for the winter. Some years later, I heard it applied to the skiers who flock to the slopes and lodges, indeed quite the opposite of the initial definition I had learned. That said, I'm sure you will agree with my definition of "snow birds" upon seeing these images. These four species (Dark-eyed Junco, Spotted Towhee, Steller's Jay and Black-capped Chickadee) are among the most common in my yard when the white stuff is on the ground. And yes, that one curved twig is by far the most popular perch. If the weather forecast can be believed, we're due for more snow every day for the next week. Have fun, you snow birds!

Picking Mushrooms

Day 135: I've been picking mushrooms without setting a foot outside! "Pick" in weaving terminology refers to one pass of the shuttle, and of course that's the context here. Since I was still trying to work my way through a pile of red thrums, Amanita muscaria was a good candidate for using them up. I tried to be as botanically correct as krokbragd limitations would allow, and although I wasn't able to depict the annulus without the stipe being too tall, I did include the volva (cup) which is characteristic of Amanitas in general. After getting these off the inkle, I warped up with a generic "little brown mushroom" somewhat suggestive of a Boleta. The red thrums are history now, but I have eight yards of warp measured to be hung on the bonker as my next project, hundreds of little Amanitas anxious to erupt.

Where Do Jeans Go When They Die?

Day 134: A week or two ago, I took a sorting fit and after cleaning out my t-shirt drawer of all the shirts with frayed necklines and small holes, I cut the usable fabric into 1" strips for rag rugs. However, when I opened the box labelled "rug strips," I discovered it was almost full. A full box is unforgiveable. It was time to recycle some of the material into rugs.

Now I like a heavy, stay-in-place rug in front of my kitchen sink or as a bath mat. Handwoven rag rugs are ideal for the purpose (the store-bought ones are limp and wrinkle up under foot). The rug strip box contained several gallon Zip-locs of prepared strips, including two bags of denim bits, more than enough for a couple of rugs. There was only one problem: nowhere to set up the table loom, which is my preferred loom for rug weaving. After serious consideration of the options, I moved my sewing machine back out to the kitchen where it can live under the table until called upon, and set up the table loom on the desk in the Loom Room, which now truly lives up to its name, occupied as it is by the floor loom, the table loom and two rigid heddle looms currently not in service. I threw all the denim strips into a big heap, mixed them up good, and now I'm drawing them out one by one to weave into rugs. I warped for three, two of which will be denim. The third will probably use up some of those cut-up t-shirts. This is where old jeans and t-shirts go when they die, folks!

Oh, Canada!

Day 133: When a Canadian friend saw my krokbragd rangers design, she said, "Classic Mountie outline. Taller boots." The suggestion immediately appealed to me. The RCMP uniform is arguably the most recognizable in the world with its belted red serge jacket, high riding boots and Stetson hat. The jodhpurs had to give way to design feasibility, but that was a small sacrifice and easily overlooked. I already had "sample" lengths of red warp left over from a previous design failure, and although it meant tying a lot of ends I wouldn't have needed to tie if I'd measured the warp directly from the cone, it was a good way to put them to use. Two Mounties in, I said, "Oh, they're adorable!" Having this design on the inkle and sheep on the bonker gave me the opportunity to run a different kind of experiment. Careful scientific analysis shows that over five minutes, four times as many passes can be made on the bonker as on the inkle.

Grumpy Doves

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Day 132: Although Mourning Doves are capable of entering a state of torpor similar to that exhibited by overwintering hummingbirds, their circulatory system is not as well-developed as that seen in many other non-migratory birds. Consequently, Mourning Doves are more likely to lose toes to frostbite. One hypothesis suggests that this susceptibility may be a by-product of the birds' expanding range. The species' physiology has not yet adapted to the colder northern climates. Mine are certainly not happy with this morning's snow. They have been sitting in groups on the fence and phone lines, heads pulled down between their shoulders and feathers fluffed out to trap body heat. Nighttime temperatures are forecast to drop into the low teens this week, making it rough on the pigeon-toed members of my yard flock.

