Yeaa, Christmas is next week.  I can't believe how quickly it is coming.  We celebrated Christmas last Saturday because my niece who lives with us was leaving to spend the real Christmas with her parents and other family members.  I got in the spirit so much,  I'm not sure I can do it again next weekend.  I think I ate too much.  Phew!

My daughter has been ill, so I haven't been spending much time at spinning and weaving.  Actually I haven't touched any of it for at least two months.  I've just got to get back into it again.  Probably right after the holidays.

Because my daughter has been so sick, I decided to rehome the alpacas.  The first four went right before Thanksgiving, the last four will be going to their new family this coming Sunday.  I'm so sad and miss them all so much, but I still believe its the right thing to do.  I just don't have the time or energy to tend to them like I would like.

We had our first big snow last month, since then the weather has been dry and cold.  Most of the snow is gone except in the shady places.  Last night we had a light dusting and nothing due in the next couple weeks.  Woohoo.  Nice traveling weather for those who are heading out to spend Christmas with family. 

Here's a pic of our Great Pyrenees Bella playing with our 5 month old chihuahua puppy Emmy.  This can be scary!

Merry Christmas everyone.  Remember the true reason for the season we we celebrate the birth of our loving Savior Jesus Christ.  God bless you all.

This new painted warp on my Mighty Wolf loom seems so appropriate for fall.  The colors are bright and the yarns are incredibly soft.  There is enough for two scarves, or one ridiculously long wrap.  Probably one scarf will go as a gift for someone, maybe I will keep the other one.

I have a lot of new fiber to try spinning thanks to Paradise Fiber in Spokane WA.  Since I joined their fiber club I get three different types of fiber each month, each one being around 4 oz each.  If I blend it with anything I can get pounds and pounds!  The fibers are beautiful and a lot of them are not ones I would normally buy.  They are either unusual or the cost might be a little high.  But this way I can try out those and I have to say I've been very pleased with the quality.

Had our first snowfall this weekend.  It only was about and inch or so, but very pretty.  Since we still have leaves on the ground to rake and quite a few left in the trees, I'm hopeful more snow will hold off for a while until we get the raking done.  Our barn and alpaca sheds are finally cleaned out and looking pretty good thanks to some very good friends.  Now if we can just stop the alpacas from 'going' where they are supposed to sleep ...

I've had the pleasure of going to my mom's 90th birthday this month.  There were nearly 50 family members that attended.  I think she looks just beautiful.  Happy Birthday Mom!

While I was there visiting, my daughter got to feeling sick.  We took her to the doctor when I got home a week later and she has been diagnosed with acute kidney failure.  She is now on dialysis and will remain so until a suitable donor can be found.  Please pray for her.

Since things have been so busy here most of my spinning / weaving has been put on hold.  I have plenty of fiber so no worry about what to do with myself these days.  The alpacas are in the process of being re-homed as I don't think I can care for them properly by myself.  My niece is such a huge help but she will be returning to her parents in the near future.  Plus with winter coming on sometimes we can't get over to the pasture with the deep snow and spend a lot of the day just digging out.  This winter our snow is predicted to be heavy and our weather colder than usual.  Our snow blower does a great job but there are still areas to shoveled by hand.  I have been fortunate for the past several years to have great neighbors to help plow us out too!

Here is a picture from a couple years ago when we had over 100" of snow.  This big guy (and six more like him) was inside our property.  The snow was so deep they simply stepped over our 6' fence.  This one saw me and tried climbing up on the roof when I ran upstairs!  They were down here eating my shrubs and fruit trees because the snow was too deep higher up the hill for them to find food.

I finally got yarns and fiber ready to send to Kentucky!  They will be displayed in a farm store there.  I'm hopeful folks back there will like them more than they seem to here.  These two are hand painted, then carded with some glitz and glamour for your spinning pleasure :->  The blue one is a batt, and yellow is roving, both done on my little Strauch Petite carder.  It is time consuming to turn the crank by hand but the results are nice.

