Diary of a Fiber Artist entry #1

It’s been rough week plus a little.

To start off last week, my body began a flare up of my chronic illness which includes but isn’t limited to: fatigue, pain, difficulty eating and skin irritations.

A day in bed. I am not sun or wind burned and there are other parts of my skin this way too.

I haven’t had much energy for even knitting or spinning. Although I did do a little…

 

 

And we also worked on shearing some goats.

It was a windy day, and I didn’t feel great, so we brought this Doe (Flora) in to check her fleece.

This past weekend I was working on recovering and trying to get over this flare up. And then a terrible thing happened.

One of our pygora goats, Gaston, was attacked by a predator.

We were up until after one in the morning doing our best to clean and sew up his wounds. He hadn’t been shorn yet, so first we had to shear him.

In the house.

On the dining room floor…er..sub-floor..

Because our nice barn and garage burned down last October.

So here we are shearing a goat in the house. And we realized that his wounds were deep and ugly. He needed stitches.

I called a friend of ours who used to be an E.M.T., the call went something like this:

“Hey, I hear you have experience with sutures…”

“Uh…yes….”

“How do you feel about helping us stitch up a goat?”

“…a goat?”

“Yes, a goat…he’s a small goat.”

He agreed and came right over. We almost had the goat sheared completely by then.

We got him fixed up and he did well, amazing really. Tough feller.

Did I mention that I had also stepped off a step wrong and re-injured my stress fracture that I thought had healed last September? So I was hobbling around in my “Moon Boot” during all of this.

 

The saga continues:

Two days later…

His sister was attacked, Flora. She went missing. We couldn’t find her at chore time.

During the search the flashlight batteries were dying–of course (the cell phone flashlight app came in handy-but batteries went on the list). After exhausted searching efforts and much prayer, we caught sight of a critter in the brush and timber. The dogs didn’t want anything to do with chasing after it, so we knew it had to be something fierce. Certain my sweet little Flora was a goner we went in the house.

I was distraught. The kids were sent to bed and I headed to the shower to clean off all of the pollen, grass and other things that irritate me more when I am in a flare-Oh and to cry.

My hero of a husband went back out, armed-with more than a light. He continued the search and amazingly he found her!

She was at the bottom the hill-the same place we had found the other goat. But for some reason we had been unable to spot her before.

All of the doctoring happened on the kitchen table! Doesn’t she have a sweet face?

This time we fixed the goat ourselves. She hasn’t done as well. It has been a long couple of days keeping her wounds clean and stopping the bleeding. I think she is pulling through and I pray that she continues to heal. This sweet Doe is an expectant mother due any day now.

We have had  a Wildlife expert out and catching the predator are in the works. For now, all of the animals are kept in the fenced yard instead of their pen. So far no more attacks have occurred. But I am sure the critter is still lurking about waiting for his goat dinner to return. Hopefully we will catch him-or her soon.

What a week..or two.

I am ready for a good knitting project.

Happy Day!

p.s. Previously this post was title “Diary of a Millennial Hippi” – bit the hubs wasn’t keen on that title, so I have changed it.