When "Fail" Turns Funny

Day 131: Sometimes, "fail" turns funny. The concept of krokbragd ants on a red gingham check tablecloth background was a good idea on the drawing board, but even after careful counting and estimating how many throws would be required for the abdomen, the width enforced by the weft passes made the design much wider than I'd intended. My "ants" wound up being short and squat. I hadn't woven much more than an inch before deciding that this one definitely had to be cut off the loom. I turned the inkle so that I could view it in the proper perspective. The "ants" reminded me of something else I'd prefer not to find at a picnic. I'm sure you could have heard my shriek all the way to the Canadian border: "Aaaaaaggghhhh!!! TICKS!!!" I grabbed the scissors as fast as I could, and by bedtime, I had rehung the warp and was merrily weaving mushrooms.

A Band Of Rangers

Day 130: As you can see, I revised the colours in my latest krokbragd design, and I'm quite happy with the results, given the limitations of the weave and thread options. I thought I'd give it a little context here so there would be no mistaking the figure. I think it could easily be adapted to other professions, say a fireman or police officer. I have another design in the developmental stage, which is to say I have it on paper, but any loom I could weave it on is currently occupied. That said, it shouldn't take me longer than today to finish up the band of rangers on the inkle. It's only two yards long, and I'm over halfway done. Weaving on the inkle is significantly slower than using the bonker loom, but it's good for trial runs.

Proto-Ranger

Day 129: Back at the end of January, I began working on a new krokbragd design. My first draft had a fatal flaw, and I wound up cutting it off the loom after the first few inches showed that there was no hope of redeeming it. That said, the idea was sound, so I went back to the drawing board and did some revision. It does well to remind you at this point that designing krokbragd is the weaver's equivalent of drawing with a nine-pin printer. The difference is that I can make the characters taller, but no wider because I am limited to four throws, two of which must be identical, i.e., a sequence of 1-2-1-3. Most krokbragd patterns are geometric for a good reason! Once I'd worked out the pattern, it was time to experiment with colours. Since the bonker loom is occupied by sheep (the best ones yet, in my opinion), I had to weave my test piece on the inkle. I set up a little over two yards, confident that my design would work well enough to be usable. I completed the sample this morning and will be making one small adjustment to the design, and when I weave Version 2, I will use richer colours in some areas and a neutral background. The face will unfortunately have to be a brighter pink. The pale pink I used here is too close to white, but after purchasing four new cones of thread to find a better choice, I am out of options. We'll just have to assume Proto-Ranger forgot to put on sunscreen.

Mr. Towhee

Day 128: If the level of activity in my yard is a reliable indicator (and I suspect it is), the weather forecast for the latter part of next week is likely to prove accurate. Recently, NOAA has been missing the mark for the nighttime lows, their predictions coming in as much as ten degrees lower than what actually registers. I hope that holds true for Wednesday and Thursday nights when they are claim we will drop to 10-14 degrees. Admittedly, we have had some bitterly cold Februaries historically, although generally not after mid-month. In any event, the Towhees have turned out en masse, a dozen or more hopping about the yard and scrabbling for any scrap of seed or bug they can find. I hope you're wrong about the weather, Mr. Towhee, or we're all going to be hunting extra calories.

Take A Shuttle

Day 217: A friend recently sent me a meme showing the original Star Trek's Enterprise with the caption, "Warp drive is for distance. Weft drive is for going back & forth. It's good for shuttles." I'd seen it before (several times, actually), but as a weaver, it made me chuckle nevertheless. Small wonder that I'm a huge Star Trek fan! I have enough shuttles to launch a fleet of my own. There are many different types, and some of them are interchangeable depending on the weaver's preference and budget, but others are fairly much dedicated to a specific style of weaving. Rag shuttles are a good example. While they could be used to hold finer threads, they are large enough to accommodate strips of fabric for weaving rugs. Others have a "knife-edge" on one side. These help beat the weft in place when using an inkle or backstrap loom. I tend to prefer stick shuttles for most of my weaving. They're relatively inexpensive and come in a wide range of sizes. The shuttle I use with the bonker loom is the shorty in the middle (wound with blue thread). It is easier than a traditional quill to manipulate and holds more thread. One thing is certain: I'll take a shuttle (or two or three or four) when I'm headed to the Loom Room at warp speed.

