go tell it to the judge

Exhibit A:

The reward project, clearly started, your honor. Looks to be about one skein of Araucania Nature Wool Bulky knit in the round, garter stitch. Top down, I believe.

Cough, um, your honor, a sidebar? The defendant thinks you should be extra nice to her because she just linked you to an excellent sale price for this yarn, which she is crazy about. The shading variations in the solid not quite midnight blue not quite teal are mitigating factors.

Exhibit B:

Very pink, very plastic circular needles. Origin unknown, believed to have been acquired from a five and dime ( a what? sorry , referencing a retail kinda place that sold everything, from fabric to hamsters and makeup, and even had a lunch counter) back when I liked to knit scandanavian sweaters in the round and there wasn't a yarn store nearby.

Exhibit C:
Forget it, I am not showing my messy desk with ,um, the incriminating not-quite-done-book keeping . You know, the work that had to be done before I could so much as breathe on that yarn.

In lieu, leaves which are oddly still on the trees around here.

In my defense:
I had to start this sweater. I had jury duty on Monday. The pamphlet clearly stated that no dangerous objects would be allowed in the courthouse and the only dangerous object they bothered to list as an example was...drumroll..knitting needles. I saw this as a challenge. My little pinky translucent needles scream Easy Bake Oven more than Danger Danger . I cast on at 6 am, by 8 am I was swilling coffee up in the jury pool waiting room, poised to start knitting as soon as the official speeches and instructional voir dire videos were over.

Upon cross examination it was revealed that I did actually have a long neglected Kidsilk Tube on a bamboo circular needle that could have come along instead, honoring the reward nature of the knitting. The extreme boring-ness of sitting in the jury pool room knitting around and around on fuschia Kidsilk Haze might cause me to poke my own eyes out, so was ruled Not The Right Project For The Situation.

Verdict: Guilty. Will attempt to stop any further knitting on this lovely project until bookeeping goal has been met. Will return to seaming sweater that is almost done, and wandering around the vicinity in my gorgeous handpsun alpaca shawl which I can't show you. If you happen to see me in person, I will not give you a chance to admire it, because before you can speak, I will have demanded that you pet it. It feels that good.

sweetened carrot, urgent deadline

Feeling guilty for your compliments on my goal reaching last post. Soon as I posted, my great intentions were interrupted by my real life . Books remain only partially kept. Which the accountants among you know is like being a little bit pregnant. Incentive yarn waits temptingly.

To help me keep my eyes on the prize, and since the knitting gods put me right by an excellent button store, I heaped a little sugar on my reward cast-on.

Do you love these as much as I do? Despite knowing that one of my sons offered this with a passing glance: " oh- pig noses carved from horn. Cool...I guess. "

Meanwhile my knitting attention turned to an impending meeting at the book publisher this Friday. On Sunday I was idly wondering what I would wear when the big red revolving siren in my brain went off : these are marketing and promotion folk! I need to make an impression as a presentable, fibery, knitterly , interesting kind of person, one that you'd want to chat with after the book comes out. I'm OK with the chat. I have all kinds of interesting tales to tell. But what to wear? I need to wear something from the book, duh!

So here's a challenge. It is too early in the season to wear a wool hat without looking a little crazy , the only finished sweater sample I have here is a heavy jacket a size too small for me, and there is no way I can crank out any of the other sweaters or vests this week. Don't even have the authentic yarns on hand. But! The unbelievably luxurious handspun alpaca from Victory Ranch I brought home from New Mexico, and the shawl pattern from that chapter. Perfect. Settled on the shawl , one with some lace, but worsted weight, so I have hope of getting it done. Not enough yardage to make the full flowing length as shown in the book - hopefully enough for a large wrappish shawl.

If you've read this blog for a while - or have peeked at my Ravelry projects - have you noted a distinct lack of lace? Yeah. And that would be why I knit to row 31 three times before I got it right and was able to keep going. I'm tootling along, glancing fearfully at the dwindling ball of fiber. Geometry being what it is, the triangle is swallowing so much yarn per row now that my bowling ball of yarn is speeding through the produce department: it's cabbage sized ! no it's a grapefruit, then an orange, an apple and presently heading into kiwi. Why oh why didn't I wind off the fringe yarn first?

