Tehya = Fading Fawn

Fading fawn = when there are various shades of fawn on an alpaca.

It is one of my favorite colors on the animal.  I'd say it is my favorite to spin into yarn.

Our first year of having cria (alpaca babies) on our farm, our precious Tehya was born (birth story here).

Here are pictures from her birth day (link to the original post) in 2008:







She was one of our *twins* (not real twins, she and her half sister, Shelby, have the same sire (dad) and were born on the same day).  We joke they are our *twins*.

One of her many award wins (link to our page of winners):



Here she is (spring 2013) all grown up (link to blog post):

Tehya was special to us, always one of our favorites.  She was born on our farm the first year we had cria, and she is the only one from that year we kept the entire time we had alpacas (in 2008, our first year cria were born on our farm, Lightning was the first born, then Shelby and Tehya. Shelby was sold at auction and Lightning went to a farm in Ohio where he became herdsire).  Tehya was one of the last to leave our farm this summer, when we finally let go of all our alpacas. 

All this to say, she's a fading fawn :)  In my next post, I'll show how I spin fading fawn to keep the beauty of the different colors.

yarn with a face

One of the neat things about spinning yarn from fiber off of your own animal, is that you have a face to go with the name and the yarn.

This is Chaska the day he was born:

And here is his fiber (for sale here):

And yarn I just spun from his fiber:

Even though we don't own Chaska anymore, he was born here and still feels like our baby. 

More products!!

Seems now that I don't have farm chores to do, I have time to create products. 

A child's hat, child's headband/ neckwarmer and an adult size headband/neckwarmer :

The head bands

They also can be worn as a neck warmer.

Another hat

This time an ear flap hat:

Last Show

Here we are at our last alpaca show.

This time only as workers, not exhibitors. 

That's my work, with a front row  veiw of the show:

So many emotions.  

Spun!!

All that fiber is now spun!!!!

I've been working on this order for over a year, so seeing the last of it spun into yarn is the light at the end.

The last of it spun:

Now to knit like crazy!!! 

Hats, hats and more hats

Well, that mess of yarn didn't look like much until I made these:

That's 3 different hats.

An ear flap hat:

A very soft sassy hat:

And an over sized cozy hat:

More to spin

For the last year I have been working on an order.  Almost all of what I have spun and knit lately is part of that order (the order is to spin and knit it all into product).

This is what I have yet to spin:

I measured out 2.5 skeins left to spin.

Compared to the multiple blankets of fiber I started with, this is huge progress!!!

I haven't decided yet what I will make with this fawn. Thinking... thinking... so many options :) 

I also have some yarn that is spun, but not knit up yet.  Many more projects in the works for this order.

All the slippers

If you kept track recently I have knit 3 pairs of slippers (pattern here):

The first pair are solid brown. The second pair are brown with multi color toes.  The last pair are multi brown and fawn.   I made the last pair, the multi colored one, a bit bigger than the other two pairs so there is also some variety in sizing.

They are super warm and comfy:

Slipper socks take 3

Another pair:

Super comfy to wear, with fun colors:

Slipper socks take two

Another pair of slipper socks, these have a multi-color toe section.

Yarn, yarn and more yarn

Over the last few weeks I have been spinning a lot of yarn!

I keep my spin meter up to date (on the right side of the blog).  Spin meter has logged 2248 yards I have spun so far this year! 

Ram lamb

Last spring 2 lambs were born on our farm, twin males:

I nick named them "Chocolate and Vanilla".

As predicted, the names stuck.

While we had hoped for girls, and worried these males might end up as meat (which is part of this business), we have found them to be growing into impressive males!

We decided to keep Chocolate (we love his color!!).  He will be a ram on our farm.

And Vanilla has sold to a farm who plans to use him as their ram.

Saturday morning we separated Vanilla from the other boys so we could trim his nails and get him ready for his trip to his new farm in northern Michigan.

He looked a little sad:

Once he gets settled into his new farm he will be one happy boy!