In Like a Lion!

A co-worker at the library commented the other night that I didn't have much luck timing my evening shifts with the winter storms.  I've had some 'hold-my-breath-and-pray' rides home at night from work this winter.

However, let me say "I FEEL LUCKY TODAY!".  I'm off work for for 3 days.  We are supposed to receive between 15 to 30 cm of snow by tonight.  It's heavy wet snow that will be hard to shovel, difficult to plow or snowblow.

Walking out to the barn today was tiring.  We are conserving our energy for the hours of snow clearing ahead.



Winter weather is not all bad.  It gives me a day in the house to catch up on some things I like.

Like spinning....

And knitting...

It's a good feeling to have those dear to me inside my cozy home on days like this.

This is my cat Smokey, who has discovered his new favourite spot on a table piled with sock knitting yarn that is beside my computer in my craft area.

He 'works' with me and if I'm using the mouse...he takes the opportunity to hold my hand.  How cute is that?

Do you think my cat might be jealous of the mouse?

I have recently referred to myself as a "dog person" who is currently without a dog.  Smokey is definitely trying to fill that void in my heart.  I feel the love.

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?

December Trials...

The snow has finally arrived!  Oh, sure...it's pretty.



 But why couldn't it just fall on the lawn and not the driveway?

Last week was a fun week of white-knuckle driving...black ice, then deep snow, frozen mounds of slush on the highway.  (Note to self:  if I'm worried about getting out of the driveway, I should perhaps stay home.)

Winter has arrived and, if history repeats itself, it will stay for 5 months.  I better get used to it.
It's time for me to look in the mirror and say "Suck it up, buttercup". 

Here's my latest handspun, handpainted, homegrown baby alpaca yarn on my umbrella swift.

The handpainting or handdying process makes a mess of the skein organization, so usually I will wind the skein from the swift to either a ball winder or a skein winder.  In this case, I needed to put the skein on the skein winder in order to measure the yarn.



I was lucky to buy this old skein winder off of a friend who salvages old fibre arts equipment, fixes it and resells.  Along with the swift, it's a valuable tool of my craft.  While my skein is on the skein winder, I can figure out how much yarn I have in my skein and from their determine how it compares to yarn standards in terms of yards per pound or meters per 100g skein. (yes, I have a metric to imperial conversion calculator!)  This is important to know if it will suit a weaving or knitting project, and whether I will have enough to complete the project.  





These are my two newest skeins. 

I can usually achieve a nice balanced handspun yarn.  This latest spinning project was a challenge.  I was using up some wonderfully soft cria fleece that unfortunately had a lot of second cuts from shearing and VM (vegetable matter like hay and twiggy things) in it.  I wouldn't sell that fleece because of that but the fibre itself was way too lovely to throw out (after all, my little cria spent a whole year growing it).  When you start with 'problem' fleece, even with careful preparation, it's hard to end up with rovings that just glide through your hands at the spinning wheel.  While spinning, I had to keep stopping to pick out clumps of crud.  Then, I decided to use my electric spinner, which I am still getting used to, to ply it.  I ended up with yarn that almost has the appearance of a boucle yarn...not what I planned but I think it will still create two shawls or large scarves for a couple of people that I love.  I'm excited to start those knitting projects.

Winter Bones

It's February! More sunny days and longer daylight hours are noticeable. I notice in Facebook that many friends are posting spring and summer pictures to give us all hope. I was listening to the CBC radio program about gardening the other day. The expert was telling us how to plan your garden, so that even the 'winter bones' of your garden are appealing. Well, I'll have to work on that. However, it did make me look at things differently while walking back from the barn.

Sumac in the winter is quite lovely.
My sumac study didn't last long before I noticed that some wild critter (either a fox or a martin, likely) had dug up a dead muskrat that had been buried in the snow. Ahhhh, the 'winter bones' of my rural garden need some refining, for sure.

I have been busy with all things and accomplishing nothing, it seems. I hope to have some finished projects to show you soon.

I was invited to give a presentation at the Powassan Public Library at the end of January. The topic began as 'yarn', but soon transformed into an evening to expose new or previous knitters to many possibilities of knitting with the new fibres and colours available. A couple friends really helped out by bringing their great sample garments. Obviously, I am biased with my alpaca yarn, but I did want to showcase all the possibilities. We also explored some of the environmental and fair trade considerations when buying yarn. Thanks to a friend made through Ravelry.com, I was able to show slides of some very funky wearable art made with novelty art yarn. I was pleased with the large turnout and hope that the evening helped the library to start a knitting program in this community.

I shared a few pictures of harvesting alpaca for my yarn. The audience loved these "before, during and after" pictures, as usual.