My schedule isn't leaving me much knitting time . Yesterday afternoon the stress of worrying that I 'll go to a meeting with a luxuriously dorky handknit alpaca neckerchief prompted me to call the ranch and ask them to overnight one more skein. At Victory Ranch the handspun is made by one alpaca each, I mean if you buy a skein, it has the name of the animal it came from, and is only spun from that one fleece. I called and asked if they had more of Laurel. They do! It'll be here Thursday. I'll be the one sitting on MetroNorth Friday morning, using the 1 hour 50 minute train ride to attach fringe. That ought keep people out of the seat next to me! Maybe I'll wear shiny shoes to distract.

gittin'er done

Lately I've been feeling like the guy you hire to do work on your house. When the job is 98% done , he just stops coming by, and there's this one little piece of trim that hasn't been put back up, and you just can't believe that it is left like that. For weeks. You know what I mean.

This week I couldn't stand it any longer. I -whheeeeee!- knit and cast off the button bands for the Cutaway I started almost 2 years ago, it's been near the finish line for a while now. I can't bear to bore you with unblocked unseamed sweater pieces, but I am just rarin' to block & sew.

Earlier today, I uploaded the last two teeny remaining images for my book cover - I know, can you imagine I left out something so critical as the center square of the cover?- to PotterCraft. That felt good. Anti-climactic, but good.

Then I dug into my most unfavorite, much procrastinated upon task, bookkeeping. I need a carrot on the end of the mind-numbing-number- entering-category-checking stick for this one , so I went out and purchased yarn - lovely Araucania Nature Wool Bulky in what I think is the third color from the top on the little card from that link but mine is deeper in its hand-dyedness, with less variegation in tones. I am allowed to cast on a frivolous Juliet sweater for myself as soon as the books are kept. Or....whenver I can rationalize casting on sooner.

consider yourself warned

You know how when you first started blogging, you were excited about having all these people, more like pretend people because no on actually knew about your blog, to talk to about knitting? Then it dawned that you were not getting much knitting done anymore because you were blogging about knitting? Or reading blogs about knitting? Or thinking about blogging about knitting?

OK, now take that and supersize it geometrically when you get on Ravelry. oh. my. I lost last week. I can't stop clicking onto that site, there is something so gratifying about logging in projects and queuing up a wish list. Nerdy, but gratifying. Not to mention peeking in on all the groups. Is there a group for people who lurk about on knitting subculture groups they don't belong in? Oh, wait, let me just click over there and check....

ps. my Ravelry name is SheShootsSheep . I can't come up with anymore aliases!

dear norma

*I was going to send this as a private note to Norma, but then decided to be an opportunist, now it's a a blog post, come read along

Well how're things up there? I've been meaning to tell you about the Really Big Red Scarf To-Do that you didn't take my advice and call in sick to attend, the Orphan Foundation of America Congressional Care Package Event in Washington two weeks ago. It was awesome. I mean it. From the moment I had my all-access-I-am-cool Senate pass slapped on and headed up to our room just to the left (thank God, politically speaking, how could I be to the right of the senate??) of the Senate Chambers it was a blur of activity . The OFA folks did a smashing job setting up a display of things that go into a care package, for my Photo-Op Corner, highlighted of course by some very beautiful hand knit red scarves.

And Norma, they are just gaw-jus this year! I was more or less pinned there for the whole event, as the Photo part of the Op; the Op part was a rushing stream of Senators,"quick, do my photo, where's a student, I'm the senator from Alaska , I'm getting called for a vote in just a few seconds" , US Reps and other Very Important Folks who came to pose stuffing a care package with an honest-to-goodness OFA college student. These photos will go out to media in their home states , spreading the word that kids who are in college but have no families need support!

Two students and two OFA staffers who run the Red Scarf program from the office.

It was a fine group of college kids there too.

Here're the students on a tour of the rotunda , later in the day.

Just like last year when we did a little PR trip to visit OFA kids in New Hampshire together (remember that ? On the Freakin Coldest Day of the whole winter?) , the students were heartbreakingly, genuinely, touched by having us knit them scarves.

Anyway, Norma, the red scarf fund is doing you proud, as are the knitters. I was told that "some of Norma's People" would be there, and honestly, I kind of thought of that as Norma's Knitting Army, and expected a pack of folks to walk in with big sashes across their chests, wielding needles. How crazy is that?

