How Do I Do This?

Welcome to the first Blog entry for Sojourner Design! I am Diane Roeder, CES and CED (that's Chief Executive Shepherd and Chief Executive Dyer) at Sojourner Design which is the fiber part of Sojourner Sheep. If you don't know me, please feel free to visit my web site at www.sojournersheep.com.

My main goal in establishing this blog is to do a better job of bringing my fiber products to market. I've found that my web site never keeps up with what's going on in the dye lab and hope that the answer will be this blog.

Although I'm not much of a writer, a secondary goal is to create a commentary, whenever possible, about lif as the shepherd of a small flock of sheep. I hope to include photos and perhaps, eventually, videos clips.

OK, for starters and just to see how easy it is to post photos, I've just taken a photo of today's work in progress. It's a pound of roving dyed in two colors that gradually flow back and forth into each other: lime and teal. Not yet ready for market; there's more of that roving that I want to dye in the same manner.

But it's a good first photo because in the background you can see my chicken house (called Fort Apache) to the right, a few sheep loitering near the haylage bales, and the funky little trailer that I use for summer quarters for my chickens so that they can free-range over the entire property, moving to a fresh area every few days.

Further into the background is the hill. Although my sheep are now in their winter quarters and confined to the area right behind the house, during the summer months my flock rotates through fresh pastures extending up the hill and over about 17 acres on the hilltop. During those months I drive my little Honda 4-wheeler up the hill (you can see the road meandering its way) to care for them. More on that in a few months.

Well this worked very nicely and it's time to publish. I'll be back soon with photos of fiber items that are ready to go to new homes.