Lambie-pie

Day 126: If you've been following along for any length of time, you might recall that I've mentioned having had a small flock of sheep at one time. I raised them largely to supply myself with wool for spinning, but also sold some of it to Pendleton Woolen Mills for a good price. I ran both Romney and a Corriedale-Suffolk cross, the latter affording the best of both worlds in fiber and meat. Typically, I would keep them until they were 18 months old and through a mature shearing. Then I'd truck them off and...well, the less I knew about it, the better...when I got them back, they were in the form of lamb-burger with the occasional package of mutton (on the young side) for stew. Chops and legs never particularly appealed to me, whereas burger was more versatile. It was a sad day when I had to give up my flock due to moving beyond the range any good shearer was willing to travel for only two or three sheep, but my taste for lamb and mutton has never dwindled. Recently, I learned to make Scotch pies, a hot-water pastry filled with ground lamb and seasoned with onion, garlic, mace, Italian herbs and extra rosemary, and served up under a lavish application of cornstarch gravy made from the drippings. Sheep! It's what's for dinner!

Grommet Setting

Day 125: Here comes the part I dread. I nearly always mangle at least one grommet by driving it unevenly, although I have learned that a gentle tap-tap-tap to start the process helps prepare the metal for the final harder raps. There are eight grommets to set in each sheeping bag, the lined bag being 22" in circumference (i.e., 8" in diameter). These will be fitted with a single drawstring like an old-fashioned seabag, and at 16" deep would be more than adequate for a water bottle and a box lunch. There are lots of other uses for sheeping bags as well: to hide your jammies from company, for carrying a spare pair of shoes or your afternoon reading material, even as a receptacle for all those plastic bags you've collected at the grocery store. Will you be one of the lucky people who gets a sheeping bag for Christmas this year? Be good!

Valentine Boy

Day 124: It made me laugh. Tippy took one of his toys to bed with him. It may have been accidental (they do get caught on his feet sometimes), but there he was, all curled up and dreaming about playtime. The photo is from a few days ago, but I decided to save it for Valentine's Day because he is my little sweetheart (all 14 pounds of him). He's silly and funny and very demonstrative in his love for his mama. He often pushes my needlework aside and demands to have a hug, which is to say he wants to sit on my lap with his arms around my neck, rubbing noses with me as we purr at each other. He is very aware of his position at/as the Center of the Universe, and while I can't accuse him of exploiting it, he does know how to work it to his advantage. Of course I stop doing whatever I'm doing when he demands attention! Isn't that what this relationship is about? Happy Valentine's Day from me and the sweetest Boy in the world.

Deviations In Phenology

Day 123: I have been thinking that the pussywillows seemed late this year, but checking my phenology notes (i.e., posts and photos), I see that catkins have emerged as early as December 22, and as late as March 16. That strikes me as a pretty wide range of deviation. My weather records show nothing remarkable for that early year: not overly dry or wet, no prolonged hot spells or unusually cold temperatures, although the summer was smokier than usual due to wildfires. Could that have instigated an early bloom? Could the tree have been stressed by aerial pollutants to an extent which kicked it into survival mode? It's an interesting hypothesis, and I suspect it's one which will lead me down a rabbit hole later on today as I try to find supporting documentation. In any event, the pussywillows are right on time according to my logs. I was just overly anxious for them to appear.