Anyway, wish you were there. Next year in DC!
And to all of you reading along, send in your scarves this week! You can have a couple of extra days but don't go too far.

your faithful correspondent,
gale

An aside: If you are reading this and saw me there in the corner taking photos maniacally, I just want to say I know my hair looked bad and I've done something about the bangs since then. I like to shoot sheep, not look like them, really.

file this under: ain't technology grand?!

See this?

It's my book! 160 pages, 219 great big image files and so many hours of my life, all in that tiny little thingy in my palm.

And see this?



The tiny little thingy above just arrived at the publisher this morning . Yet you can already pre-order. Amazing!

• • • • • • • • • •

Also amazing: how hard it was for me to sit in my office for a solid week of doing all the final computer work on the images. I am simply not a sit still indoors person. What saved me was listening as I worked, to hours & hours of brilliant backdated podcasts, from This American Life, Cast On and Its a Purl, Man. Thanks Ira, Brenda and Guido, my virtual heroes, for keeping me in my seat.

this just in

"Your invitation was sent on September 16, 2007. We just sent you a new copy of the email (from invitations@ravelry.com) in case it was lost or eaten by a spam filter."

oh good.
Now I'll have something to do to fill my empty hours when the book goes off to the publisher at the end of the week. Gotta go. A few hundred images to finalize. How is it that deadline already? And why is it that I'm checking my Ravelry queue spot and making up blogposts ?

let us now praise wool socks

...were the words running like a zipper billboard across the base of my skull when I stayed in this cabin , on the scenic shores of Lake Sebago in Maine a couple of weekends ago.

And when I say scenic, I mean pristine beauty with a SNAP in the air. Like 40 degrees F at night. No windows.

I left my sunny 80 degree neighborhood to attend this 3 day professional meeting, haphazardly grabbing a pair of wool socks on the way to my ride north. Just in case. I wore them day and night . I think they saved me.
My colleagues are still skeptical when I say I spent a great part of the year photographing sheep, alpaca and goat farms for a travel & knitting book. Pretty much a conversation stopper. There was one person who talked ruminants with me, because he and his talented wife just published this book. Excellent reading, vicarious pilgrimages are such a pleasure. Only problem is it makes you crave goat cheese, big time.

Back to my theme: In particular , let us praise the knitting of worsted weight socks. That's right, gentle reader, I finished a pair of socks in less than 2 weeks. Me! The Slowest Sock Knitter around *that'd make me SSK around, wouldn't it?

I think I'm on to something. It feels a tad remedial, a bit like cheating, but I love these heavy socks, I love immediate gratification...and I have so little pride.

ps I also love Artyarns SuperMerino . The first of these socks took 1 skein plus an annoyingly small extra bit , about 3 yards , from a 2nd skein The second sock took one skein neatly. I think its a couple of rounds shorter in the cuff. Don't tell anyone, OK?

what the inarticulate pirate shouted

Arrrrrgh! Go sea!
(Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day)

pattern: Argosy from Knitty Winter 06
yarn: hand painted worsted weight silk from HipKnits
needles: size 7 us
finished dimensions: about 62" long by 5 " across at widest
the lowdown:
Last month's vacation knitting, blocked yesterday. I was worried about not having enough yarn, with a 180 yard skein, so I narrowed the pattern . There's SO much yarn leftover. Maybe enough t0 make a second scarf, not quite as long. Crazy! If only I'd weighed it I'd be more accurate but I'm guessing it took less than 120 yards. I think that qualifies this pattern as a good worsted one-skeiner.
thumbs up? oh yes. Easy to memorize the pattern, quick to knit, fun to look at, plays well with a variegated / changing yarn. The silk might be a little floppy for my taste but ooh you should see the pearlescence of it. what's not to like? I definitely recommend it as a quality knit, in, oh, I don't know, maybe a shade of, hmmm, RED!
I'm not alone: check out these Argosies or the wrap version at the designer's blog.

Here's a truer view of its colors, a really perfect blues/steel/touch of yellowish-brownish tinge. It really does look like the water, seen from below on a sunny day, in my neighborhood. Maybe not the cleanest body of saltwater but one of my favorite places on the planet.

