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.