Where has the time gone?

I don't know whether it is because of the late start with our spring but time is going fast and all I am doing is trying to catch-up. Was out working in the front flower beds but a rain and a bit of hail storm blew through, it looked pretty bad but moving fast so we only got the edge of it so no damage thank-goodness. I could not believe how well I did at the fleece show at fibre week at Old's College. I had to enter the fleeces before we sheared the animals so just had to wing it and when we sheared the fleeces were so full of trash I did not have time to pick it all out so I entered fleeces that were easy to clean up. The fleece from our girl Ginger-Spice was not that long, barely making the three inch minimum, in fact I thought it would be too short but surprise!! she got first in her class and then took the grand champion. I should have got a picture of her. The shearer came and finished shearing the Alpacas as we were having trouble with our clipper and I have got all the alpaca fibre sorted and ready to go except for baby Blackberry, because his fibre is so fine it has some debris that needs to be picked out. Now have to get at the llama fibre and get it sorted but have gotten carried away sorting things and cleaning up downstairs. RH was at the stampede grounds in the Llama section for most of last week so on Monday I had him back the stock trailer up to the doors downstairs and load up the dead treadmill etc. etc. and do a dump run so today I vacuumed and tidied up as we want to finish up the flooring down there, which is a job for rainy days. I finally took the sweater hat out of time out and took it's picture, then I have been knitting a pair of socks out of the grey alpaca mix skein I had overdyed red, I love the red color, because of the dark and grey mix of the alpaca yarn there is dark and light red in the yarn. Then I have been knitting a scarf to put in the show at the Llama Conference in Sept. I am knitting it in a fine yarn made of 100% llama, I bought the skeins off a friend that had her fibre processed at the mill, the yarn did not have enough twist in it so I put replyed it and it came out great. Could not decide what pattern to use, finally decided on the feather and fan pattern, I added another pattern across as I thought it would not be wide enough and I really did not have to but it will make a wider scarf...but it is more knitting!! Have not decided what else I will enter. The llama club was given some cone's of llama yarn for a fund raiser and I bought two cone's of a fawn color and skeined off some of it and am going to overdye it and see how it comes out, it is a lace weight so is very fine....have to look for some patterns. Well I am on chore duty tonight and I hear my kids in the barn calling me, I am watering down their noon bottle as I will eliminate it pretty soon and get them down to two bottles a day, they are growing fast and eating grain and grass so do not really need it (but they think they do) I am still waiting on my three pygmy girls to kid, they look like any day, just hope they only have twins as I do not want to be tied down to bottle duty all summer and fall although pygmies are very portable, a few years ago I had two of them on the bottle and we had to go into the city so we tucked them in the dog carrier and took them in the back of the car with Maxx the Jack Russel to keep them company along with their bottles, had to find a shady car parkade to park while we did our business and then on our way home find a grass area for them to get out a bit and give them their bottles. Off to feed the kids!!

A Rain Day

We are having a few rain days and we needed them as we had a couple weeks of heat and things were starting to dry out, the rain gives me a break from watering. Iris's have been blooming and some of my lilies are starting to bloom and it is going to be quite a show as I counted over sixty blooms on the one bunch of plants. We had hail a couple of nights ago but ended up with just white spots on the leaves thank-goodness. I thought for sure after all that wet snow on my plants this spring I would not have any flowers at all. Not much on the knitting front, I did finish a scarf and hat set I was working on, it was a no-mind knit as it was just garter stitch, just have to put the fringe on the scarf. Also finished the sweater hat (headache hat), haven't taken any pictures yet as it is in time out until I feel more kindly to it. The Llama Conference is coming up so am thinking about what I should enter in the knitting etc. classes, took some skeins out and looked at them the other day but should decide on some patterns pretty soon. They also have the class where you send two oz of llama fibre picked free of guard hair and debris. I won the class last year with one of our young males fibre, but we sold him last year, have to look at the fibre of the three young animals we sheared this year, it was so trashy I could not send their fibre to the fleece show but will look and see if I can clean up two oz. As it is going to be cool today I have bread going in the breadmaker, baked bread yesterday too but we were having trouble with the power going off and on and did not know if it would get baked but it held in there and bread turned out great. As we can not work outside we I am getting some flooring put down in my work area downstairs, it will be a treat not to standing on concrete!! Hope everyone is enjoying the summer...it is going by fast!!

Summer is Here!!

