Having a Snow Day!!

It had warmed up and most of the snow was gone, we woke up to this softly falling snow this morning and it is very soft looking out there. The knitting is slowly winding down, decided I would not knit a stitch yesterday and it was very hard not to pick up the needles last night but I managed...kept falling asleep.

This how I knit!! I keep telling her she is going to lose an eye one day because of the needles but it does not worry her!! Well off to get at the day, today will be a baking day and then putting up the Christmas tree...and of course a bit of knitting.

What happened to November!!

Well what happened to November!! Can not believe it is December already and I better start believing and start looking at the calender and get my act together and put the knitting needles down...if I can...think they are stuck to my fingers. Last Christmas market this weekend and am on my last knitting order for a customer. So glad it is the last market for the year, the markets have been so good this year we are selling out of most of our items, then have to knit like mad to have something for the next market. Friend Gabie and I have been knitting ourselves sick...and we are so far gone with the knitting addiction we can not stop, last market when I called and asked if she was knitting as everything was gone again she said she was done!! no more knitting...I said I am done...no more knitting for markets this year! Well that lasted at least fifteen minutes...she even ran out of yarn and we had to get some to her....she sent a bag of items she knit, I had back orders for four pair of socks and three pair of slippers but I did get ten headband/cowls knit up, thank-goodness I have yarn so something is on the table. Plus..Plus....my sister had this great idea for the grand and great grandchildren for Christmas...our mother had passed away in Feb. and she thought it would be great to knit these angel ornaments and put a piece of my mothers jewelry on each one and give the angels to the grandchildren for Christmas....I remember her handing these kits to me and our younger sister in the summer and we said o.k. and tucked them away...me actually forgetting about them..and then finding the kit a few weeks ago and thinking I better get started on these angels...looked at the pattern and thought you got to be kidding...just the body has thirty-one rows and they are all different...and the kit is for nine angels....I e-mailed the sisters and said are you girls working on the angels? Sister who had this great idea and had got the kits for us...said she had tried one and it is not too bad....younger sister..who can plain knit...a bit..said she would get at hers but could not remember how to purl...I said get some scrap yarn and your needles and get in front of the computer and hook into youtube and get started... thinking..you got to be kidding! Well I started an angel...what a complicated pattern....could not get past row five..always had the wrong amount of stitches left...but I got it figured out finally and worked away... got the nine body parts done and knit the the wings...eighteen wings...thinking..how is younger sister ever going to get this done. Finally got my nine knit and the kit did not have enough pipe cleaners to finish the nine angels...hmmm...where had I stashed this kit..maybe some fell out. So went looking around...guess what I found..another kit for nine more angels!! You have to be kidding...when I talked to sister who's great idea this was..she said yes..her and I had two kits to knit up and younger sister had one kit...o.k..started knit angels again...e-mailed younger sister..said to her... remember when I said not to use bad language while knitting the angels...I take that back! Finally sister whose great idea this was..who had got the angel kits...and who told us to suck it up and get knitting when we complained...was not doing so well with her angels either...she e-mailed me and said if she ever has a great idea like this again..... So got my eighteen angels knit and put together and tucked in a box and mailed to the sister (she is working non-stop on her angels this weekend) sister who could not figure out how to purl who has been watching youtube knitting video's non-stop and still has not got past the fifth row...she has this idea that she will just knit something and then is going to glue feathers all over it.....I think between other sister and I there will be enough angels. I might do a couple for myself..once they are knit and together they are nice.

Just talked to younger sister yesterday...I said we would have enough without her nine angels...but I did suggest....that the one she was working on...with all the glued feathers and whatever.....to cover her knitting mistakes...would make a great Christmas gift...for our sister.....Better go get at my knitting.....

Well here it is almost the middle of October...where did the summer go. I have been having a terrible time with blogger and the computers I had almost given up trying to write a post, did not have time to waste fighting with them, for me about the only uninterrupted time I have is at night after everyone else has gone to bed and for some reason since we have moved down here that is the time the internet is half asleep and sometimes I can not even open up the blogger site to do anything. Last post I had planted the garden etc. etc. and now the garden is being put to bed for the winter. It was so hot with next to no rain this summer so spent most of my time watering which is not the same for the plants, did get a few peas and beans and they were so good but the heat and no humidity the flowers dried up on the tomatoes and finally not even the peas and beans were producing anymore. The gladiolus had blooms come out but they did not open either, just dried up. I just dug the bulbs up, I was worried whether they would have survived...but they are large and healthy.

But with all the hot dry weather we got the decks built at the front and back of the house, my pots I filled with plants for the deck got to sit on the deck for a short bit before the frost arrived, am going to try to keep the geraniums over the winter in the shed, have a heat lamp in there right now but have to get a better heat source when it really gets cold. We have had a couple of wet days and now are having some more warm weather so are getting the landscaping finished around the front deck.

Was also busy knitting fingerless gloves for the market table and got my dye pots out a couple of times to dye up some yarn. Now the regular weekly markets are finished for the year but the Christmas markets are coming up so when I am not knitting I am sorting washing and carding Alpaca fibre. am working on a white baby fleece right now...it was so full of vim when I started, it was a lot of work but it is clean and sooo soft, am carding a little bit of merino and silk in it and it is so beautiful!! I really want to keep it for myself...have to stop myself from running to the spinning wheel with it right now!! Well better get back to the carding...carding...carding