I think we can agree this proves I'm no Julia Trice, can that woman rock a self-portrait or what? Be sure to scroll down to the knit nightie and jeans shots from that link.
I stand (or lean) in awe.

slow learner

Things I learned since Sunday that I already knew (or should have known)

Item 1
Old friends and annual gatherings are the best way to spend an afternoon. Especially if there's at least one other knitter



Item 2
It definitely takes more than 2 skeins of Artyarns SuperMerino to make a pair of socks in my foot size.

Item 3
Webs is fab on the phone. So easy to order from and happy to grab matching skeins off their shelves. Webs has a discount if you spend , um, more than one skein's worth.

Item 4
It is dangerous to leave your credit card sitting next to the computer after you order body lotion because put together with Item 3 above, you will end up with two pair of additional socks' worth of Artyarns Supermerino. Holiday knitting, here we come.

Item 5
Referring to item 4 above, because you will uncharacteristically order a groovy new camera strap to stand out from the boys. An item you haven't felt necessary since...forever.
You hope it'll arrive in time for an awesome photo op in a couple of weeks. (Hint, get your red scarves knit and sent in, they can appear on famous senators' necks)

A sweet new year to all of you celebrating tomorrow!

trip

we could use some rain but the sunflowers are hanging in there

So there I was writing a reply to your kind comments about my much traveled slow socks. I was saying it looked like I wasn't hitting the road again so soon, when I found myself on an overnight zip to Vermont for last minute book revisions.

No complaints. Love the designer. Love Montpelier. What a shame to be spitting distance from Norma-land and only 2 days short of the Vt Sheep & Wool with no extra time.

However. The drive is not without rewards.
First pitstop is Putney for a good sandwich and snacks. While I was waiting for my order I tried some patchouli & lime scented body lotion, and fell in love with it. Vermont is the kind of place where patchouli & lime smells just right, kind of like buying cowboy boots and hats while in Texas, or big turquoise jewelry in the southwest, or pink flamingo print sundresses in Florida. You get home and say "what was I thinking?" . In this case , my bad . I used the same scented tester on the way home, and three people told me how utterly great I smelled. (no, wait, as of now I am saved by online shopping if you meet me in the coming months, take a whiff).

Back on the road , the Green Mountain Spinnery, is around the corner in Putney. The only yarn I'm yearning for now is heavier weight superwash sock, which isn't their thing. For old times' sake, I had to stick my head in. I used to stock up on yarn whenever I passed by, back in the dark days. You know,the years before the internet but after all the good yarn stores had closed . There were two guys picking over fleeces outside in the sun, and inside, the usual friendly folks, and the mill whirring away. I peeked in ,I like spinning bobbins and gears, I squeezed and petted skeins , I considered this cardigan pattern. Not this visit. This time, 2 more hours to drive.

The work went splendidly. The next afternoon homeward bound, another favorite, the infamous Webs in Northampton, Massachusetts.

It doesn't have much , as they say in real estate, curb appeal. Inside, always wow.

With 15 minutes to run in, seek sock yarn, and pay, I vowed not to go anywhere near the back warehouse room. Its ginormous, full to the rafters with industrial shelving, piled with sale priced yarn . The list on the website is the tip of the iceberg. You can easily lose an hour a morning. My usual MO is go straight back, then when I'm done, venture into the also spacious front sales room . There's enough floor to kneel between the shelves and lay out skeins, and indulge in all the decision making rituals you require without blocking fellow shoppers.

This visit I decided quickly in the retail front , I paid, I asked to use the restroom...and clearly the knitting goddesses are in on this : the lav is in the warehouse. I only lost another twenty minutes, and promised myself a more sane visit soon, upon spying the tall shelf with Noro closeouts as I hustled by.

A sales woman complimented my speed and focus. Maybe she saw the crazed gleam in my eye. Maybe it was the wafting patchouli & lime .

My just-what-I-had-in-mind-purchase:
Artyarns Supermerino worsted weight, for some quicker knitting of socks. This seems to be working - without much knitting time at all I've almost completed a sock in 2 days. And soft! The only drama is whether I need more than 2 skeins to get the little doggies done.

give me an S

Phew.

It was almost a Summer of Sock no ess for me.

While others crank out the footwear, I literally drag my feet. Some people amaze me with beautiful socks debuting weekly. Not I! I need months for ordinary 3-1 rib pair like these. Aside from being the slowest knit socks in the world, they're also possibly the most traveled inknitero (although I can think of one contender with some serious moving partial sock documentation ).

