Just have to Brag

We have 4 awesome Shetland ram lambs in our group this year (so far!)! Two are 62% UK bloodlines through Drum Ram, Drum Jings and Keir Gordon, one black and one white. Blizzard is pictured below.
This little ram has presence, evenly crimpy birth coat, lovely head and tail, and rock solid rear. He's standing with his equally nice sister, Midnight, below. These two are for sale at this time.
Blizzard's black half brother/cousin is just one day old but already has that same presence, four square stance and evenly crimpy birth coat that Blizzard does. "Daisy's Black Boy" will be for sale if we don't keep him here.

Both of our moorit gulmoget ram lambs, Franjean and Rool, are for sale. We're keeping Franjean's moorit gulmoget sister, Elora, and so retaining that pattern in our flock. I'm really impressed by the solid bodies on these boys. They should be soft and somewhat intermediate in fleece character. Rool is pictured below.
Both boys are sired by Sheltering Pines Octavian, a double F2 black gulmoget polled ram owned by Juliann Budde in Illinois. Franjean's dam is Bitterroot Bessie, and Rool's dam is Bessie's daughter, Little Country Val.

More to brag about - Fleeces!!!
The Shepherds' Extravaganza is the first major sheep and fiber event in the Pacific Northwest. This year (at my suggestion!) the handspinning fleece show featured Shetland Sheep fleeces. Well, since it was my suggestion, I felt I had to enter as many fleeces as I could to support the show. The limit was 10... whew! I got just 10 sheared and skirted in time to enter the show. There was a total Shetland fleece entry of 39 - excellent support from as far away as Oregon and Alberta!
Imagine my surprise when one of our fleeces won Best Shetland Ram fleece!!!

This is Willie's second shearing. His is a very "modern" UK type fleece with shorter crimpy black wool and no white fibers at 2 years of age. Willie is for sale this year as we have some very nice offspring of his to carry on.

I was also (less pleasantly) surprised to find out that I'd missed finding some tender fleece in one of our entries, and it was "awarded" a white ribbon. oops!

The surprises kept coming, though ... another of our entries won Best Shetland Lamb fleece, and then in the final competition - won the Champion Shetland Fleece. I was stunned. Happily stunned. :-)

This fleece is a very, very black soft primitive style fleece that was sheared in September, so it was also extremely clean. I can't take all the credit for this one. It came from a ram lamb we bought from Kim Kerley of Mountain Niche farm in Chehalis. We were filling out our show string, and only needed him through September. Who'd have thought??!

- Franna