Dead T-shirts

Day 122: Inspired to action by a discussion with a friend about hoarders, I decided to do a little "de-stuffing." De-stuffing occurs at least once a year, and is defined as a purge of unnecessary items, sometimes mild, sometimes brutal. It keeps me from being buried in objects I never use, and as any half-baked psychologist would undoubtedly assert, it provides a sense (largely false) of being in control of my life. To this end, I binned half a dozen pairs of old shoes, set aside overly snug pants to be taken to a thrift shop, and sorted a dozen t-shirts into a pile to be turned into rug strips. As you have heard me complain several times, I'm desperately short of material for my posts, so I thought I'd have a go at converting rug strips into an Orb with PaintShop Pro. Orbs are fun to make, and often give quite unexpected results. My first attempt was rather blasé, so I backed out of it and hit it with a "wave" distortion. My rug strips became Rickrack! The Rickrack translated into a delightfully psychedelic Orb. So how do you make an Orb from a photo? Start with a square. Using the distortion tool in the photo processing software of your choice, convert the polar coordinates from polar to rectangular. Then flip the image vertically, and convert the polar coordinates from rectangular to polar. You'll probably have some other options available for changing the background colour, etc., but those three steps (polar to rectangular, flip vertical, rectangular to polar) are crucial to success and must be done in that order.

Backyard Mystery

Day 121: I'll give you the punchline first: I have no idea what this is, although I think I can safely say it's a lichen. The shape suggest that it's a Cladonia, and the broken upper cortex (the outer layer of the thallus) would seem to support that assumption. However, the algal layer is poorly developed, making it almost snow-white. At first I thought it might have been fungal because I thought I was observing peridioles in the cup. At least that's what they looked like through the camera lens, but I was not satisfied that I was seeing them, so I went back in the house for a magnifier. I never think to grab a kneeling pad when I'm excited about finding something strange. No, I went back out and knelt right down in the soggy, cold moss so that I could put my eye to the glass for an up-close-and-personal look. The inner surface appeared grainy...oh, you know...like broken lichen cortex, d'uh!...and then I looked further down the stipe where the lower cortex was revealed in reddish patches. But muddy knees couldn't pay a better dividend than that. I will simply have to keep an eye on the area over the next few weeks to see how it matures. Oh, by the way, if you're ever over for a visit, don't disturb any of the little stakes poking up in various places around my yard. Those are markers telling me I need to follow up.

Lively Chives

Day 120: Such a simple thing, the rising of the chives, but their lively green poking up through the brown litter of winter speaks to the arrival of the gardening season. Oh, to be sure, we are still a long way from setting out tomatoes or even planting lettuce, but even if my horticultural efforts produce nothing else, the faithful, humble chive does not neglect its duty. Although they're not quite tall enough for their first haircut yet, the promise of aromatic omelets and tangy cottage-cheese crepes is undeniable here. We should be more grateful for their loyalty. Like most gardeners, however, I take chives for granted. Plant once, and you've installed the vegetative equivalent of a BFF: they'll always be there when you need them. Let's hear it for the lowly chive, people!

Coney Island

Day 119: A few days ago, a good friend asked me if I had a woven band appropriate to put on her new teal blue felt hat. "The colours in the lanyard you made me work just fine," she said. "Well, come on down and take a look at what I have," I replied, and then went off to arrange all of my rolled bands in a display tray for her easy viewing. Sounds like this should be fairly straightforward, right? She showed up in due course, having forgotten to bring the lanyard with, and after perusing my collection, was a bit mind-boggled by the wide array of colours and patterns. She decided to make a second trip, lanyard in hand for comparison. We settled on a design, and then came the challenge of selecting colours. I thought it might simplify the process if I invited her to my own private Coney Island, i.e., the cupboard in the Loom Room where all the weaving materials live.  One after another, we sat cones of cotton side-by-side, rejecting some, leaving others in a "possibilities" pile and, after twenty minues or so of dithering, settled on a deep loden green for the background, bluish-grey for the pattern threads and black for the border. By bedtime, I had the warp on the bonker and had woven roughly a foot of band. Only then did one of my mother's primary tenets echo in my brain: Never give a child under twelve a choice of more than one.

