Friday, April 22, 2011

Where does the time go!!

I can not believe that it is already the 22nd of April!! I have lost a couple of weeks somewhere!! But we have been busy, we have had our farm for sale for the last year and never had one call from anyone, we were not in a hurry but wanted to downsize in the future. Well a couple of weeks ago we had a couple of out of province call and were coming to see our place and the same weekend we had another couple phone and want to come out. The second couple wanted to buy so that is what we have been doing, we have been back and forth to the lawyer getting everything signed etc. and then have been madly looking around for somewhere for us to move to. The places we had liked were already sold and the couple we liked the area and the houses as presented on the web but when we went to look at them( pictures are deceiving)....one I think will have to be demolished and the other one had a disaster of a floor plan. We kept coming back to this other place but hesitating as the house had no basement and the question was...can we downsize that much....   but the good thing was there are no neighbors right next door except for the ones in the cemetery across the road from us and I am sure we are not going to have a problem with them because of our animals, might have to make a little suit for our Jack Russell Maxx if he insists on attending funerals. We will have to build barns and put up safe fences but the people that have bought our place have no problem with us keeping our Llamas and Alpacas here until we get fences up. It is going to take some time until I get the garage set up for my work room so this month I will be busy sorting fibre and carding fibre to carry me over until I get a work space.
    Meanwhile back on the ranch this is what my garden area still looks like!!! We have had eight inches of wet snow twice lately and the temps have not been that warm so it is not disappearing that fast.

We have never had this much snow out here in April, when we get down off the hill the snow is almost gone but we must have our own weather up here. The little birds have been fighting over the nesting boxes, hope they wait until warmer weather to lay their eggs. have been putting out seed bells for them as they are so hungry, with all the snow cover is hard for them to find food.
   As I can not get out in the yard I have been busy carding my Llama and Alpaca fibre, mixing it with different wools. Cleaned up the carder so I could get some white carded, is a job getting all the black and grey fibres out of the carder, so while I have the white run going am going to try to card most of it then work my way down the other colors.


The grey I carded before starting on the white and I mixed some superwash Merino wool with it, the white I wanted to mix superwash Merino and silk with it but I had the Alpaca fibre washed and dehaired at a mill and the alpaca was so soft and fine it broke it down a bit so have carded it with a longer staple wool and it is working out great. mixed some with some BFL I had and then some with some Corriedale wool roving I had, wanted to get the white all carded up but think I am going to run out of wool to mix with it. Although I have some cream colored llama fibre that mixes well with the merino/silk. And...we still have to try to get our animals sheared before we move.......we have a lot of challenges ahead of us......we have done it before but we are a bit older now.

For some reason my Christmas Cactus are still blooming...maybe it could be the snow they see out the windows???

Love this plant as it is the original plant of my Grandmother's and must be well over fifty years old, I better start some new ones from it just incase. The flowers are so beautiful. The other problem when we move is where am I going to put all my plants!!

I also have about twenty-five African Violet plants too, they need to be repotted which means when I am done there will be more, some have formed extra plants in their pots, so glad it is going to be warm when we move.
   Have not even had time to wash and block my sweater. Everything should be final of the sale of the place next week so will hopefully get back to the fibre thing as it is going to take some time to dry up for me to get in the flowerbeds and then I better start packing!!!

3 comments:

The socklady said...

Congrats ( I think ). Am avoiding putting my place up because I don't want to downsize (scares me).

Shelley's Garden said...

Wow! A move! Lots to do. Hope you're moving closer to us!

Jody said...

Your roving looks wonderful. I wish you could show how you create it.