I cast on in January in DC, and since then I knit on them in cars, on planes, on trains and ferries. They were at a ranch in Texas in February, then the Navajo reservation in Arizona,they made it to book group, I drug them into the sand on beaches down the street at home and in Delaware. They had a dip in beer at a party, a nice soap soak and dry and just this morning while sewing them up, I dropped the needle with tail thread, mid-kitchener, into my coffee. The upside? If it turns out I lose in the Most traveled sock category maybe they are Most Beveraged.

They visited ranches in Montana and a farm in Minnesota I added inches at early season youth football practice (do. not. ask.)and had a few glorious knitting moments at Fish Creek Falls in Colorado. Their presence let me focus on something other than the waves of fear washing over me as members of our hiking party (my sons & niece & nephew) were freeclimbing rocks higher up in ways that were unbearable to watch. (it doesn't look that tricky in the photos but believe me, you have to be willing to take some leaps)
(that's a rare blog appearance for Dave, too) I think that's the 2nd sock.

I'm not that slow a knitter, its just that socks are filler knitting for me, when I have a moment or two, or will be chatting while knitting or need a tiny bit of distraction. Even so, I've decided to up my ouput. I've sworn to knit heavier yarn weight socks for the next season.

ps. Here's something else I've been waiting for all summer-
the fattest of the 4 kinds of sunflower in the front garden to open, at the same time as the morning glories. If the first frost holds off , I'll have the front of the house cheerfully exuding a Crazy Lady Lives Here motif for six weeks or so.

get Red(dy)

I've updated the poster/flyer/webdisplay for this year's Red Scarf Project, with the October due date.*
Email me (ezisusATsnetDOTnet) if you'd like the image files to print out a version to hang up in your very own LYS, knitters' hangout or to pass around.

The lowdown is over at Norma's fabby Red Scarf Project 2008 blog.
And speaking of fabby, show some love, in the form of a donation, to the Red Scarf Fund for Foster Youth.

And still speaking of fabby, there's Norma herself. She's the mastermind of this fund, and she's running a contest, you can win as long as you donate and then drop her a note.

When you start thinking about it, the mind boggles with what's missing from a young person's life once they age out of the foster care system. The obvious- parental figures, is just the tip of it. If you have a child heading for college, think about how much help you're giving them. Not just with tuition. All the little decisions and the problem solving. The which dorm and how do I register and what's the way to get my banking done. These kids? They do it alone. No one to guide them along the way. No "back home" to return to when they need some TLC.

* the photos on the poster are Orphan Foundation staff posed with some of the college kids who benefit from the OFA red scarf care packages. Those smiles? 100% real.

knit! I so?

with apologies to these folks

Had I not broken the power cord post off into the little hole on my laptop, you'd have read this a week ago.
a view akong the way - groovy, no?
There I was, computer-less, for the Big Extended Family Week of vacation togetherness on a far off mountain. Was I all angsty and stressed? No! Why not? Because I realized a couple of weeks ago that this summer's theme is...SO?

As in: my kitchen is being trashed regularly by zombie- like hordes of teenage boys cooking midnight meals, (so?) or snacking heartily with the TV and computer both blasting in the family room as I ignore and churn the pixels upstairs in my home office. So? . The sand is building up in the living room, the backyard garden was never weeded past July 4th and we are eating some very sketchy combinations of food passing as meals. So? So? and SO?

Every summer has a theme and this is it for 2007. I usually slack off the work a bit in the summer. Not this year and something's gotta give. It just happens to be my standards. SO?

In keeping with the theme, aware of my responsibility to continue the woolly/alpaca/mohair-y test knitting for the book, I said.. SO? I'm taking silk for vacation knitting.
Has nothing to do with fiber farms, only , as a friend pointed out, worm spit. Hand dyed silk, aran weight, and just exactly the color of the water at the neighborhood beach.


I'll show an after-vacation shot of what I knit with the silk sometime soon. Yeah, I've been back a few days and should already have a photo of it. But I haven't. SO?

summer idyll (not idle)

The formerly beer marinated, now eucalyptus and lavendar scented sock-and-a-half spent the week like this, as it took its sweet time drying.
There's a reason you normally unwind a ball into a long skein before washing.There's a world of pain inside that center pull. Nice yarn though, no? Its from Autumn House Farm.