A good friend, Suzanne, and I have been planning a project for well over a year. I had some black alpaca yarn that was more suitable for weaving material than knitting. Suzanne and I had decided that there was probably enough there to weave two black jackets if we put them on one loom. We've talked a lot about this over many months. Suzanne grew tired of talking about it. So, we've picked out patterns. We've consulted with Ralph, our weaving guru. We've gone shopping for some colour accent yarn (of course, after shopping, I discovered the perfect Noro novelty yarn in my stash). We've planned the warp (apparently in a garment, even random colour needs to be planned carefully). We made the warp. Suzanne is weaving the material at her apartment.

I am really looking forward to having something made from alpaca handcrafted by my friend Suzanne. Besides being an accomplished weaver/artist, Suzanne is a very special person in my life.
Alpaca are a huge part of my life. This garment will be so special.

Suzanne is very focussed on this project. I think it might be consuming her! We have already discussed hand-crafted buttons for this garment.


Here's a picture of Aurelia. I've shown you pictures of her beautiful fleece before. She actually is a brilliant white although the picture looks like she is fawn. I'm sure it is just the overcast lighting, because she couldn't possibly be that dirty.

O Tannenbaum!

O Christmas Tree! It's fake - can you tell? I promise I will never buy another one...well, maybe if it comes with the lights already installed. 10 more days until Christmas. Our community public school had their Christmas concert tonight. The countdown is on.

Here's a spinning project that I've been wanting to try for some time now. I handspun the alpaca\merino blend singles and now I am plying them together with a polyester thread strung with beads. I'm finding it kind of tricky to hold the beaded thread in one hand to pop a bead off into the yarn while plying. The tendency is to hold back on the thread itself, so it is much tighter than the singles yarn. I'm thinking that the colour beads on the white yarn looks kind of clownish, but perhaps it will make a nice edging on a scarf or shawl someday. Come to think of it, it looks a little Christmas-sy itself.






Our chickens are not loving the winter...although they do venture out of the chicken house to get fresh air.

















The rooster Big Red is a handsome devil, isn't he?
The hen's name is Elsie.

People ask me whether alpacas like the Northern Ontario winters. Well, they do like the cold weather of December better than the heat and humidity of our typical August. They need shelter from the wind and from getting too wet, but other than that, they do very well in our climate. Today was a mild winter day, but when the sun started going down, it got cooler. In the twilight - which now happens about 5:30pm - I could see this 6 month old weanling and another running about playing and pronking. It's fun to watch.

Snow!!!

Yes, it has been a while since I've written. It's that time of year...things are busy for the shop and in life.

I've had two open houses at the farm store and participated in a one day craft sale. I also turned a year older during all this (if anyone asks...39...really;)).

Saturday was my second open house. The traffic out to the farm is dependent on the weather. And boy, did it snow Friday and Saturday morning. Here's the view of the barn area from my back sunroom. Luckily, the snow stopped late morning and the sun came out. In fact, two of my regular customers came out on their way to go kayaking. (May I suggest alpaca underwear?)



We've had a very mild fall. On the good side, the alpacas were grazing in the pastures up until last week. On the bad side, with the ground not frozen, the barnyard was getting pretty mucky.
Like others who don't ski or snowmobile, I generally don't look forward to seeing the white stuff in this quantity. But with the snow came colder temperatures at night, which makes the ground more solid in the barnyard.

Another plus for the snow fall, is that Gary and Amy got to test out 'Zelda'....as she has been named by Amy. We bought this beater which was sitting dead at some hunt camp outside of New Liskeard this summer. Gary and Amy have been fixing it up for a farm vehicle. It helped us gather fallen wood in the fall and now, with the plow on the front, will make the driveway cleanups more comfortable than the tractor with the snowblowing attachment.

I drive a PT Cruiser year round. Last week, I invested in studded winter tires for the first time in 26 years of owning vehicles. I think it was money well spent.


Here's a picture of my shop. I carry alpaca based yarns and finished products, all from Canadian farmed alpaca and everything is made in Canada. The yarn, especially, is getting somewhat picked over at this time of year. I'll be looking at buying fibre from another farm after New Years', so that I can get some milled yarn ordered ahead of our farm's spring shearing.
There is a pretty big turn around time and effort to turn fleece from the alpacas back into yarn, even if it is milled. Shorn fleece needs to be handpicked for removing vegetable matter, sorted into grades appropriate to end use and by colour variation. This is bagged and labelled. Then it is either brought or shipped to the mill, for discussion with the mill personnel for desired blend, meterage and twist. There is a waiting list at the mill, typically of six months or more. When I get the yarn back from the mill, there is often washing required, sometimes dyeing. The meterage is checked and for knitting, a swatch to check the gauge. Then labelling before stocking on the shelves. There is a lot of hand-work and skill that goes into putting quality yarn on the shelves, whether it is handspun or millspun.

This little fellow is Buddy, our daughter's dwarf male rabbit. I found out I was allergic to rabbit fur while blending angora with alpaca for my own handspun. That blend makes such a very lovely soft yarn that I shall probably continue to blend it and spin it, but only when I can work outside. Some things are worth the itchy eyes. Just like 'Buddy hugs'.