Before I start whining about how I am NOT ready for the 2007 Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival - May 5 & 6, a couple of updates on previous topics:
When we last checked in on alpaca Galadriel (Glad for short) who used to be one of my girls but is now one of Sue n Judy's girls at Wildwood Alpacas she was well, there's no polite way to say this, Big-As-A-House.
But our Gladdie came through with a super-cute little boy! Good girl Glad! Notice how she's saying, "Hey, Girlfriend! - Stay away from my cria or you're looking at some serious spit in the face!" Glad is a good, over-protective mother and some of us can relate to that! Does the face spit technique work on too-old-boys who want to date your 9th grade daughter?
Sweetie, the cranky horse, a previous blogging topic, is now not cranky at all (OK not cranky for HER.) Her suspensory ligament is great and here she is taking a well deserved nosh on the fresh spring grass while her adoring owner (me) loves up on her. Us middle aged gals have to stick together whether 4 or 2 legged. Just because we don't bounce back from the injuries as quickly as we used to doesn't mean we're out to pasture yet.
Beth (my neighbor and friend's) horse boarding place is really perfect and they take great care of the horses. Just make sure you don't turn your back on those barn cats. They will get in your car OR your locker if you give them half the chance. I once drove home with one by accident.
Beth's place is called, Emerald Hills Farm and we joke that the motto should be "Crouching Horse - Hidden Cat." If you are ever in need of horse boarding near Mt. Airy, Maryland, you could NOT do better than her place. Click Here Emerald Hills Farm
But enough fun with our animals! We have to start stressing out about the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I can't believe it's less than 2 weeks away and I don't have my inventory done OR most of my merchandise tagged. I finished as many hand spun alpaca things as I can for this year - not as many as I planned but, Oh well. And I still have to read Janet Szabo's book, "Aran Sweater Design" so that I won't look like a total dunce in her class next week. I often find that I'm much dumber at picking up patterns, knitting math and techniques, etc. than the rest of my classmates in these Festival seminars so I have to cheat by reading the book before class.
As usual, I will be selling a lot of handspun and hand knit alpaca hats. I feel that, along with animals, warm hats and socks are the basic keys to happiness in life. Here are some of my creations for this year:
I will also be selling off a lot of my excess hand spinning and fleece processing equipment including a spare mother-of-all for an Ashford Traditional Wheel that I don't even remember acquiring.
You can see a lot of the stuff that I plan to sell this year in my Booth, Barn 6, Booth 6 ("Three Farms Alpaca") HERE
Even if you don't want to buy anything,
COME BY AND SAY HI!
if you get to the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival!
PS> My teenage daughter is running the Sheep Poster Contest this year and pretty worried about whether she'll get enough entries. If you know a kid who may be interested, there are ribbons and trophies in it and it's free. Don't mention that you read the blog - we don't want any appearance of improper judging. Just enter the SHEEP POSTER CONTEST It's easy.
See you there.
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Well, more fallout from the Wall Street Journal article about alpaca breeding. The author makes some very silly comparisons about ostriches and tries to make out that most alpaca breeders are lawyers and doctors looking for tax breaks. Since I was too lazy to write a rebuttal myself, I am linking to a very smart, funny rebuttal article written by my good friend, Ingrid Wood
Ingrid's Answer to the Wall Street Journal Alpaca Article
Ingrid and I often call ourselves the "mean girls" of the alpaca biz because we don't take any "stuff" from anyone including YOU Wall Street Journal girl! Try doing just a little research honey! You could have easily found people who are selling and using their alpaca fiber if you'd wanted to write a more balanced article. Take some pride in your work for goodness sakes! We do.
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I find myself a little whiny lately due to the fact that I have no alpaca babies to watch in my field, jumping and running like crazy things, but my alpaca friends keep me well supplied - Bless them every one. Above is a photo sent by Amanda with the title, "Happy Easter Bunny." What a cute bunny.
Another very good alpaca pal, Sue Hammer, sent a photo of two of my old girls as big as houses, reclining dispiritedly on the ground, too pregnant and tired to bother getting on their feet to eat. Poor babies!
Don't they look bleak? Hang in there Pinka & Glad, you're almost there!
