Sun shine

Our farm in Michigan is under snow so we escaped to a place where the sun shines = bliss

I am thinking a white Christmas is overrated.  Sun is so good!! I'd take sun over snow anyday. 

So was spending time with these two :)

My heart sings to see the sun, hear the birds sing, and spend time with family. 

The time of year for products

I've been busy keeping up my stock of products:

The fixed ones

Here they are, now not too stretchy:

Again

Here is the blue, brown and tan headband that I pulled apart (just like the black and grey one in my last post).

 I knit it this time with a smaller needle:

I can already tell it has more bounce to the stretch. Instead of pulling so long it loses it's form, it pulls and pulls a little back.

Frogging

Frogging = knitter talk for "rip it" out.

I am not one to avoid frogging if I know the end will be a better product.  Here is my daughter's headband after one use:

It was stretchy, but in a too much stretch way.

So I pulled it apart:

As I pulled out each color stripe of yarn, I tied the ends together and put it in a ball, so that I can knit it again, in the same color pattern:

Teen Flare

I consulted with the teenage crowd and was told these colors are the colors (browns, tans and blues). I was excited that I have these all on hand to knit this up quick!!

My daughter grabbed up the grey and black version of this headband.  She wore it once.  Then it disappeared.  I asked her what happened.  She then told me it wasn't working great.  It would stretch longer and longer and that made it hard to wear.

I was troubled. I don't want to make things that are hard to wear :(  So I thought about it.  For this stripped version, I grabbed a bigger size knitting needle.  The idea to me was that it would make it more lacy looking.  Well, I think it made it lose some structure though too.  So I went out on a limb.  I took all the striped ones I had made, and I ripped them out.  I will show more about that in my next post.

Christmas grab bag

For our Christmas party at work, we do a grab bag gift exchange.  You bring in a gift, it goes into a pile.  Everyone gets a number.  The first person picks a gift, opens it, the next person can steal the first person's gift or take a new one from the un-open pile.  And it goes on.

Every couple of years I bring in an Alpaca product for my grab bag gift.  This year I brought in this:

The yarn came from fiber off of Rose, Tehya, Gabriel and Greyt Exxpectations.  All great alpacas who roamed our farm once upon a time :)

I haven't mentioned here yet the fact I had to re-knit all the stripped headbands all over again.  Thankfully I realized this need before the Christmas party.  I was up late last night finishing up the re-knit.  And I am so  happy I did.  I'll explain why in a future post.

More headbands!!

This past weekend I knit 3 different headband / Neck warmers / Ear muffs.

First I did these:

The dark rose grey one sold right away (the second I put a picture of it on my Facebook page).   The black n grey stripe, well, my daughter snatched that up!  She said "if it doesn't sell, I want it."  How could I not let her have it? 

Then I knit this one (link to ETSY sales page):

That one is for sale on our farm ETSY page. 

Creativity center

My weekends are often pretty low key.  My goal for Saturday is to clean my house.  Since the whole family helps with that, it's not a huge task.  My goal for Sunday is to go for a run (I'm not up to my usually long run Sunday of 7 miles, since surgery I've only built up to 4 miles.  I'm getting there though).   So, after these things are done, my day is mine to do fiber arts!!!

The coffee table in front of my couch is covered in my creative wears ~  various skeins of hand spun alpaca yarn and needles and scissors and measuring tape and buttons and all: 

Some phases look more messy than others.  And somehow, out of this I end up with some knit products.

Knitting

I have been really busy with my day job but manage to get in some knitting here and there. 

Small Business Saturday ~ our products our stories

Today is Small Business Saturday, the day promoted to shop small and local mom and pop shops.

It's easy, find a mom and pop shop local to you, or shop small shops on-line:

There are many small businesses on ETSY, our farm is there too :)  Oak Haven Alpacas:

What sort of things do we have for sale?

Well, a variety.  We have hand knit product we knit out of yarn I spun on our farm from fiber off of our alpacas.  We have home spun yarn, and raw alpaca fiber.

For example, here is an ear flap hat link to the ETSY page), I knit out of yarn I spun here at our farm off of one of our award winning alpacas, Tehya.  She has always been one of my favorite girls, I've known her since the day she was born:

There is this ear flap hat:

This one was made on our farm also.  The dark color came off of a male named Greyt Exxpectations.  The lighter color in the stripe is from Tehya.  Each hand made product has a story, a history.  

In my last post I showed several of our headbands / neck warmers / ear muffs:

Home spun yarn sells faster than I can produce it (and honestly, J and I knit up what I haven't sold).  So any home spun yarn (link to order page) needs to be ordered for purchase:

We also have some fiber arts tools for sale, such as a drop spindle:

And was have lots of raw alpaca fiber for sale, for example:

Headbands, earmuffs, and neck warmers too

These can be worn as a headband, as a neck warmer, and around your ears to keep the wind away! It's a 3 in 1 multi-winter accessory.

and this one:

Here they are for sale at our ETSY farm shop:

multi-color one

Fawn wider one

Cream color one

Always tax time

I prepare all year for tax time:

When we started our farm, we also started working with an accountant for our taxes.  It has been a life saver!

The first year was a lot of work because we were not prepared for what all we needed to do.  At tax time it was a rush to organize.

That first year I learned about each category we had on our taxes (such as "feed" for the animals, "show costs" and so forth).  Each January at the beginning of a new year I write on envelopes for each category, then whenever I get a receipt, I put it in the right envelope.  At tax time we only have to add it up!  Easy!!!

This way we get our taxes done fast and are done with it before many people even start on theirs.

Farm Life

Not everyone has a farm life like this:

Yep, that's half of a squirrel -  in my dinning room!!!!

Those that are friends with me on Facebook will remember my story about this a couple weeks ago. The day this happened I screamed and screamed!  I forgot about this picture until I was going through pictures on my phone to delete some and came across this and thought, yeah, that;s farm life.

Our house dog, Shadow, ran into the house with this in his mouth.  When I screamed, he dropped it.

The funny part is that I was watching what it was, wondering if the animal was still alive.  I was almost thankful to see half a critter LOL

Zack went outside to get our poop scooper and I scooped it up and disposed of it.  Ah, life in the country.

That fading fawn

A couple weeks ago I was showing how I prepare fading fawn fiber for processing.

This is how it spins up:

Here I did a two color ply (fawn in one strand, white for the other):

I often make a small two color ply yarn as a contrast to go along with the main skein.  That way I can knit a different color edge or stripe in my project.

Here is the fading fawn:

The boys

Ram:

Ram lamb, Chocolate:

He's super cute!!!

Here he looks a little sad, but that was because he hoped I was bringing him grain.  No such luck just yet: