Yarnmom

This fake yarn is supposedly better for sheep.

Aimed at people who don’t know where wool comes from, it’s 100% plastic. Yes, plastic.

So any garment you wash will release microfibres into the sea. It’ll never decompose.

You’re supposed to believe that sheep shearing is violent and cruel. There are imbeciles out there that work in an unprofessional manner while shearing, but that’s not the case overall.

Sheep don’t suffer from having their fleece removed.

Left on, the fleece can become a home for fly eggs and the subsequent maggots which can eat the sheep. Chemical treatments are available to prevent that happening. It’s much better for the sheep, the land and the farmer to avoid chemical use.

Some farmers are less conscientious than they should be about taking care of their stock, and the occasional tiny nick will happen, but no one is going to hire a shearer who is a) incompetent enough and b) uncaring enough to actually injure the animals to the point of bleeding, let alone the kind of horrors the internet claims.

Also, most breeds of sheep will literally die if they go too long without being sheared. PETA (and let’s face it, most of this anti-wool stuff can be traced back to deliberate misinformation from PETA) doesn’t care if sheep die, they have openly stated that they would prefer every domestic species that can no longer survive without humans go extinct rather than live in “"slavery.”“

On the funnier side, ignorance about anything closer to nature than a supermarket shelf can result in gems like this one:

Regular yogurt for me.  Thanks.

(As for ignorance, this post is epic and getting more so every time I see it.)

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Back on topic.

Shearing’s not skinning and it’s not painful, unless some guy getting busy with a manscaping clipper means he’s flaying himself alive.

Shearing is an all-over haircut, call it sheepscaping if need be though expect some odd looks, and good shearers - as @ruusverd​ said, bad shearers earn a bad rep and soon earn no more money - will leave less nicks on an entire sheep than I might inflict on my face if I forget to change my razor-blade. 

That’s pretty impressive when dealing with a notoriously dimwit animal that doesn’t understand “now just sit still for a minute” and finds “see that open gate, go through it” a difficult concept. (Going through an unexpected hole in the hedge, however, is something sheep do with great ease and willingness, especially if there’s a soon-to-be-ex herb garden on the far side…)

“All warm and snuggly in their woolly jumpers…” Oh puh-leeze. A jumper is a garment which can be taken off and put on as required. A sheep’s fleece is nothing of the sort. Ireland’s just had a heatwave, so which of these two would have been more comfortable the other day when it was 30°C / 90°F in the shade?

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But look at the blood! goes the outcry about sheep with red stains. Here’s what that “blood” is. Unless the outcriers believe the front half is royal and bleeds blue, it’s just dye.

Why dye? There are various reasons: to show who owns which sheep in a mixed flock of the same breed, or to indicate if one has been dosed with something, or to mark if a ewe has mated with a ram.

The ram wears a harness - AFAIK not black leather with chrome studs, at least not on any farm near here - which holds a dye-pad on his chest. After he’s done his business, the hopefully-preggers ewe will have a patch of that dye on her rump as in the photo.

Different colours let the farmer know which ram’s been busy if there’s more than one, or with one ram, on what day the mating occurred so they can calculate when to expect lambs. That kit suggests rams get one day a week off…

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Besides shearing sheep to stop them overheating, if the weather is rainy rather than sunny they’ll still need sheared to stop them getting waterlogged.

A waterlogged sheep is a top-heavy sheep, and since rainy weather will have made the ground slippery, a top-heavy sheep can all too easily become a sheep on its back - a broad, flat back that won’t roll - unable to get upright.

Sheep internal organs aren’t meant to be upside down and inversion will eventually kill them, if they’re not gutted by a fox first. Crows will have had their eyes long before then.

Forget deceitful propaganda about fake wool, here’s some REAL advice about how to do a sheep a (literal) good turn.

I’ve done it myself, and though she’d already lost one eye - hoodie crows don’t miss a chance - that ewe survived and next spring produced what I was told were two fine lambs. I felt pretty good about that.

I still do.

