Monday, April 28, 2008

Free time ahead!



Whew! I feel like I’ve been going non-stop for the last eight weeks. Well it’s finally all behind us. The last alpaca has been sheared, I have learned the secrets of spinning novelty yarn and the Pima County 4H fair is a pleasant memory.
We even have the rugs back from Texas, now. They came out beautifully, but then, I expected nothing less from Ingrid’s.
These 3’ x 5’ rugs are 100% natural, made from the fleeces of our own alpacas and woven right here in the Southwest. They have a delightful southwest theme and would fit right in, in any ranch house or cabin. We’ll be getting those up on our website soon.
The spinning class was quite the success, with many “ah-ha” moments. I’m anxious to try my hand at some more novelty yarn and have been busy clearing the back log of spinning I’ve promised other people.
I’ve also been playing around with some different dye techniques and hopefully will be incorporating those fibers into some spinning and weaving projects.But mostly, I’m going to take a deep breath, relax, and enjoy a little down time for a day or two.

Monday, April 14, 2008

shear magic!

Shearing time is upon us again! Friday we where joined by three other farms as a local shearer went to work on our alpacas (thanks Paul!). Of course I meant to get pictures, but, uh, well I forgot, so no visual aids for this blog. I’ll post some post-shearing photos of the gang in while.
We just had Paul shear out three yearling boys, as we may want to show their fleeces this year and he gets the fleece off so much prettier than we do. Saturday and Sunday, Brian and I went to work on the rest of the herd. We decided this year to just take our time and do a couple of animals each day and spread the shearing out over several weekends. We managed to get all the boys finished and about half the girls, and still had time to go out for lunch on Sunday. Next weekend we’ll finish up the girls and maybe get the crias done. Then it’s skirting and sorting and deciding what fleece will end up as what finished product! I love this time of year.

In between all this, I’ve been busy with my goal of clearing out the backlog of fleeces from previous years. My plan is to not have any stray old fleeces lying around with no purpose. To that end, I’ve been getting a batch ready to send out to be made into socks. Hopefully we’ll get those back in time for this years holiday season. I also will be sorting through all those bags of seconds that have been piling up, in the hopes of getting some rugs made. The test run is just about ready and we should be seeing the first rugs back in the next couple of weeks. I can’t wait.
We’re also exploring a possible felting project. And of course, we’ll be spinning up as many of the ultra fine royal baby fleeces as we can!

Thursday, April 3, 2008



Another exciting day at the farm, Reba and Zoe returned home from breeding. I had every intent on isolating them from the rest of the hers for a few weeks, but, well, it was a long trip and I had a major headache, and well, I forgot. So much for bio-security.

Adama was fascinated by Reba and spent the whole evening chasing her, much to Reba’s dismay. Though by this morning it was more a mutual run rather than a chase, as Reba, Zoe and the three crias where off on a full out pronk at 4:00 this morning.

Just so you know, no one, including alpacas, should have that much energy that early in the morning!