lamb enamel pins

After a long time of obsessing and putting it off and looking all over for a lamb like this, I finally produced my first enamel pin!

Soon I might post about the process of making this, but the main thing is that I drew a bunch of India ink drawings and scanned my favorite--a completely analogue process.

The backing cards are handstamped with a handcarved block of easy carve linoleum. My favorite.

The material is hard enamel (also known as cloisonne, the highest quality kind) with silver details and  the lamb just an inch and a quarter tall at its highest point.

You can check this lamb out on my new etsy. Oinkshop! We have Eve to thank for the name.

Thanks so much for looking! I am grateful to all the various sympathetic and tender people and readers who have supported this and all the other animal-based DIY projects I have pursued over the years.

olive and opal eating pine

Dozens of photos of hatching chicks

 Hatching Chicks: The Definitive Collection.

The moral of this story (and the moral of all my posts about farm animals) is: animals are better than people. Actually, that should probably be the title of my blog.

 As soon as the little dark one hatched, he ran straight under his mom.

 The new daddy comes to check on his family. Just a few days later, this rooster was taken by foxes. We spent an hour searching the woods for his remains--a few brown feathers.

It was such a surprise to find the first peeping baby in the nesting box, right on time, three weeks after we gave the eggs back to the brooding hen. Though I'd been expecting them to hatch, it was funny and weird to find this little visitor where there'd been a humdrum everyday-looking egg just an hour before.

lambies

Podere Campriano, 2013