I turned my attention to this, a Shear Spirit project I'm testing in Cascade Dolce. Alpaca /silk/wool blend. Mmmm. I wish I could show it finished, I might love it more than anything I've knit in a while. This ice pink/chocolatey brown combo works great in person, I wasn't so sure about it when I cast on. I have this idea that red/aqua will be the next brown/light blue, but this isn't too bad, either.

With a slew of work and a bored 13 yo in tow, I made a quick trip to visit the parents at the Delaware beach. I won't show you a picture of the sad scraggly blanket they keep by the sofa, the spot that should be covered by the unseamed mitered afghan my sister and I so lovingly conceived . And knit but haven't finished. I called sis threatening to send her said picture. We made heartfelt pledges to get seaming.

Mom's been test knitting for the book and did overtime duty deciphering tech problems in patterns, so it was a good working trip. I got a lot done in 36 hours, despite finding my parents, at times, um, distracting. Yet cute. (Don't tell my dad. He was a football player. He hates when people think he's cute.)

This and they taught my son three new kinds of poker. Wholesome beach life!

karmic update: knitting edition

You know Lauren, until recently she posted at Almost Felted.
Since she's moving to a warmer climate , she decided to unload many of her handknits. If you read her blog, you know that not only is she talented but prolific. She has a lot of handknits, and all were just the right size for her very small self. Here she is , bullied into posing on a packing day ( doncha hate photographer bullies?) with a basket of her gorgeous garments.


There's a group that helps new arrival refugees get set up here. Here being New England, they have a chilly time the first year. Since third world females are smaller than your average North American woman, I told Lauren about them, and she passed the whole big basket of wooly love on. This week, seven Iraqi women who arrived with nothing warm, are set for the winter. If that's not good knitting karma, I don't know what is.

Elsewhere in the karmic knitting world balance, at a backyard party , a frisbee hit a small table, sending a large cup of beer flying . The table was surrounded by grass except for one flowered tote bag. Which held my knitting. Since just then I had been persuaded against all good reason to get up and sing backup with the jamming musician friends- all good reason being the fact I have a horrible voice- I wasn't there to grab the bag. The sock and a half were inside, in a zip lock bag. Unzipped.

In the car home, I reached in to knit a few rounds and found a sock, yarn and needle marinating in a couple of ounces of ale. Maybe its me but I think you should at least finish knitting your sock and wear it before it sops up a beer at a party?

The bit of good karma here is that the alpaca/silk project underway was not in the bag. Sock & wool are recovering now, after a quick bath, needles and all. Those who heard me sing? I think they are still recovering.

chewing on this

So many times lately this thought popped into my brain: "The devil is in the details".
And then a minute later, I'd think, no, I'm remembering that wrong, the saying is "God is in the details".

Finally it bugged me so much - and besides, gave me an excuse to turn away from the nasty little details themselves- that I looked it up. Turns out both of these are "the" quote.

So there you have it. They are both right. There are detail people and there are big idea people. Its half-empty and half-full, toe-may-toe and to-mah-toe. Big idea people like plunging in and making it happen somehow. Big idea people are sure the details will work themselves out. Big idea people should not be in the final stages of helping to edit knitting patterns for their Big Idea book even if they have been knitters most of their lives because it is making them very nervous that they will not notice a P3 together in the wrong spot, or the lack of explanation how to start armhole decreases at the same time as shaping the neck.

On the bright side, most of this nervous energy has been channeled into a pair of basic socks. Maybe I'm not a detail person but at least my feet will be warm come fall.

six boats later......

Ferry knitting rocks. That's all I'm saying.

• • • • • • • • • • •

Ok I'll say more. (added later: no pun intended) . That's a sock up there, and I am so enjoying knitting it, after a long sock hiatus (the hiatus, not the cuff length) I can scarcely put it down. However. My favorite clients from last week, that I ferried to? They rock too. And if they are reading this......I am editing, I am, I really am. Not knitting. Nuh-uh, not me.

• • • • • • • • • • •

This is Michelle Shocked, she really rocks.

In Northampton last Friday night. If you can see her on tour this summer, go. She's one of those performers who does a totally great and unplanned live show.

Also rocking this week: the summer farmer's market is back. Including the really good goat cheese guys. If I ever find a farm that does both goats for fiber and goats for cheese, I might just move in for keeps.