I'm working on more.  I hope to be able to spin up some of the batts I'm making.  I try to tie each bag with a sample of the yarn.  Its much better than feeling the product for sale, as hands have a certain amount of oil and dirt than eventually will make it off-color.  The spindles I use for teaching are perfect for sampling.  Take a spinning class from me and I will give you one with your fiber.

We are trying to get our wood in today.  The weather has turned much colder, with rain off and on for the last couple weeks.  This morning it was a brisk 33 degrees.  Brrrr!   But of course winter is just around the corner.  We usually have snow between Oct 31 and Thanksgiving.  Maybe this winter will be kinder to us and we won't have that much, although everything says we will have lots of snow again.  Oh well.  More time indoors to do fibery stuff, in addition to keeping the paths clear of snow and wood brought up to heat the house.  Love that woodstove!

Mom's 90th birthday is next Wed.  If you'd like to say Happy Birthday, give her a call on Oct 13th or email me for her phone number.  Happy Birthday (almost) mom.

An exciting day today.  We've seen a several acre fire behind our house.  We smelled smoke this afternoon but weren't sure where it was coming from.  Sure enough, it was just a couple acres over.  Fire engines were all parked down on the road but we couldn't see any up the hill from our farm.  Its not that steep, but completely covered with trees and brush.  Probably more than usual due to the long wet spring and early summer we had this year.

We tried to round up the alpacas for transporting in the stock trailer, but they wouldn't cooperate so we decided the pasture was a safe place to leave them.  Not much grass in the pasture this time of year so its as good as any place.  We did move the tractor over in the middle of the pasture as well as our stock trailer, just in case.  Its about 2 1/2 acres in size with no brush or grass, just a few trees now so isn't likely to burn.

Here are a couple pix of the helicopters that were doing water drops on the fire.  Its still smoky in the air but not as bad as an hour a go.  The water drops are still going on but I think they have a pretty good handle on the fire.  Last I heard it was about three acres in size, but I'm not sure now.

The first picture is a helicopter dropping water, you can see it just to the left of the big tree on the right.  Second picture is just some of the smoke coming up from the fire (see how close!) and third one is one of the helicopters with a full bucket getting ready to drop it not far from our property.

Our lost Great Pyrenees Dolly has been spotted around here.  We've received several calls this week she was down by the highway.  We finally saw her this morning and although we were very close to her couldn't catch her.  She has always been shy and afraid of cars, and ran into the woods when we would try to get to her.  She appeared to have on a collar with tags, but these are not our tags.  At least we could know where she's been.  Please pray God leads her home the rest of the way.  She's been gone since Feb 4 of this year.

The fiber blending has been going well.  I've been working nearly every day trying to get some rovings and batts ready to sell.  I will be sending some to friends in Kentucky who have a store to see if its something people there might like.  Here is a picture of the blue, carded and turned into roving.  So soft!

With the beautiful warm weather we've had the past few weeks I've been dyeing fiber again.  This time something new was tried.  I put the pre-soaked fiber into a couple of large plastic containers and poured leftover dye in different colors in the jar as I added the fiber.  Then into a black trash bag and sat it in the hot sun for a couple days.  

When I rinsed them afterwards there was a little more color in the water than normal, but they rinsed clean after a couple times.  I don't think any true color was washed away.  The colors were not as varied as I'd hoped.  They pretty much did their own thing together, but pretty anyway.  I think I will try carding them with some of the flash I got a couple months ago.  We'll see what turns out.  I do like the colors they both ended up ... fluorescent pink and electric blue, and a light lime green and soft royal blue.  The computer really doesn't do them justice.

We have a new family member!  Meet Emmy, my daughter's newest addition.  Emmy is about three days old in the picture and is a tiny little chihuahua puppy.  We will be receiving her when she's about 7 weeks old.  The longer little animals spend with mom, the better the start in life they usually have.  We can't wait!

