Allie Pleiter and the real story behind "Bluegrass Easter"

Last time I wrote, I promised you the “true story” behind Bluegrass Easter. It should provide a giggle to your day--I know I’ve told the story a dozen times this month already and it still makes me smile.

I’m a serious knitter. There are miles and miles of yarn in my house, and I’m almost never sitting down without needles in my hands. So, as you can imagine, I’ve become friendly with lots of fiber folk nearby. One of these was the lovely store Esther’s Place in Big Rock Illinois, and its charming owners Donna and Natasha. Aside from the store (which is also a bed and breakfast--can you say weekend getaway?), they also run a small farm nearby with, you guessed it, sheep.

I received an email from Esther’s Place one day last year, asking for prayers for the upcoming lambing season. It seems my friends were in for many more lambs than planned. The reason why? Well, the farm’s one ram had taken his job description seriously. Very seriously. In a shockingly short span of time, our hero managed to get romantic with every single ewe on the farm. Every single one. And ewes often give birth to twins. So the flock was going to do more than double in a short span of time. It’s hard to tell sheep are pregnant until you shear them and get all that wool off them, so surprise pregnancies aren’t than rare. This, though, was on an epic scale.

I ask you, could any knitting romance author--especially one who’d been recently asked to propose an Easter novella--leave such a story alone???

I can’t think of a better farewell to my beloved Kentucky Corners series than to send Middleburg’s control-freak librarian into a similar situation. So my dear knitting Audrey Lupine (which, a reader just told me, is a word that means wolf! How amazing is that?) has a “ca-lamb-ity” of massive proportions to contend with in addition to all of Middleburg’s traditional craziness. Mix in one handsome trying-to-leave-his-practice-behind veterinarian who conveniently moves in next door, and all I had to do was sit back and let the fur fly....er, the fleece fly.

Like I said, I giggle every time I think about it.