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This is what shearing really looks like, and that’s not the behaviour of an animal in distress or pain. Baffled, maybe, but any human whose haircut started with a judo throw would be baffled too..

The end result is a 12lb / 5.5kg load of insulation which the sheep no longer has to carry about. How’d you like being stuck inside that lot on a hot day?

The “shearing is cruel” fruitloops rely on deliberate lies, gullibility and lack of knowledge. Be aware.

 Or maybe…

b) he is not nearly as chaotic as these others. He is really lacking that cause he's just so human. Clever and funny and smart and a little smartass, yes, but I cannot see my inner tumblrgirl hold up her spoon, proclaim her love of penguins and d00m, and then say she likes Ryland Grace, there is just too much maturity happening there and not enough r4nd0m. thanks. (i just finished PHM, its fairly fresh for me. I also don't think he's got quite enough antagonistic vibes to fit)

i dont even like tumblr sexymen, this is just a weird assertion.

There just isn't enough potential disapproval and rebellion going on here. like, a tumblr sexyman has got to get me eyes of judgment for being on his arm or something. that said i really dont think the doctor whos fit on those lists overall but he becomes wantable because he's been off-limits in his canon and is detested for warcrimes against uhhhh time or something i cant remember the specifics.

oooh i got it.

they mess with your sense of self-preservation. look at them all. they're all either jerks or dangerous or worse. Grace just happened to be scared in a situation that makes sense to be scared in. He's far too heroic to activate my "this will make my mother cry" attraction switch.

i am concerned for tumblr now that ive gotten this far in dissecting this. and myself.

From left to right: 1795 Michał Jerzy Mniszech with his daughter Elżbieta - Marcello Bacciarelli; Christopher Anstey and his daughter Mary Ann by William Hoare 1776; A Musician and His Daughter by Thomas de Keyser 1629; The Geography Lesson (Portrait of Monsieur G. and His Daughter), 1812; Jean-baptiste Isabey And His Daughter; Portrait of a Young Girl and Older Man by William Harrison Scarborough

in fact often if it was kind of safe dads had the babies in their workshops for just that reason as we can see in these paintings:

First Lesson by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865 - 1931)

Un Coup De Main (The Helping Hand) by Émile Renouf (1845 – 1894)

Hey! I hate to be making this post, but I don’t have a lot of other options. My name is Kay. I’m an artist and theatre professional in Portland. I haven’t had consistent dental insurance since I was 18 and I desperately need some dental work. I need a root canal, two new crowns, replacements for two crowns that were poorly done when I was younger, and several fillings. I try to take good care of my teeth, but a combination of bad genetics, bad dentists, and bad insurance have resulted in a lot of problems. Although I’m employed at a theatre full-time, they only offer insurance to employees who meet a certain threshold, and the state insurance I can afford will only cover a small amount of the work I need done.

Most of these cavities are years old, and have been slowly getting worse to the point where I can no longer ignore them. It’s starting to cause significant disruption to my life. I’m in pain from day to day, I’m filling holes with dental wax to minimize irritation, I can only chew out of one corner of my mouth, I’m starting to lose weight because it’s too hard to eat, the dentist I consulted said it’s just a matter of time before he has to start pulling teeth instead of repairing them. I’m even starting to feel embarrassed about smiling.

My new dentist is great and has already offered me the biggest discounts they have available. But after insurance I’m still looking at $7800 out of pocket. I work at a nonprofit and my husband is underemployed—there’s no way we can come up with a fraction of that over the next year, let alone all of it. My parents live on a fixed income and can’t help me out. They require payment upfront, so I can’t just get them done and pay them back over time. I’m running out of options and I’d like to be able to eat again. Anything you can contribute will make a huge difference in my daily quality of life, not to mention my peace of mind. Thanks for reading. ♥️

No but this is so true. Most other homeschoolers I've met "in the wild" (e.g. not within my own community) were taught using a structured curriculum pre-designed by education experts. Families that rawdog it by inventing their own individual curriculum are kinda rare in the space, although there are those who do it well.