I do have to confess, though, that Tom and I spend a shocking amount of time childishly repeating to ourselves, "We don't have to shear this spring!" No sore backs and clogged sinuses! No giant, 800 milligram tablets of Motrin! No 80 degree day for sweaty, sticky shearing followed by a freezing 30 degree day with snow and accusing glares from the shivering alpacas.
Good / Bad
So life is mostly good, but not all good. I got another positive comment about the cranky fleece article - this one from a lady living in Germany who said, "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" and some other nice stuff. That's good! If you read this article, one of the things that I complained about was large alpaca farms who tell everyone that they can't be bothered using their own alpaca fleece. This week, one of those very people was quoted in the Wall St. Journal as saying that very thing. BAD - Very BAD! Here's a link to the article.
Wall Street Journal Alpaca Article
Another bad thing? people who have nothing better to do than put dumb comments about Job Hunting in Australia and Viagra and other, worse things on other people's blogs. The reason that I do not allow comments on this blog any longer is to avoid these "link spammers" and other web rats. That's also the reason that my counter total is only 683, it was reset when I updated to the new and "more secure" blogging software. If you have your own blog, be careful of these hacker / criminals! They are Bad! Check your comments and files for break-ins often, BEFORE they junk up all your web hosting space.
While I was doing my Nancy Drew, super-sleuth thing, hunting down the links of these hackers, I was checking many of the statistics for this blog and website to see who is linking to them. I did not find any hacker type links but I did find, inexplicably, a lady in the Netherlands whose knitting blog, Life n' Knitting links to my web site. This is in Dutch but some of it can be translated.
I was all set to like this Dutch person who seems to knit a lot of beautiful things with alpaca, but then I looked more closely at her super, amazingly, astonishingly perfect knitting, so now I hate her! Just kidding but, look at this knit, lace shawl! Yikes! Is she a Borg or what? No human did that knitting!
Also found a link to me from a Saudi Arabian site but, since I cannot read Arabic, I have no idea what it says. I do speak Spanish and I am not totally ignorant so I know that Azucar (sugar), Almohada (pillow), Ojala (I hope/pray that) and Alfombra (carpet) are supposedly Arabic words that made it into Spanish with the Moors. Thanks Moors! because I like my pillow, carpets and sugar PRETTY WELL, especially the sugar. If you DO speak Arabic (and English), I'd love to know what this web site or blog is about. Can you tell me? Be careful though, in case it IS a bad web site owned by hackers.
As I mentioned before, you'll have to e-mail me since there are no comments allowed on this blog. You can find me e-mail address on My Website
Two other good things? finished the set of hand spun alpaca hat & flip top mittens that I will sell at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival (Barn 6, Booth 6). See how willingly my daughter models them?
And, Mr. & Mrs. Mallard have moved into the pond in my backyard for the spring. I love ducks! They are not alpaca related but, if you have a farm, you have to have a pond (fire insurance) and, if you have a pond, why not have ducks? These are the little things that make the farm life so nice.
This coming Sunday is the ABC Show in New Jersey. If you live around there and want to go, get the info. from their website, Alpaca Heritage Events
If you get to the show, say Hi to Ingrid, Yvette and the "other Kate" aka "Kate 2" from me, "Kate 1."
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Second cuts that had to be grabbed out of drum carder
I was feeling a bit mean for having put a cranky article up on my website and asking people to read this instead of all of them contacting me for ideas about what to do with their alpaca fleeces. (See previous post on this blog.) So I was super happy to get two positive e-mail responses to the cranky article. One of them, from a nice couple named Tim and Tammy started out with the paragraph below:
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I have just finished reading Alpaca Fleece Sales Reality Check. THANK YOU!!!! This is one of the most straightforward pieces of information we have heard or read since looking into the alpaca business 4 years ago.
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Wow! I am thrilled that someone felt that this article was useful to them and didn't get mad at me for being (gulp,) "too straightforward." Thank you Tim and Tammy for taking the time to give this feedback because, whenever I get too blunt in my articles, I always imagine 100 people all thought bubbling at once, "I wish she'd shut up!" You guys made my day!