Our kitty Petey that was missing for three days has returned home.  We found him up in a Very tall tree in the woods behind our house.  We had to get our tree cutter friend to climb up and get him.  He was so ready to come down, didn't fight at all.  I can't imagine why he would go so high unless something like a coyote or fox scared him.  We also have owls and hawks that have carried off at least one of our kitties in the past.

No spinning being done right now.  Its been very warm, 80's and 90's.  With no air conditioning in our house its a little uncomfortable to be handling such warm fibers.  Early morning is ok sometimes, but I'm just not organized enough that early.

Jury duty for me this month, I can't plan anything.  Fortunately I still have not had to go, but you just never know.  Each Friday night I call to see who is on their roster for the following week.  So far, so good.

It seems we have lost another kitty.  Petey, our much overweight orange boy has gone missing.  Only since yesterday, but he's always the first one at the food dish.  We are very worried and pray nothing has happened to him.  He is sooo sweet and we've raised him from a bottle baby.  He is a previous foster baby.

Yesterday the three pygora goats were sold to a nice lady from Plummer ID.  I went outside early this morning and didn't hear them calling me to come feed them!  I think I miss them (no!) already.  But they now have eight acres to eat, so should be really happy.

The yarn in the photo is the merino top / cashmere.  It is incredibly soft and spun with the little bits of cashmere making it look 'tweedy' or heathered.  Only four ounces of the merino so maybe I will have to buy a little more so there's enough to make a scarf or something.  I Love it!  These fibers came from Paradise Fibers in Spokane WA.

And I wish I knew how to take better photos, the yarns never show up as pretty as they are in person.

Summer is here, off and on.  One day 85 degrees, next day 69.  But a little rain once in a while keeps everything green and fresh.  I really don't mind.  My flower garden was looking so good but now is getting a little tired.  The purple flowers at the top of the page are Campanula, this pink one is called Poor Man's Orchid.  They are tiny, about the size of a 50 cent piece, the stalks grow to about 5 feet tall.  Anyone want any?  They are very prolific.


Finally got a picture of the black alpaca / green firestar, but its not a very good one.  It is hard to get a good picture of black anything.  I finally ended up putting it in a sunny window.  Haven't started spinning it yet and hope to get about another 3 ounces blended.  Maybe I can put in on the Etsy shop.

I did get some beautiful soft light beige merino and blended it with super soft cashmere.  Both these were through the fiber club I joined with Paradise Fibers.  It is incredibly soft and spun thick and thin.  The cashmere made the merino top just a little bumpy, so not too much variation.   It would make a wonderful scarf, mittens, socks ... just about anything next to the skin.  I will post a picture next time.

Spring is here and I hope it stays a while.  Beautiful flowers everywhere.  Along with the flowers we have an over abundance of dandelions to deal with.  So much yard work! 

The green flash I have has been blended with black alpaca.  Wow!  That really makes it flashy, lol.  Also blended with about 10 different colors of wool I had used for a 6th grade class demo that was done last week.  There were only bits and pieces of different things, not enough to do anything with, so they were all blended together with the green flash.  Very nice.

Yard sale days are finally here.  One of our favorite things in the summer.  We are cleaning out our own closets and storage areas in the hopes of getting rid of a lot of unneeded stuff.  We've got several big tent-like tarps to set up in the yard but probably most of the stuff will go into the garage, just in case it rains.  Memorial weekend is coming up so that seems like a good time to start.

Our Blanchard Spinners went to Paradise Fibers yesterday.  Not all of us could go, but those of us that did had a great time and found some yummy fibers to put on our wish list.  I bought some green flash fibers that I want to try blending with my alpaca to give it some bling as well as being soft.

The yard is coming together again.  Everything is so green and fresh.  Lots and lots of weeds.  That's the next project for me I guess.  I love gardening, but on this farm there's just so much of it.  Anyone want to have a garden?  C'mon over!