Well we finally have summer and sunshine......and all the work that that brings....but I am not complaining. A lot of the perennials are starting to bloom, birds are singing and my little frog came back to live in the flower bed....I think it is the same one....but how do you tell. of course there is also a gopher living under the front step that has been munching on some of my plants...have to figure out how to get him out of there. Have not done much knitting the last while with all the outside work, am still knitting on the headache hat but am almost finished. Did take some time to do a couple of dye pots. I have the grey and light brown colored yarn I had processed at the mill this spring and I thought I would try some over dying and it turned out great!! Love the colors!! Have to get a couple more pots on the go. The last week we have been shearing the llamas and shearing alpacas for the first time, we sheared twenty-four llamas and three alpacas. Some spitting, some screaming, some jumping over panels and having to shear some laying down. We still have seven alpacas to shear but are going to see if we can get the guy that shears in the area to do them. RH had got the blades and combs sharpened for our clipper but who ever did it did not do a great job so it was a real pain getting the clipper to work properly and with the alpacas with their denser fibre it was not doing a good job. I know the guy that shears in our area is so behind because of the rain, and if he can not fit us in we will just have to shear them ourselves. The farmers markets have started for the season, we go to two of them,one Thursday afternoon and the other one Saturday morning so that keeps us busy too. RH does the markets and I stay home and tend to the animals. We have three female llamas we are waiting to have their baby's, they are overdue so am keeping a watch on them plus the three pygmy girls are due any day. I had entered six llama fleeces in a fleece show and because of the rain and not getting them sheared before the deadline to enter them I just had to wing it, now that we have sheared them I think I am going to have to substitute some of the entry's if they will let me, as some I entered have too much trash in them. So I am off to sort through fleece and decide what to do, plus I better go down to the garden and see what the gophers have been up to!!

The rain has not ended!!

Thank-goodness I did get the garden in before the rains came or it would be so late even though the mice ate the pea and bean seeds on me, actually we had a couple days when we did not get rain and the top of the ground dried off enough I could poke a few more pea seeds in and sure enough the mice were munching again. We have the mouse bait in pieces of plastic pipe but the mice were taking the bait out of the pipe and taking it home with them......all I hope is they had a party and invited all their friends. Now I have rocks against the pipes so the mouse can get in but they can not take the bait home with them, I was down at the garden yesterday and it did not look like any more mouse activity lately, even a couple of seeds they missed were growing. I think I will soak the bean seeds (I had to go buy more) overnight before I plant them. I was talking to a guy that has had the same problem with the mice and he has made cute little bird houses without the hole for the birds to go in and just put mouse holes at the bottom and he puts the mouse bait in them, that sounds more attractive to me than old pipe laying in the bed. I have all those tomato plants growing under lights....when will I ever get them in, it has been too cold to even harden them off, I need a mini greenhouse thing I guess. I also have pumpkin and squash plants growing under the lights ready to put out. Now on the knitting of the cute little sweater hat......I am keeping at it but it is not going fast!!I have now separated the stitches and am working on the front and back on straight needles so is so much easier, is so hard to see your stitches when they are scrunched up on the round needle, I think the other hats I have knit in cables have been knit on two needles and then sewn up, I don't know whether this pattern could be knit on two needles....will have to think on that!! Yesterday I took a skein of my grey alpaca/mohair/wool mix that I have been using for socks and dyed it blue, it turned out so nice so decided to do a dye pot of five skeins today, when I added the dye to the pot........I forgot I did not used the amount of dye for the dark color.......I used an amount between the dark and the medium....so these skeins are not the nice grey/blue color I wanted......they are blue!! blue!! I did a sample pot using red dye but I think I put the right amount in that dye pot. The dye pots are just finishing up so will take pictures tomorrow when they are dry. I better write myself some notes and underline them!!All our big goats have had their kids so now are waiting on the pygmies and the Angora/pygmy cross goat that the buck caught when RH left the gate open, he did that three times so I guess we are lucky only one accidently got bred!! Am off to take the dye pots off the stove and get the bottles ready for the kids in the barn. Will post the rainbow that we had after yesterdays rain.

This might be spring??

