Winter Has Arrived

Winter has arrived this week.  Lots of snow followed by a very cold -32C Saturday morning.

I commonly get asked how the alpacas like the winter.  My standard answer is that they much prefer a cold January to a humid, hot August.  Alpacas have a lot of dense fibre on their body, so if they are in good condition, and can get out of the wind, they do fine.  Most have a fibre that is about as long as my fingers on their body.  If I stick my fingers into their side, their body is very warm.

If they kush (lay on their knees) in the straw of the lean-to, they cover any of their bare parts (which is generally just their groin area.   This is Luxor in his man-cave. He is 15 years old and he is in an area with Vivaldi, the youngest male (pictured above).  I keep these gentle guys separate from the breeding males who can intimidate them.  Their man-cave is just a little lean-to built for two so that they can get out of the wind and precipitation.   They still have barn access but they like to be out here during the day.

They drink a lot more water in the winter, because the hay is dry.  Our waterers are heated, so they don't freeze.  You'll notice sparse trails in the snow in the picture of the girls area.  Alpacas really slow down in the winter weather with trails from the hay feeder to the lean-to to the barn and then to the outside waterer.  Alpacas don't like walking off the trails...even if you are coming on the trail carrying a 45 lb bale of hay for them, they will hesitate to make way for you to get by.

The sky is absolutely gorgeous bright and blue on a cold January day.  I'm thankful that my teenager loves to snowblow and plow.  It took her and the hubby several hours on Saturday.   It was a day that I was thankful that I had 5 load of laundry that needed doing...

We are making progress on the circular sock knitting machine!  I use the "Royal WE", because hubby is a gadget guy which has really come in handy while we try to figure this out.

There is a steep learning curve and lots of figuring out.

And I've figured out what acrylic yarn is useful for....(practice tubes).  It's pretty though, isn't it?

Cranking Out of 2011

Another year is coming to a close in a couple days.  If you read my blog entry from last New Year's, you know that I no longer make resolutions.  There's a reason for that.   I don't need anything else to fail at!

So, it gives me great pleasure to show some progress on the antique circular sock knitting machine that I purchased...ahem....three or four years ago!   



In my defense, the manual is a bad photocopy of the instructions from around 1930-40.  Apparently, if you lived during those times, you would have had a neighbour who had one that could show you how to thread the thing!  The lady that I bought this from had not used the equipment.

I dug out the parts and took advantage of the extra day off work plus the good nature of my family to make this yesterday's project.

The key point that I've learned is that you first need to make some netting to hold your weights.  And before that, my handy hubby had to come up with a device to help with the casting on of the thread.  Thank goodness for YouTube...it helped us get to this point.

At the right end, you see what the netting looks like.  It is made with every other needle installed.  The rest is knit with every needle installed.  I used some 2/8 cotton that I had in my weaving stash, so the knit isn't tight like it would be with sock yarn.  We put a knot in the end to hold the weight which kept the tension.  The whole thing went well until we tried to join some real sock yarn to this.

Our next task will be to produce a simple tube with sock yarn.  There's a few steps to learn before a real sock with emerge from this contraption. 

Don't look for an update on this anytime soon.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  2012 - can you believe it?