Sorting Alpaca Fleeces and Planting the Garden

What have I been up to?? Not Blogging that is for sure, too much to do!! I have been sorting alpaca fleeces, washing the fleeces..picking the fleece...carding the fleece and pulling it into rovings...white fleece!! Thought I would never get it clean, but after picking crud out of it and washing it and putting it through the picker and carder it was so beautiful (thank-goodness!!) I had not used a picker before and was talked into buying a Patrick Green picker by Paula Simmons when I bought the triple carder, then we moved shortly after and the picker was still in the box and I kept hearing how dangerous a picker was....I went on youtube and watched some videos of people using a picker and them talking about how dangerous it was....thinking why did I get this thing!! But here I was with this soft and fine white fleece with all the crud in it...and Paula had said it was used for Alpaca...O.K. I thought...I will try it and I got it out of the box...read the instructions....took a handfull of fleece and slowly pushed the picker back and forth....wow!! I was getting all this fluff and most of the debris was falling out!! So there I was picking then carding and it was turning out so beautiful. I had an order for two pounds of roving...so that was a lot of carding and pulling into roving but got it finished and delivered, really hated it go...but there are more fleeces to process. So I worked on processing fleece when I could not work outside as we were getting rain and when we could work outside we got some raised beds built, filled with dirt and I got my vegetables planted and strawberries planted in a small raised bed, we put hoops of pvc pipe over the beds and put some garden mesh over them to keep the birds and deer from getting in the beds. I checked today and the lettuce, beets, carrots and spinach is coming up, RH had planted potatoes a while ago in the ground and they have been up for a bit. Then I got all the flowerpots planted for..........the imaginary deck....it is not built yet but I am ready!! We finally got the landscaper to come and push the big pile of dirt up around the house and now all the llamas and alpacas have been sheared and it drys up we we can get at the deck building..meanwhile here are the pots of flowers waiting. I also got carried away and bought some rose bushes, started some dahlia, lily and gladiolus bulbs...to go around the imaginary deck...so have planted them in the ground in behind the raised beds and will move them later...plus...my Aunt sent me some tomato seeds which I started under lights and they will be ready to plant outside soon...where...I have not decided yet...and so it goes.....

A Naked Alpaca...finally!!

The weather has been very warm the last few days so the shearing has started, actually it has been so hot in the afternoons shearing has only been done in the mornings, so it is not going that fast but has started...and now they are saying rain and snow the end of the week. Here is our little Belle...all naked and feeling great...she is so black! her mother and sister and brother are sheared also.

I have been trying for two days to get a post written!! I just get it started and write a couple of sentences and then blogger will not not let me continue do anything, now tonight it let me put Belle's picture up...and will not let me post anymore pictures! Am frustrated!! But so far is letting me write words so I will write. HB sheared all day today and has only one female llama left...she refused to come out of the pasture and we have our three large male llamas left to shear, they will be done if the weather holds good the next few days but that is a bit iffy so we will see. Went on Sat and picked up some alpaca fleeces from a friend, needed some light colors and as we did a calm period this morning I got out the sorting table and sorted for a bit outside, so have been washing alpaca fibre all day, wind came up so moved the table downstairs and now have fibre drying, just came up from fluffing it a bit to help it dry. Hopefully it will be dry enough tomorrow to start carding. Started picking and sorting another white alpaca fleece but it is so fine it is full of a lot of debris so it is slow going. Well off to bed and hope I am allowed to post this!! Hopefully tomorrow will be a better posting day!!

NOOOOO!!!! Not snow again!!

This is what we woke up to this morning! It must have started about five o'clock as I heard the birds outside carrying on, they have been working on building their nests forever and here came the snow again. Last night it got so cold I finally went out around midnight and put all my potted plants in the shed, thank-goodness! It has not been that warm at all and everything is so slow coming up and the leaves on the trees are barely out. RH got the garden area beside the raised beds tilled up so the moisture was good for that, the sun did finally come out and the snow disappeared but it was windy and cold. The tulips have buds on them but they do not want to open up when it is so cold out. Well off to bed, RH was off to a meeting tonight, just got home and resident dog barfed everything he ate today all over the carpet so had to get out the rug shampooer and get to work, it was bad enough the dog barfed but got worse when RH had to step in it. Spent the afternoon cleaning the carder and trying to get my stuff organized again, thought I had some dark brown alpaca and was going to card it...well guess that was another thing I put in a safe place as I could not find it or it could be that RH had moved all my stuff around again...I am trying to stay sane....why does everything have to be a treasure hunt!! Tomorrow is another day...hope it is a warm sunny one!!

We are slowly getting there!!

We have a had a few nice sunny days although today was so windy, farmers field around us was being planted so lots of dust. RH rented a roto tiller and dug up a large area beside the raised beds he built, we are still waiting for the landscaper to arrive, we scrounged around and found some soil to put in the bottom half of the raised beds and there was an old manure pile out in the barnyard and he uncovered it and dug into the center of the pile with the bobcat and got some nice compost, now we just need some good dirt for the top of the beds. A person does not realize how much soil the beds take. Thank-goodness for the little bobcat as at our ages we can not do much shoveling and carrying anymore. Had an appointment with the eye doctor earlier in the week and all the business's have their plants...it was like Christmas!! I had to contain myself, bought two rose bushes, three iris plants different from what I already have, love this one, it wasn't blooming when I brought it home but look what it did yesterday!!

Also bought a couple lilies and a small geranium, forgot to take my camera out and take a picture of the little Geranium plants in the window of the shed, so nice to see all the bright color. Am not getting many pictures as the little camera that I can tuck in my pocket is having an issue and will not take pictures. Not much on the fibre front as we have not shorn our llamas and alpacas yet and now on the news tonight it sounds like we could get some more rain, hopefully they are wrong but it has really turned cold tonight. Good news is our Alpaca friends did manage to get their Alpacas shorn on the weekend, as we only have black Alpacas I usually get the other colors of fibre from them. So we will go get the fibre this Sat. and then I will be busy...can not wait!!