I've no idea what fiber this yarn is made from.  Its fairly soft, looks possibly handspun, but not really sure.  There are short guard hairs in it, but it makes such an interesting yarn.  Not scratchy.  It was inherited with the cormo and the rest of the things when I purchased the Mighty Wolf loom from some friends.  The skeins were such a mess I didn't really know what or how much was there so ended up using my swift and ball winder to help straighten it out.  Guess I better show it to a friend who knows much more than I do.

I've dyed up the rest of the cormo yarn this week.  The new dyes work so beautifully!  Since I wanted to see what they all looked like these yarns are multi-colored but I think as a winter hat or scarf they would be great. 

My Etsy shop is nearly ready to open.  Now that the shop design and payment options are ready I just need to price some fiber batts and yarns ... that's the hard part.  Never knowing what to charge for something I love so much.  I can give them to friends and family but sell ??  Well, empty nest syndrome and all that I guess.

Dolly is still gone.  This week we are making up new flyers with a different picture of her and hanging them all the way up and down the highway where she's been spotted quite a few times.  We still pray she will come home of her own accord, that God will show her the way back.

We've been having a blizzard since last night.  The wind is so strong.  We all thought just maybe(?) winter was over.  The last couple weeks have ranged between 40's and even 50's one day.  Oh well, -12 degrees F isn't as bad as it could be.

The alpacas love it, Bella seems not to mind it ... she was lying out in the pasture near the gate watching for any sign of life in the house this morning.  The goats seem fine, although Snoball, in the pen by herself, was shaking a little this morning when the girls went to feed.  My daughter put in more hay but I think that shed may be too drafty.  We will have to put a tarp of something around the outside when the wind dies down.  She was eating and drinking alright and not crying so I think she's ok for now.  The cashmeres used to shake a lot but never got sick.

The yarn balls are the Cormo I dyed the other day.  I was just needing to see how it would look as a hat or pair of socks.  So soft and pretty.  I like the colors much better mixed together in the balls.  After the 'four-year sox' I finished last year I said I'd never make another pair.  Now I'm not so sure.  We'll see.

Dolly is still missing.  I still get an occasional phone call that someone has seen her.  I think everyone in this area is looking for her.  I just pray she is ok.

We had another cougar sighting yesterday on two of the roads leading up to our driveway.  Called F&W but they won't do anything until damage is done (what does That mean??).  Finally called a referral from that office and he indicated he'd come down if there was a problem.  Hopefully the lion will keep movin' on.

Dolly is nowhere to be found.  The last call from someone was last Sunday, and no sightings since then.  I am praying God will bring her home showing her the way.  Just like us, He shows us the way.  The choice is ours.

I dyed two skeins of the beautiful Cormo yarn I had.  There are several more (8?) to dye and I wanted to see how a new brand of dye worked.  What beautiful vivid colors.  I hand painted the skeins in five bright colors so it looks like something just right for a child or winter cap.  Next time I will be a little more subtle, which is how my dye jobs usually turn out.  These skeins are mill spun 165 yards each 2ply sport weight.  330 yards would certainly be enough for most projects.

Our new spinning group at the community center is getting off to a rather slow start but its fun and certainly worthwhile and I've met some very nice ladies.  We are planning a field trip to Paradise Fibers to check out what interesting fibery stuff they have.  I love that store!

If I didn't tell you before, my 11 year old niece got one B and the rest A's on her semester report card!  Such an improvement.  We are all so pleased with her progress.  A new cell phone for her was promised and received for the good work.

We continue to search for Dolly.  I had a man call last night who had seen her for the last two days in Blanchard.  We drove his road last night in the dark with flashlights, also today for several miles up the road but didn't find her.  We ended up at this person's house and he indicated she was spotted about three miles north of town also.

I'm beginning to think she just doesn't want to come home.  Everywhere she has been seen, she's had to pass somewhere near the farm.  Oh well.  We have done everything we can.

I was able today to work on my etsy shop.  I think I've got just about everything set up for the shop with the exception of something to sell!  There is some beautiful soft Cormo yarn ready for the dye pot so I'm hopeful I can get it in tonight, then let it sit until tomorrow when I can rinse it out.  You all will get the etsy address when its ready to go.

No news isn't necessarily good news, but at least its not bad news.  I've had two more people see Dolly, both in approxi- mately the same place as the first three.

So that lets us know that she is still out there somewhere.  We have had some cold weather but with her full fiber coat, I'm sure it feels pretty balmy to her.   I have talked with many people about her.  Everyone is so nice!  One lady has been praying for Dolly to return, and didn't know who we were.  I met her just by chance on the road tonight.

We have been stopping folks driving down the local roads near our farm and just asking them to please watch for her.  Then they want to know about her and we are off and talking!

Tonight we spent about an hour driving up to the crossroads where she's been spotted and dragging an old pillow case with some of our fragrant poopy goat hay in it.  We still have ice and snow on our roads up here but that stuff is so stinky I'm sure it will not be gone for quite some time.  Dolly is absolutely in love with one of our little wethers, LoverBoy, so I'm hoping it was his that I was able to scoop up and put in the bag.

Thanks to everyone who has been leaving me messages and comments.  I surely appreciate them.  It makes me feel so good to know there are nice people out there who care.  :->  Thank you everybody!

And this is an earlier picture of Dolly playing with Bella when Bella was a puppy.

Just an update ... we talked to a man yesterday after church at a gas station in Spirit Lake.  My daughter asked him if he'd seen Dolly and he said YES!  He had seen her Sat night heading up the big hill towards town.  That's about 7 miles from our house.