Speaking of blunt articles, this is the time of year that I always think about shearing. This is the first spring in years that Tom and I have no exhausting alpaca shearing schedule to fit in between cria births and spring alpaca show preparations. Boo hoo! Which is not to say that we are not getting calls asking for shearing anyway. So, here is a link to a shearing advice article of mine that lives on the website of the Alpaca Heritage Events Inc.
Shearing Article
Luckily, I can always count on my lovely alpaca friends to send me photos of their cute alpaca babies and/ or their shearing day. Here is a wonderful one of my old girl, "Pinka" and her son Champ sent by friend and Mac Computer goddess, Sue of Wildwood Alpacas in Virginia. Shearing is a little scary so, of course, you are going to need to nurse from Mom afterwards to cheer yourself up. This guy is trying to duck under there for a little milk therapy.
See why we all call this girl Pinka? She's totally pink under that luscious fleece. Sue says that Pinka gave her a "withering stare." Laugh out loud, I know exactly the Pinka look she means!
The one thing I still have here is my remaining un-spun fleeces lurking forlornly behind my spinning chair in my little spinning room.
I am in full production mode now, processing a leftover part of a Cherfleece on the drum carder,
spinning a recently processed Snowman fleece and knitting up the yarn from the previously mentioned Jezebel fleece. The photo at the top of this entry illustrates WHY we should try to avoid second cuts during shearing. These were picked out of the roving I was making with the Snowman fleece. No big right? Wrong, because the drumcarder is ouchy and pointy and I always get little annoying cuts on my fingers and knuckles if I have to pull these off of the drum carder! It's better to keep them from happening in the first place. If you look closely at the photo below, you'll see some second cuts embedded on the scary, spikey drum. (Purists! Yes, I DO know that the smaller drum is more properly referred to as the "licker in" but how many non-spinners know that?)
I loved doing the snowman fleece because he has great length! The shorter staple length fleeces are a pain to drum card but this little guy produced more than 5 inches. Yet another thing they don't measure in the show ring (staple length) but it really matters to spinners.
Here is the Snowman himself, having a fun day playing in the snow. Don't get me started on the "blue-eyed white" controversy please! These guys are not usually allowed to breed but, who cares? This guy had a gorgeous fleece and sweet as pie personality. There's no shortage of grunting, testosterone crazed breeding males anyway. Look at that cute, baby boy face!
More often than not, as I go through the fleece bag and continue drum carding, I will run into a piece or two that is NOT blanket. People sometimes ask me at fleece shows, "How do you KNOW that that isn't blanket?!?" You just get used to the way each one looks after a while and even though they can't see it, it is as obvious as can be if you've looked at a thousand fleeces. Here is the NOT BLANKET piece I found in Snowman's fleece, placed next to a piece that IS blanket. See the difference? It's not that hard.
Of course, you cannot do this work without the proper musical accompaniment to get you in that fiber goddess mood. Today's musical selection, the soundtrack from Rob Roy. Excellent spinster lady music. Check out the cutting edge stereo equipment! Twenty-somethings, if you've never seen that thing at the top, it's called a "turntable" and it plays, "records!"
Soon, the entire fleece has been reduced to little, spinnable rovings and the fleece bag is empty - YAY! This bucket represents less than half of the rovings from the entire fleece.
meanwhile, back in knitting world, I finished the gift for the friend I mentioned in this post , a hat spun and knit from her old girl Jezebel mixed with some purple yarn spun up from a wool/silk blend.
You may have figured out by now that I'm not a dressy-girl spinner or knitter. I like to be warm and I like my garments to have that rustic (some might say dorky) feel.
Also made another crazy hat from Jezebel's fleece and a remnant of pink handspun yarn left over from a spun up fleece of, who else, Pinka. (Okay, I did add a little dye to pinken it up a bit.)
This is one of the dilemmas of all handspinners, It takes so much effort to process a raw fleece, spin up the fleece into yarn and/ or ply it, that you hate to throw these small, leftover yarn balls away. I keep a little collection of them that I use for stripes or other decorative touches when knitting.
Next project, matching flip top mittens for the black and pink hat. I plan to sell this set at the MD Sheep & Wool Festivalalong with the drum carder pictured above and a used Ashford Elizabeth spinning wheel. If you're interested, come see me at Three Farms Alpaca Booth, Barn 6, Booth 6.
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