Spinning and Weaving Demonstration

This Saturday, September 26th, is National Alpaca Farm Day. I have been invited to give fleece preparation, spinning, and weaving demonstrations at Ameripaca Alpaca Breeding Company's farm in West River Maryland from 10am-2pm. There will be yarn and alpaca products for sale as well as lots and lots of alpacas. Hope to see you there!

A New Store

After a long break, I am finally back to spinning yarn! I let far too many things get in the way; my other jobs, health issues (wheat gluten is not my friend), farm stuff, life in general. It feels so good to sit behind the spinning wheel again. I have two years worth of fleece to work through and plan to thoroughly enjoy myself designing new yarns. I'm hoping to be back at the Baltimore Farmer's Market on Sunday morning sometime this Fall. But, in the meantime, I am pleased and excited to announce my new Etsy store! Finally!

I need to make a proper shop banner, and I don't have much listed at the moment. I'll be adding things as I make them. Right now I have some lace weight single ply llama yarn spun from Paul's 2008 fleece.

The yarn is very soft, just like Paul. I mixed his red spots in with his cream colored fleece so the yarn has a pretty, heathery look. I've set aside a few skeins to knit into a lace scarf.

Things on the farm continue to go well. All of the llamas and alpacas are enjoying the mild summer. The garden is alternating mud with crunchy dryness but still looks good in spite of the weather. We even had a fun surprise -- a baby boo pumpkin seedling. We had little white pumpkins sitting around the garden last Fall and this one must have dropped seeds in the grass.

I loved having a pumpkin patch a few years back but it took over the whole garden and I haven't planted any since. However, it looks like the miniature pumpkins are small enough that I can safely add them. So far there is one cute little pumpkin on the vine.

I'm hoping it is ready in the next couple of weeks. If it looks nice enough I might enter it in the State Fair. Along with some of my yarn and our farm produced green eggs...

Lots of Weaving

We're finally getting rain and plenty of it. I'm grateful - we needed it badly. The pastures were dry and crunchy with not much grass left.

I've been busy with a lot of commission work lately. Two orders are for hand spun, hand woven blankets. One design is left up to me, the other is to be a re-creation of the Emmitt coverlet. The original is shown below.



I'm looking forward to this. The Emmitt coverlet is one of my favorite pieces. Working in overshot is great fun and the suri alpaca fiber gives the yarn gorgeous luster. I'll be spinning the yarn from Liberty Belle's fleece. She's a beauty with very fine, soft fiber. The warp will be dipped once into my indigo vat for a robin's egg blue while the weft and tabby will be natural white. Photos to come some time in the next couple of months.

Hello!

After making excuses for the last few years as to why I don't have time to write and maintain a blog, I've finally given in. I will be writing about what works and what doesn't work for me and everything in between. Lots of stories about the llamas and alpacas will appear as well as records of my various projects. I also plan to share my thoughts about sustainable farming and producing yarn and fiber products using green practices.

It's just about time to head to the barn for evening feeding so I'll leave you with the above photo of our most recent addition. He's a weanling huacaya alpaca, blue grey, sweet as pie, and unbelievably soft. His registered name is Native Son. Isn't he a cutie?