Sally Reed and Julie, her sheep.

Welcome to Black Sheep at Orenco! This is, I hope, the first of many blog posts to come. In this space I will try and post at least a couple times a week announcing new shop arrivals, upcoming classes, give aways, sales and even patterns/Ideas I run across on facebook, pinterist and other friend's blogs. I hope you find this aspect of the shop webpage useful and interesting.
The photo I have included today is one of my aunt Sally and her sheep Julie from the early 1960s. My grandparents were farmers in Eastern Washington raising a variety of animals and crops over the years. A constant on the farm was sheep. In my childhood I was lucky enough to experience the magic of lambing season and shearing and the lovely temperment that most sheep have. My grandmother was an avid knitter and crocheter. I am sure there are many trunks containing baby sweaters and hats made by my grandmother around town. Whenever I visited she was hard at work on a small pink, blue or green garmet. It was my grandmother who taught me to crochet. She tried to teach me knitting but that skill took a little longer to stick. I learned to spin and dye while in college. I actually took the basket-weaving class that is the butt of so many jokes. It was a REAL class and a valuable one.

I will include all kinds of sheep related photos on the Wool Shed posts so if you have some you want to see please let me know or send them in (obviously with permission to print).