Fibery Stuff

Wow, it's been over a week since the last post. I guess nothing earth-shattering has happened around here.

This weekend is Alpace Farm Days, when alpaca farms around the country have open houses. So I took DGD and visited two of the four alpaca farms here in our county. The owners of farm #1, Silver Thunder Alpacas, are former spinning students of mine. I see him around once in a while because he works at our local Tractor Supply. Her I don't see but once a year or so. It was nice to see how their farm is coming along, with new gates (can never have too many gates), a new little farm store building, and a new cria from this spring. Baby alpacas and llamas are called crias. They're building their herd up slowly and have 8 females and at least 5 or 6 males (though not all the males are used for breeding, some are just for fiber).

The second farm is Appalachian Alpacas. I did a spinning demo and display there two years ago for Alpaca Farm Days. The first day was very windy and blew all my display stuff all over. The second day it rained just sideways enough to get my stuff wet (I was in a gazebo). So that was a flop. Today was much nicer. A friend of mine, the hostess of our local fiber guild, was weaving on a small triangle loom and a man, who I knew from a local weaving guild, was spinning (yes, men spin too, for you non-spinners out there). This farm has a bigger herd than the other one because the daughter and SIL of one owner lives next door and keeps their alpacas with mom's. So they had 8 crias, all fairly young, with their mothers, plus a few females with no baby. Didn't see where the males were.

While I was there, our guild mom told me about a new fiber fair that will be held in Charlotte, NC, next June. They have a website, but there's nothing much on it yet. I hope to go, if I can save up enough spending money. Charlotte's about a 3 1/2 to 4 hr. ride, so I don't know if it warrants an overnight stay or not. Depends on how much walking around I do. There's another show next month, SAFF, or Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair, just south of Asheville. That's only 1 1/2 hr. away, so that's easy to do in one day. I have a couple of fleeces (sheep) that were given to me that I desperately need to have processed (since I don't want to wash them myself). I don't mind carding, but can't stand washing. Which is why it's taken me about 3 years to process another fleece that I bought. I still have about 2 pounds left to do. So, anyway, I absolutely MUST take those 2 or 3 fleeces with me and drop them off with the fiber mill that will be there as a vendor. They're in Missouri, so they'll then ship back a box or boxes of nice clean roving (long continuous strip of carded wool).

In keeping with the fibery vein, I need to wash yarn this week. The yarn I've spun for Howell Farm needs to be washed, measured, weighed, and labeled before Thursday. That last half pound of wool that still needs to be spun? Yeah, well, I guess it's not going to get done before we go, unless I get ambitious tomorrow. LOL