Hanging Around

Day 118: To quote Audubon's website, "There are certain terms that embed themselves into your consciousness like a woodpecker’s beak in particle board. 'Birb' is one of them...The word began, as near as anyone can tell, when the absurdist Twitter account BirdsRightsActivist tweeted the single word 'Birb' out on November 2012; two years later, it had multiple entries in Urban Dictionary and a dedicated reddit forum." It is my strongly held personal opinion that Red-Breasted Nuthatches qualify as birbs: cute, funny, round, small...all in the classic definition of birbishness. But these characteristics don't necessarily apply to all birbs in equal measure. Any bird can be a birb regardless of its size or shape. The ineffable quality of birbishness lies in the individual's character, and character is something my resident Nut has in abundance. When he appears at the suet feeder, I invariably say aloud, "There's Nut!" Any degree of bad mood is dispelled when Nut is having his breakfast upside-down. Hearing him honk his chickadee-like scold when I'm out in the yard elicits, "I hear you over there, Nut" and a chuckle. I'm sure he thinks being a birb is serious business, but to me, he is a bright spot of humour in my day. If his capacity to amuse doesn't define his qualifications for birbishness, I don't know what else might.

Disposable Ethic

Day 117: Some of you will have heard this tale of woe already, so I'll try to keep the recap brief. Suffice to say that at roughly a week past the 30-day return period, the bread maker I bought myself for Christmas ceased functioning and Amazon refused to make an exception to their policy even though I'd only used it four times, the last three of which were failures. For $80, I'd expected to get more than one edible loaf of bread out of it, if you take my meaning. They told me to contact the manufacturer. I did so this morning, and they're sending out a replacement, no return required. So what am I to do with a dead bread machine? The representative told me to just throw it in the garbage.

And there you have a glimpse of a rapidly growing problem: the disposable ethic. A century or so ago, companies took pride in the longevity of their products. "Built to last" was even Ford Motor Company's motto (it's changed now). Parent passed along items they'd used their entire lifetimes, giving them to children and grandchildren because they were still serviceable. In fact, I am still using many kitchen items which were my mother's and grandmother's, handed over to me when I was a newlywed some many decades ago. My cookie sheets are older than I am. My grandmother's music box, over 100 years old now, still plays a perfect tune. So today when I was told to throw the five-week old bread maker in the bin, I was sickened at the thought. Our landfills are overflowing. Our garbage lines the streets, to say nothing of trails and waterways. If companies would only build for permanence instead of profit, what a better place this world might be! If I had a grandchild, I might be proud to leave them my "antique" muffin tins, but I cannot be proud of the society which is leaving them a world covered in trash.

Damn Nuisance

Day 116: You know I love birds. Most birds, that is. There are Exceptions: pigeons, starlings, eagles (just big pigeons with white heads and a larger appetite for garbage). I even enjoy seeing Canada Geese as long as they stay over there when I'm over here, and I have never had any specific personal issues with the notorious English Sparrow. However, then there are Red-Winged Blackbirds. If they'd just remained in their bogs! But no, they stopped by one afternoon several years back and discovered that black-oil sunflower seeds are somewhat tastier than cattail seeds, and now I can't get rid of them. I bang on the window. I clap my hands loudly. I run through the yard waving my arms screaming invective strong enough to curdle milk, but they only move across the street, returning as soon as I turn my back. The other birds seem to understand the dilemma, hardly pausing when they see me raving about "*$&%ing blackbirds!!!" It's as if they know that I'm defending the feeders, something they daren't try against this highly aggressive species. No other bird scares them away: not jays, not crows, not even the ravens. Talk about a sense of entitlement! I'll stand a blackbird up against a welfare recipient any day.

