Shearing is over for another year

The Alpacazona alpacas are naked once more. Brian and I finished shearing the last of the big boys yesterday. Now I can turn my attention to sorting, skirting and washing fleece. Oh, and I can return to the war against the weeds in the yard. They’ve gotten ahead of us as we’ve been spending most of our free time denuding alpacas.
Plus I won’t feel so guilty when I sit down and work and a project here and there. There’s yarn to be spun, plied and dyed, roving to label, scarves to weave, baskets to shape. The list just goes on and on. At least I’m never bored.

Summer begins

Things are slowly heating up. Literally. We had our first 90 degree day this week. It’s supposed to cool back into the eighties after this weekend, but it’s a temporary reprieve at best. We’ve been busy getting things ready for the long hot summer. The fans have all been cleaned and oiled, the swamp coolers have been checked and reconditioned, and the alpacas are, well, I’m working on getting them sheared. I do my own so it takes a while to get them all done. I’ve got two more girls to go and I did most of Legend. I hope to get the girls finished this weekend and start in on the rest of the boys. Legend will either have to go back to Kathleen looking kind of stupid (I couldn’t get any of his neck or head done) or wait until I either have a team of people to hold him down or a lot of drugs to calm him down. And possibly some drugs to calm me down as well….
Mean while, I’m taking advantage of the rising temps to get back into some solar dying. I did about ten skeins this past weekend. Brian and I took some vacation time and spent the first day and a half just hanging around the house doing chores and generally goofing off. Then we headed up for a couple of nights in the camper. A last little get away before the big shearing push.

Miss B is doing well. She usually spends the twilight hour racing around the fields trying to get Cartigan to play with her. Cartigan seems willing; he just can’t seem to get the rules. Though he spend a great deal of time following her around.

Spring Tucson Shearing Festival

The Spring Tucson Shearing Festival was a success! We’re starting to recognizing faces from past events so it’s like a happy family reunion now. And of course I always like meeting new people, like Sara of “Woolies” (woolies.etsy.com) and “Buster and Boo (busterandboo.etsy.com), who has been helping me work though some of the kinks in my Etsy store. I feel very fortunate to have met someone patient enough to walk me through the technical part of on line selling, especially with my unique inability to grasp anything computerish.
I was pleasantly surprised when Kathy, the hostess of the shearing festival, asked me if I would consider teaching a class on making coil baskets. It’s something totally out of my comfort zone, but I think I might take a stab at it. What’s the worst that can happen? The people taking the class tell me I suck and demand their money back? Ok, well that would be bad, but I would live through it. I think.
After the festival, I ran down to Maynard’s Market to drop off more yarn and socks and found out I should have brought more felted soaps. There was only one left! Guess I’ll have to get busy making some more.

The latest Open House

Wow! We had an Open House at Linda’s (Mesquite Valley Alpacas) this weekend. It started out a bit slow as it was raining pretty hard, but around 11:00 the rain stopped, the sun broke out and it was a beautiful day! People started showing up and kept us hopping right up until four. I think everyone really enjoyed meeting the alpacas and I know they had fun matching up the yarns and rovings to the animals it came from. I brought my camera, but never actually managed to get it out of its case. Oppsie.
Monday, we’ll be back at Linda’s for shearing. We have over 100 alpacas to get done that day. I’ll have Aries, O, and Heilo there. Plus I’m bringing Dante back (Tyche tells me she is tired of his companionship and he can leave now) and I’ll have Linda’s Spirit. Dante will stay behind, but Spirit will come back with my boys.
Fajita and Posie will be leaving as well. Fajita has found a new home and Linda has room now for Posie. I think I’ll miss those two, I got kind of use to having them around, though I’m sure the girls will be just as happy to not have the compitition for hay and fan space this summer.
I started shearing my guys here and got the younger boys done. This week I’ll be working on the girls and maybe Jacko and Sunny.
Jack and Sunny are growing like weeds. Jack has finally discovered the joys of sweet feed and scarfs down his cup full morning and evening. Sunny still has no interest in the feed but where Jack goes, he goes, so he’s got his nose right down there checking out what Jacks eating. Interestingly, Sunny is extremely friendly for a cria. He likes to have his neck scratched and doesn’t seem to mind being touched while he eats. I wonder if it’s because Jack is so tame. Being bottled fed and handled so much while he was sick has made Jack a very friendly alpaca. I wonder if because Jack doesn’t run or get upset when we hold him, Sunny figures why should he? These are pretty intelligent animals, but can they reason like that?
We’ve started halter training Jack. Because of the extensive handling, we started earlier than we normally do. I want it firmly entrenched in Jacko’s head that we are bigger than him and we are in control, not him, before he is actually bigger than me. He tried to chest butt me once, and I put a quick end to that. He is doing pretty good so far and seems to enjoy looking around as we walk around the yard.