See, I have been spinning

First I had to ply some nice yarn to empty my bobbins. The natural oatmeal with flecks of medium brown is a soft, smooshy 2 ply shetland with about 2oo yards of yarn. I also had about 80 yards of lilac lace weight yarn spun from roving I got at Serenity Farms. Cary raises wonderful Corriedale sheep and I've never been dissappointed with fleece or roving I've gotten from her.

Next, it was treat time! I stripped the roving into pieces about as thick as my thumb and divided it into two piles approximately the same weight and started spinning. It's going to make a thick fingering, not quite sport weight and and I'm planning on plying it with a similar single of white alpaca. When I sampled just the 2 ply, the colors almost looked like I was making John Deere yarn and while that's not a terrible thing, it isn't what I wanted. By adding the white single it broke it up and I still had the colors that looked like sunshine or a field of sunflowers.
I'm putting it in to soak then letting it dry while I run to the feed store. Hopefully I'll have a new knit scarf up soon.

December Swap Goodies

Let me tell you, Leann from Enchanted Hues has some luscious roving! She knew my favorite colors and dyed this roving perfectly for me. I won't be online long, I just have to go spin.
Thanks Leann!

Pictures of my swap gifts from Val!

This is such wonderfully soft wool!
and my wretched dog tore into the package!!
Bad Dog!
Thankfully I can still spin it, I just won't get the pleasure of
spinning from the delightful little bundles that Val prepared for me.
A few of them were still intact so I know what a great job she did
but lots of my soft corriedale is mixed with Husky fluff!

Here are the rest of the goodies :)
Do you see the unassuming jar of body cream in the center of the braid??
This is some of the nicest stuff! Thank You Val!!
and the baggie to the side is
Angora bunny fluff. YUMM!

See what happened when I finally left to run errands?

This little guy was waiting in the nursery pasture when I got home. So I run inside to grab the cria kit for iodine - and the camera - and head back out to the barn.

Mom was checking him out while everyone got to know the new kid

Autumn, you did good. Isn't he cute??

Wait a minute, did I get this wrong??

No, it turns out Glow has nose and toes showing too and I'm thinking "Oh my, why does this always happen when Del is on the road?" so we shift gears, put the camera away for a bit and focus on Glow and her delivery. It becomes obvious very quickly that we need some help and I'm incredibly thankful that we live so near the University of Missouri! The vet and a couple of students were out here in just a few minutes. There were a few tricky problems with the cria's position and I am ever so grateful they were able to save Glow, however the cria didn't make it.
I'm skipping the delivery pictures, and will just leave you with this,

This little guy has nursed from both Glow and Autumn and Autumn seems content to share him with Glow. We still have one more llama due and I'm hoping for an easy delivery and peace in the pastures.

Look who's keeping me company

The poodle is Vivi, next is Bubba and in the back is Jake. They keep me company most of the time. Sometimes they're troublesome but we get through it. The picture is courtesy of my granddaughter. Occaisionally she shows up here, she's my helper around the farm.

Oohh La la!! See what was in my mailbox!

I can hardly wait to play with this yummy fiber! It's such soft merino and a merino tencel blend I may see if I like it blended into batts with some of my alpaca or just spun up then plied with some alpaca. The possibilities are almost endless.

It's Fiber Swap Time!!

Here's a peek at the wool that I'm carding up for my first swap partner. On some of it I dyed the locks while I was scouring it, and some is left natural. There's a little Corriedale, some Cormo, and some of our Alpaca and our Shetland. Just a pinch of this and a handful of that... from the bags of goodies in the studio.

With a little teasing and flicking I start feeding the carder.

After the first round of carding I decided to layer it and blend it one more time.

I sure do hope she likes these!

I'm pestering the mail carrier these days looking forward to my package too.

Do you love autumn?

It's about my favorite time of year. This is the view from my window next to the computer. Soon we'll have the alpacas in the pasture just on the other side of the tree and I'll be able to enjoy them for a while too.

Home with Quinn and Alicia

Sorry this is so fuzzy. Alicia and Kristy both seem to keep moving ;) I have some great help with the alpacas these days! We'll be moving Alicia into the boy alpaca pen later today because she's still well under a year old and I want to set her up to succeed. Keeping her with the females when it's cria season just isn't the best plan.
Now that Quinn is here to guard the sheep, I'm able to move them out into further pasture. They'll still be somewhat close to the house for a few weeks, we're not far from the Missouri River and have seen some flooding recently which is pushing the wild life a little closer to the pastures .
This is the picture I see most often when I look out the window. I can barely make a noise and Quinn looks up to make sure it's just me. I love these new additions to the farm!

Quinn and Alicia have arrived

This is Quinn, trying to get comfortable for the night. Can you see how tall he is? He was sharing floor space with Alicia and another litter mate that was traveling part of the way with us. I have to tell you, if you ever thought about getting a large guard dog for your farm, you won't go wrong by calling Jackie Church at Windance Farms! These dogs are WONDERFUL!

They travelled like pro's and had wonderful manners. It didn't take hardly any time for them to learn to get their leash clipped on and follow us where we needed to go, then hop back into the truck and let us unclip their leashes.

But the real treat was getting home.

Bye Bye Susie

You'll be heading to your new home soon.

I Love Spring

Can you see the turkey? just to the right of the little cedar tree, he's really big. This is the field out back of the barn, I'm really bad about estimating distances but I know he was at least 50 yards from me. I guess he was feeling pretty safe in our field, I generally don't allow hunters here so even though it was turkey season he still strolled around the field like he owned the place.

I just love it when the redbuds are in bloom, the mayapples are up and the pastures get green. Soon everything will be lush and the dogwoods will be blooming with the peonies not far behind.

If anybody knows what this plant is, please leave me a comment. The leaves remind me of a slow growing, variegated mint but I've never seen these flowers before. It's really happy under a big old elm tree. I'd love to know what it is.

New Year's Day on the Farm

Sorry, no pictures of this adventure. We found out early in 2008 that Chocolate Bar had figured out how to open the gate latch. He's very talented with his horns. I'm hoping he can't figure out how to get the new carabiners off. Yes, plural, he also generously opened the gate for the girls.

I looked out the office window and what did I see? 6 sheep wandering around the orchard, exploring the new space. They were quite content and if they weren't so close to a place with no fence between them and the road, I probably wouldn't have been so concerned. As it was, we all grabbed our coats and boots and split up. My granddaughter and I headed to the road to come between them and any traffic, while my husband headed to the barn for a little pan of oats.

I barely had time to get to the driveway, much less the road, when I saw the sweetest sight. A nice single file line of sheep following my husband into the girls fence. Once they were all in, it wasn't too hard to get Largo and Chocolate Bar and move them back into their own pen.

I knew we were completely smitten with these little cuties when, even as we were working to get them back in the fence, we were laughing about how cute they are and how much we love them. I've worked with farm animals off and on since I was a child helping my parents and I had never before enjoyed a day when the livestock got out. Something about the difference between a sheep that I can pick up and a 1000 lb cow trampling the landscaping around the house . . .
Give me a little Shetland sheep any day!

Now it's off to the studio to spin up some yarn for that hat I promised to make.