Silk

Silk:

My "twin" Eliz sent this silk to me to see what we could make of it. (our twin story is long.... the short if it is that we share a birthday & a lot of life events but aren't actual birth twins). 

I have been thinking about this silk for awhile now. 

I felt it and after consideration, I thought it would mix well with fiber off the alpaca Challenger:

So I prepped Challenger fiber:

Spinning it is different:

I will post more about the spinning in a future post.

The results are neat:

Interesting

Something new to work with. 

Counting faces

Whenever we have bad weather,I always look outside and count faces.  I want to make sure all my animals are accounted for.  Like much of the county we have had a brutal storm.  First snow (we actually did not get that much) and then bitter cold.   So this morning, I looked out to count faces.  They were hidden in their shed, but when I let our house dogs outside, the sheep came out.   I counted faces, 5 ewes, then the 2 boys (rammy and chocolate).

The ewes once I threw some hay on the ground for them:

The boys eating hay in their shelter:

Temps are dropping today, when I headed outside it was a whopping 3* F outside:

We got maybe 4 or so inches of snow.  So I had to dig a path to get the hay out.  Our hay is now in our garage so I started a path there:

The hay in the garage - I grabbed a bale and put it in the wagon to haul out to the sheep:

Fits well: 

Tent surgery

Let me say, tent surgery is messy!

It started out a few years back.  We put up this canvas tent for a "hay tent" knowing full well that these tents only last a couple of years.  Add on that we use this tent everyday.  When we had alpacas on our farm, I was in this tent twice a day (we fed them morning and night).  Now with the sheep we only go in once a day, but still, daily use.  Plus the days we bring in the hay.  Also it's where our farm cats live.  We use it a ton and knew average life span is only about 2 to 3 years.  

Well, we put up this hay tent in March of 2010, almost 4 years ago (link to that blog post here).   We never expected it to last this long.  The last time we were stacking bales of hay in it, I said, I didn't think it would be much longer and the tent would cave in.   We decided then that if that does happen, we'll move the hay back into our garage (where we have had it before, there is just a lot less room in there.  However, with only 7 sheep, we aren't going through that much hay at this point).

We were out of town over Christmas and New Years this year.  While we were away, our farm helper told us the hay tent collapsed.  We were not surprised.  Though I do have to say I almost moved the hay before we left and at that point I really wish I had! 

We came home to this:

There was snow, then it sort of melted, then refroze, so layers of snow, ice and what not on top.  It was very heavy! 

Unfortunately, there were also several bales of hay (we counted 17), and all our pallets to stack the hay on still inside:

The force of the collapse actually bent the metal frame:

What was standing of the tent was held up by the stack of hay:

If we moved the hay, the whole thing would collapse, and the weight of all that snow and ice could trap anyone inside that tent.

So we had to be creative.  First we got everything we could out of the tent, except that one stack of hay holding the whole thing up.   The whole time thinking if it does start to cave in more, we need to get out fast.  Then we ripped open the side to extract the bales of hay.

While it looks like it might have been fun to do, it actually was a lot of really hard work.  We had to clear off the frozen snow/ice mess, then dig, then pull the metal braces off the hay stack, then get the hay.  This all took us a couple of hours to do.  And left behind a nasty mess :(

Now the hay is safely stored inside our garage.  

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.