Tonight I just got a call from a lady that said she saw Dolly yesterday at about the same time in the very same place.  So my daughter went up there a while ago to sit and wait for Dolly.  I pray Dolly does the same thing for the third night.  And not too late, its just now 7pm.  C'mon Dolly.

I am heart broken tonight.  Our beautiful, faithful old Great Pyrenees Dolly has been missing since Friday Feb 4 around noon.  She escaped from the pasture and trotted down our little dirt road.  She has done this before but always comes back a few hours later.

We've called and called for her.  We hung posters on posts and poles around here and I even stopped at a few houses asking if anyone had seen her.  I called the sheriff in both counties around us, police depts in several neighboring cities.

Anyway, we've done as much as we can.  We have been praying ever since yesterday when she disappeared and prayed together tonight before dinner so we are all hopeful she will come home soon.  I love her so much!  And God is so faithful!  Thank you Jesus.

Our alpacas just love this snowy cold weather.  They will lay out in the pasture when its snowing instead of inside the sheds.  Here is a picture of Apollo, behind him is Diego (one of my first two) and one of the brown boys just behind him, but I can't see who it is. 

They are so sweet.  They're the ideal farm animal I think.  No, we don't eat them.  But we do harvest their beautiful fiber once a year usually in the early spring.  Then they are cool all summer and start getting some length on their coats towards fall. 

One of the things they really like in the summer time is when I get out the hose and squirt their feet and legs.  Sometimes one will get so happy he will stick his entire head in the stream of water, open his mouth and get a nice cold drink.  All I have to do is head towards the water faucet and they are there.

Their fiber is extremely soft and warm.  Some of the most beautiful yarns come from these guys.  Here's a picture of Wasabi's fiber when he was only about a year old.  It was dyed blue and green, spun and plied to about a sport weight yarn.  Haven't made anything out of this yet, but it would certainly make a soft scarf or socks.  It feels like butter.

I have some new ideas for this year as far as using the natural colors of my animals.  I hope they turn out as I imagine them.

My niece had a great time space dyeing her merino / silk fiber she bought with some Christmas money she received.  We used Country Classics dye which don't require any additives other than soaking the fiber in a little Synthropol before dyeing.  The colors were a little tame for her (she likes zebra stripes and hot pink!) but all in all its very pretty. 

I started putting a Verithane finish on her wheel to protect the wood but couldn't find the sandpaper needed, so finally got some yesterday and hope to have the wheel finished by this afternoon.  Being a Kromski Minstrel it has so many little pieces that make it so fancy so it takes a while to get them all coated.  She's anxious to use it so guess I better hurry up.

I started blending some yellow superwash fiber that I don't really like the color of, with some beautiful white Punta.  It needed a little pzazz so some salmon-colored nylon icicle was added in big streaks.  I think it turned out pretty nice.  I wanted to see what it was like so its on one of my student spindles right now.  I love the way its turning out.  Hopefully others will like the batts and try spinning them.

We had our first spinning group the our local community center this Tuesday.  There were three ladies there plus myself.  One was a spinner but its always so much more fun to spin with others.  Its also a great way to discover new techniques.  The other two are using the student spindles and seemed to have fun.  They caught on very quickly and picked out some of the dyed / blended wool samples I brought.  Hopefully there will be more spinners in the future, but for a first time with instruction from me going on, three was quite enough.  Any more might have been too much.

Snow continues to fall in north Idaho and now a freezing rain is predicted after there were many pileups and collisions on our local roads and our one freeway.  Guess its a good day to stay home.  We were supposed to go pick up alpaca feed and then take our remaining two rescue babies up to the shelter in Priest River.  Everything is on hold until at least tomorrow.

What a good day to stay in the do some dyeing!  Already have fiber in soaking that my niece bought with her Christmas money, some merino and silk from Paradise Fibers.  So soft.  She spun a little already and was able to see the beauty of the fibers and the ease of spinning it.  We will do some rainbow space dyeing this afternoon.

Back in October I dyed some fibers for a spinning class I hope to be giving at our local community center.  I showed on that post some bending nylon in the dye pot with some dabs of color applied at random, this picture is after rinsing and on the drying rack.  It can be difficult sometimes to imagine just how the fiber will look once its dried, spun and then incorporated into your project.  That's what is so much fun about this craft ... seeing the final product made from your imagination.  Sometimes I start with what will be a planned project, but what I end up with is entirely different.

We are having a studio and shop day tomorrow.  Who knows what will come out of it.  Maybe a couple of real masterpieces :->   We are supposed to get up to 18" of new snow tonight and tomorrow, so it sure sounds like a good day to stay inside.  This morning's temp was just about -10 degrees so you know who wasn't outside, at least for too long.

There is usually a bright side to most things.  As snow continues to fall off and on here and the outside temps run between -10 and above 20 degrees,  my niece loves it and it doesn't matter how cold.  She was out playing with the dogs a few days ago and made her very first snowman.  We didn't have any carrots for his nose and since the woodstove was already going we couldn't dig for pieces of charcoal for his mouth so we made do with some green candy kisses for his eyes and a stump of broccoli for his mouth.  I thought he was cute.

The pink and white punta & BFL yarn is finished and plyed now.  I actually got two nearly full bobbins of finished yarn.  Today I'm trying to get it measured on the niddy-noddy, weighed and washed to set the twist as they say.  After drying it will be hung with the rest of the hand-spun finished yarns and hopefully end up in my etsy shop.  I've had the etsy a while but never have put anything in there yet.

The tan Polworth with the pink glitz is still on my Sonata wheel so am hoping that will be finished up this week.  Just a little more to spin and then the two bobbins will be plyed together.  Its beautiful but a little coarse for what I like but it may soften up when finished.