I love a contest!

I just got Georgia Mountains new newsletter, and I'm thrilled to see that their partners, Amia Yarn Company is having a contest! I love a contest. All you need to do is go to their blog (http://knitwitchblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/contest-time-again.html) and it will instruct you on how to enter the drawing up to THREE times.
Whoohooo, prizes.

Ok, must go finish entering. Good luck everybody!

Another weekend behind us. It was a most productive weekend, fleece wise. Pat and Linda came out on Sunday and we spent the morning out in the shop working away. It’s always more fun to work with company, though Pat was rather quick to point out that it was the most humid day of the year. But we’ll let her grumble, because she brought us lunch! Yeah Pat!

I ‘m still playing with dyes and techniques. I solar dyed some yarn for a scarf project I’ve got in the back of my head. Then I put some white batts in the exhaust and set those out to cook in the sun. I also got some onion skin dye started and picked a bucket full of prickly pears to get a dye started in pink. The prickly pear dye is fermenting in my laundry room. It will be interesting to see how that turns out.

I have a new scarf on the loom. All I need to do is press the last one and it’s done. Plus I’ve finished spinning the silk that will be the warp for the guanaco and silk scarf I plan to start when this current one is finished.

The weekend ended with a pretty good size monsoon storm rolling through. Of course I forgot I had a fleece out on the drying rack until the very last minute, which had me and Brian running out in the rain and dust to get it into the shop before it blew all the way to Mesa. Oh well, I may have to rewash that one.

Happy July! Summer is well and truly here, as we've been at over 110 degrees for the last half of June. Temperatures are starting to come done now as the humidity is increasing. Which can only mean one thing: Monsoon is HERE! Last years was one of the driest on record, so lets hope for a little rain this year.

We took off for the long weekend and headed up to Northern Arizona, to a place called Clint Wells. For those of you that think Arizona is just one giant desert, I have proof that there are wet, green areas. You just have to go looking for them. We spent an afternoon playing down in Clear Creek catching crayfish. The crayfish have taken over much of the riparian habitats in Arizona and are actually killing off native species of fish, so we have the Az Dept of Game an Fish's blessing to remove them from the streams. Which we did. And then we ate them. Tasty.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, the alpacas are hanging out by the fans and swamp coolers. They get belly hosings a couple of times a day to help with keeping them cool. Though some times I wonder if we aren't actually making it worse as each time they get wet, they run right out into the sun and start sun bathing. Everybody except Vela, one of our little borders has discovered the fun of playing in the hose. As far as Vela is concerned it's nothing but a giant green snake spitting venom at her. Make a mud puddle, however, and she runs right over and starts to do a happy dance in it. I have really got to catch in video since it's hysterical to watch. She literally gets in the middle and just starts stomping all four feet making the mud splash all around her. Kids.

The only other excitement around here was finding Aries in with all the girls this morning. I'm guessing her rolled under the fence since all the gates were still latched. I don't think he got into any trouble, but at 17 months old, it's not impossible. Um, hey Linda, remember all those open girls you left over here....?

Happy Tuesday

We're back. It's been a rough couple of weeks with the tragic loss of two of our girls. It threw us down for awhile, but we're a resilient bunch around here. I took a little of my own advise and have been spending a great deal of time with the alpacas. These are some of the most therapeutic animals on the face of this plant, in my own humble opinion. You simply can't stay down when you're around them, especially when one of the crias has discovered your toes and believes they must be some sort of exotic treat. Alpacas may have no top teeth, but it still smarts when one nips you.

I've also thrown myself into sorting fleeces. I've only got 30 days left to finish skirting show fleeces. I've got seven more to go between mine and Linda's. Then I've got to get them boxed up and off to the ACFNA fleece show in Colorado.

And we have a new product that we've been designing packaging for. Introducing.... Alpaca Poo Tea! We've been accepted on a nation wide ag site, Localharvest.org, and have submitted our request to sell this wonderful all natural fertilizer. We should know in a couple of days if we're in. Plus we'll get it on our own website with the next up date which should be ready to go up next month.

Well, that's all for now.

introducing J.J.

So, we have another mouth to feed. And judging from his girth, that may be no easy task. This stray, now dubbed J.J., showed up last week. All our attempts at finding his owner have been amazingly unsuccessful, which was a bit surprising as he obviously had been well cared for. After two nights of sleeping on our front porch, Brian took pity on him and into the house he came.
There where some minor jealousy issues from Molly, but once she figured out J.J. had no interest in sitting on my lap, she accepted his presence. Daisy never cared one way or the other what the new dog was doing. She is supremely confident in her position as queen over all. For the first couple of days, J.J. just ignored the alpacas, but Molly has now shown him that oh-so-fun game of charging the fence to make the alpacas run. Great, now I have to attempt to train another one that this isn’t a game we like to play. I’ve only been marginally successful in getting Molly to stop. I had better luck with just desensitizing the alpacas to her attempts. Now they only run from Molly when they feel like it, but J.J. is obviously a much more vicious and frightening creature. Besides, he barks while he’s running, they’re not use to that.

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.

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!