Variations On A Sheep

Day 115: If you are getting tired of sheep, I am not. In fact, there's another version currently on the bonker loom, and threads set out to measure for even another. They are just so much fun to weave! Of course that could be said for any krokbragd design because the action would be identical. The pattern is determined by the colours of the warp. As I've explained before, krokbragd designs can be likened to drawing a recognizable picture with a nine-pin printer, and although the patterns can be wider across the band, they are limited to four passes on the length. To further complicate matters, two of those passes have to be identical and separated by one of the other two (here, that's the sheep's legs). Let's call the legs "1." 1 repeats twice, alternating in the four-throw sequence 1-2-1-3. As you can guess, there's not a whole lot of creative latitude there. I've used lengths from some of these rolls already to make custom canvas shop...sheeping bags. Sheep! You gotta love 'em!

It's What Really Counts

Day 114: I keep promising myself to sit down and devote some serious brain power to learning how to use this simple device, but every time I've tried, I've become bogged when it came to adding by means of subtraction. I think I may have finally found some instructions I'll be able to follow without tearing my hair out by the roots. There are several different styles of abacus. This happens to be a Japanese soroban. Note that there are four beads in the lower section and only one bead in the upper part. This is quite different from the Chinese style which has five beads in the lower section and two in the upper, and consequently, the method of calculation is going to be different for each type. There are other styles as well, each with its own particular system. I don't aspire to doing complex calculations, either. I'd just like to be able to multiply 23 x 72 without having to use something with a battery in it. Here it must be noted for posterity that I once caught my lazy husband using a pocket calculator to determine the answer to 9 x 6. I'm not quite that far gone!

Mountain Pancakes

Day 113: When the Mountain makes pancakes, it's a sure sign the weather is about to change (and it did, so there's no hope of seeing that elusive comet any time this week). Mount Rainier is famous for its lenticular cloud formations. In fact, at least once, they've been reported as UFOs, although I can't quite imagine why. Admittedly, they're dramatic. One time when I was backpacking on the north side, I saw one incoming which looked exactly like Capt. Kirk's Enterprise complete with warp nacelles, at least to my imaginative mind. Sometimes, they pile up on one side or another of the peak; others will accumulate on or over the summit, often lowering as a developing weather system gains strength. They occur when moist, stable air flows over the summit to create a series of waves and troughs. Unequal dew point and ambient temperature in the bottoms of the troughs causes evaporation. At the peaks of the waves where dew point and temperature are equal, condensation occurs. When this recipe is exactly right, the Mountain makes pancakes. Or maybe, like the Lemurians who were reported to live in Mount Shasta, there really is a race of aliens occupying the ice caves on the summit, flying in and out in their saucer-shaped spaceships disguised as clouds.

A Visit From The Mistletoe Fairy

Day 112: When the mailman backed into my driveway yesterday afternoon, I was puzzled. I wasn't expecting a package of any sort. When I saw the return address, I understood. It was from the Mistletoe Faerie/Fairy, our Morris-dance group's holiday gift-giver. That said, I was surprised because although I had elected not to participate in our annual exchange this year, they nevertheless chose to remember me. Inside was an assortment of gifts, including a small quartz crystal which didn't make it into the photo because I only found it on the kitchen table when I sat down to eat dinner. Given my advancing years and inability to drive long distances plus worries about covid, I'm doubtful I'll ever be able to dance with the group again, but it's heartwarming to know that I made some good friends there. I miss you all!

Hefty Herd

Day 111: When I took this photo, I still had about half an hour's work left to do. When I finally rolled the band off the bonker loom, I had a functional 10 1/2 yards (31 feet). After a short stint with a pocket calculator, I determined that my herd is comprised of approximately 450 sheep which ain't bad for less than a week's effort. I have made a number of different variations on this pattern, mostly changing up to daisies so that sometimes they have leaves and sometimes not, sometimes with taller or shorter stems, or sometimes omitting them altogether, but the sheep have remained the same. I do have another character waiting for the arrival of a particular colour of thread before I can warp up the new design, so I think I'll mosey over to the north paddock to see if I can muster a few more ewes in the meantime.