Well we went from winter to summer heat and then to a monsoon, the rain started and lasted about ten days, I was so glad I had got my garden in before it started raining........or so I thought.....when it dried up enough I could get down to the garden, I was so excited to see what was growing....what I found was the mice had dug all my pea and bean seeds out of the ground and ate them, at first I thought the birds did it but the more I thought on it....there were no bird feet tracks and the seeds were dug out just like I had picked them out of the dirt....I defeated the gophers by putting in raised beds with chicken wire around them and mesh wire under the beds so they could not dig under....now what??...this never seems to end!! Now we have mouse bait in pieces of plastic pipe in every bed and they must like it as when I went down yesterday they had drug the squares of bait out of the pipe trying to take it home with them, let us hope this is going to work. They also started digging up the beet seeds must must not have liked them as they just left them so I replanted them. I had ordered special pea seeds as we have a problem with powdery mildew on the pea plants so only get a couple of picking, so ordered a mildew resistant pea seed. Now the mice have never bothered my pea and been seeds before......why now. After the monsoon we have had pretty nice spring weather. More goat babies, we only bred four of the Boer/Dairy does and we ended up with a set of quads, a set of triplets and two sets of twins, the three pygmy does we bred should kid pretty soon. And I have been "trying to knit" the cute sweater hat!! I got the twisted rib brim finished no problem, and it is double so takes a lot of yarn and a lot of knitting, then it was on to the pattern &*^%$#$% I have knit a lot of cable knitting in the past and never had this much trouble, first of all they had a chart to knit from in which a lot of the symbols were so similar it was hard to tell the difference so after I ripped it all out the first time I color coded the symbols, which worked better although I found it really hard to knit the pattern on the cir needle the stitches were either all scrunched up on the smaller needle or too far apart on the next longer one, so after ripping back at least three times I think I am on my way but this pattern is a lot of work, takes forever to knit a row, is getting easier now I can see where the pattern is going. Have found a mistake way back and I am not going to rip it all out again, I will just emb a flower over it or something because if I rib it back one more time it is not going to be a hat....it will be a headband!! If I knit it again I will redesign the cable pattern....it does not need to be so complicated. Well I am off to do a couple more rows on the headache hat!!

From Winter to Summer!!

It seems just yesterday we were shoveling snow and all of a sudden it is hot and dry....what happened to spring?? They say it is supposed to rain in a few days and we really need it after days of heat and dry winds.Finished putting the garden in today so some moisture would be welcome......as long as it is rain and not snow.. Will water the garden good tomorrow...that usually brings the rain. The babies have started to arrive, Boer Mommy had triplets the other day, last year she had quads, she was not feeling well before the kids were born but after a couple of shots of penicillin and some vitamins she seems to be feeling a lot better. Right now we take a bottle of milk out and feed who ever is hungry. Babies were small but are doing great. We only have four Boer and Boer cross does to kid this year and three Pygmies does, we have never had so few, the days of ninety-two kids, thirteen sets of triplets and two sets of quads, leaving me with twenty-two kids on the bottle are over!! Can not do it anymore!! on the knitting front I am working on my sixth pair of socks for the market stash, using some of the merino yarn I recently dyed and some of the alpaca/merino I got back from the mill. Am almost socked out so have to decide what to knit next. Maybe a few hats, found a cute hat pattern in a book my daughter gave me, it is made like a sweater and you wear it with the arms tied on top of your head. Hope everyone is having a great long weekend!!

Another Snow Day or two again!!

Well we still are having snow days. Yesterday this is what we woke up to, you can barely see my yellow tulips peeking out of the heavy wet snow. Thank-goodness by noon most of the snow had disappeared with no harm to anything and it did not freeze last night. Today was cool but no snow but they are forecasting bad weather again the middle of next week, things are growing so slowly the season is going to be over before we know it. I have been sock knitting, there must be four or five pair stacked up ready to wash and block and put in the market basket. Have spent most of the week at the Dr. office with xrays etc. of my back as I have been having so much back pain lately. The Dr. asked me if I had been doing anything that caused it and I could not think of anything but it started just after Christmas. This morning as I woke up I remembered what probably started it......we had to load some goats into the stock trailer on Dec. 13th (I had written it in my blog so I looked it up) now RH just can not catch goats, all the running and almost getting them etc. etc. and pretty soon goats are flying all over the place so I went out to help him and was helping him push a goat in the trailer, he had it by the horns and I was pushing and he yanked it so fast I lost my balance and hit my head into his back and my neck went crack. I moved my head and neck and it felt o.k. so I forgot about it. Now we try not to be in the barnyard at the same time or if I have to be there I try to stay at least three feet away from him as he never notices I am there and I have had to have eye surgery because he ran into me and pushed my glasses into my eye, I had a bad bruised leg from him running at a goat I was holding for him etc. etc. It was funny but really it wasn't, when I went to the Dr's office after my eye surgery to renew a prescription for eye drops there was a student Dr. in the office and he read my chart and said what happened to your eye and I told him about RH running into me and he looked like he was going to report it to the authorities as abuse and I said it wasn't on purpose, if it had been on purpose you would have had two patients sitting in front of you.......he did not have a sense of humor. Hope everyone has a great Mothers Day tomorrow and spring arrives soon....soon....soon....