It will get colder in Jan and Feb with minus teens and 20’s in the day time, but the wind chills (-20 to -30) tonight and into tomorrow and Sunday, with this Alberta Clipper, are close to our late Jan and Feb chill. Makes me afraid of what our late Jan and Feb temps will be!! Our mid winter thaw is starting on Tuesday this week (also a month early), but those mid to upper 30’s will be so nice. And tho’ the roads will be messy as all the snow melts, the roads will be clear and then we start over again.
Because of the very cold frostbite temps, my son’s farm won’t be open to the public for alpaca visits tomorrow, tho he’s leaving his store open for shoppers (hope some of them can brave the cold temps for alpaca yarn, alpaca socks and hats, and his 3D printed items.) I get the day off, so the plan is to sleep in, stay home, drink some hot chocolate and knit!
I showed you a picture of a doe that was eating under a tree in the snow before and I took a picture of a Buck a couple of days ago eating under the same tree. They sure are pretty but pretty pesky here in town.
I finished the Look for Happiness Blanket by Fifty Four Ten Studio a few weeks ago and just haven’t gotten around to showing it, so here it is. I made the medium size for a lap blanket. I still need to wash and block it. Hope she will like it. It took me some time, but I found it a peaceful knit and enjoyed this pattern, so I didn’t hurry through it. :). Taking pictures at night sure doesn’t give true color, lol, this is actually a denim color so it’s a little darker and brighter than it shows up. Maybe someday I will master taking pictures for my blog, or not.
The next two pictures I took last week at the Farm’s annual open to the public Christmas celebration. I neglected to get pictures of the alpaca who were wearing candy cane horns, tho I have to admit most of them managed to get them off, lol. But there were cookies (an alpaca cookie I managed to snag). I accidentally broke it on the way home (breaking things seem to be my thing), but it still took a pretty picture and his reg farm hand drew a picture in the snow of an alpaca before people came out, I thought it was cute. Along with the cookies there was also hot chocolate for the people who came out. They also had Santa who asked all the kids what they wanted for Christmas and he gave them all a gift bag with alpaca goodies. Because it was cold we didn’t have a ton of people, but they had put together 50 gift bags for the kids and they were all claimed ;). I think everyone had fun. They are debating, for this next Saturday because of the Alberta clipper that is heading this way with very cold temps, on rather they will open, don’t want little ones getting frostbite. They would still keep the store open for people wanting to shop for Christmas. It will depend on if the clipper arrives on time or is slower moving. It is supposed to be -30 with the wind chills by Monday, winds from 30 to 50 miles per hr in some areas of IA, ugh.
These minus temps are our late Jan and early Feb temps, I can hardly wait to see what they will be in Jan and Feb :0. Even our mid winter thaw (warm up) is coming early, the week before Christmas, according to the weather man, sigh. We need it tho, in 2008 there was no mid winter thaw (we always get one, but not that year, it’s generally in Jan) so the snow on the ground did not melt and when it melted in the spring there was so much snow melting from the top of IA on down that the Cedar River flooded big time, over flowing 5 miles on each side of the river. Rail road cars had been put on the tracks that go over the bridges to try to keep the bridges from being washed away, but the flood was so high it took the rail road cars that had been filled with big rocks to weigh them down more, right off the bridge. A Dairy Queen that was a few blocks away from the river was flooded over the roof. So we need that mid winter thaw. Maybe it means spring will come sooner! I’ll just keep that thought.
This was the Halloween celebration at the farm this past Saturday :). The first two pictures are some of his decorations, then there are several pictures of the alpacas wearing costumes, lol, some of them had trouble leaving them on! You can see the male behind the fence with a bow tie and little Apollo also has a tie on, some of the females were wearing hats. Libby the llama said, nope! They will be decked out at Christmas too :).
The next to the last picture is some sport weight hand spun I turned into a hat for my friend that gave me the smaller wheel that I use at the farm during alpaca days to show spinning to the people who come out to enjoy the alpacas as a thank you. It’s a paid for pattern, Husband Request Hat on Ravelry. I changed it a little so I made it a little longer and knit 4 purl 2 so it’s a little more stretchy, but I wasn’t sure of his head measurements and I am not a fan of the hats that fit skin tight so I thought this was the best way to go. Hope it fits him :P.
The last picture is the new hat I’m working on with the Hats for Warmth project I work on for our local homeless shelter. This will be hat number 5 this year, one more after this and I will send them off to the shelter. I am using a #6 16″ circular needle and I Love This Yarn in the print color #red tweed. It’s not really a tweed, it’s a darker red with black speckles on it, LOL, but it is pretty. I am enjoying knitting it.
The first picture is a skein of yarn I bought from my son’s farm store, it’s a medium brown alpaca from his male alpaca, Charlie, mixed with 20% red pulled sari silk. It is so pretty! It’s a fingering weight yarn, 200 yds. I might get another one to make sure I have enough for a hat or a pair of fingerless mitts as I like the cuff on the long side, I think they will be so pretty!
The next two pictures are a fair isle pattern my son has knit into hats using his flat bed knitting machine. They are knit flat, I’ll be sewing them up for him because, lol, that’s the part he doesn’t enjoy. He is really enjoying that machine!
He has been named….Apollo. He weighed 11 lbs 2 ozs at birth (on the small size) but weighs 12 lbs and 8 ozs now, he’s growing like a weed!! We won’t know his permanent color until he’s sheared next spring, but he is a cutie!
All my son’s yarn, for knitters and crocheters, and roving, for spinners and needle felters, from the past two years of shearing (yeah, there will be quite a bit!) is being picked up this Friday from the fiber mill and should be in his shop on Saturday for Alpaca days at his farm.
We had a birth this morning! A little boy (we were hoping for a little girl) but he is so cute and will be a rose grey like his mom, he’s so little! My son is watching to make sure he could latch on to nurse and the little one did, the colostrum is important. He will be weighed this evening and they will pick out a name for him so he can be registered. I told my son he should name the little one Ozzy Osborn, but he said, he doesn’t look like an Ozzy, and I thought, what does an Ozzy alpaca look like? LOL. Anyway a name will be forthcoming. He’s doing well so far, he was about an hr old in the right bottom picture. My son put one of his whippet’s sweaters on him because it started raining, so he wouldn’t get cold. The mom wasn’t real happy but she allowed it.
The mom is named Dori. She’s a first time mom and had this beautiful 18 lb cria, who was born today at 12:30pm. No name yet, but her dad is Charlie Brown, hehe, he’s the same color brown as this little one is, but she is his first daughter, he has thrown 3 males (also his color). Tim and Ev were very happy to have a little female this time. :). The cria that was born in May was a male they named Oreo because he was black with a white face. Boots (Oreo’s mom, is a black female with with white on the lower part of her front legs, thus her name lol) was brought into the herd last year and was already pregnant (we didn’t know) so we don’t know who the father was. All the males and females on that farm were registered and there’s no genetics to our herd, so having a new black male alpaca is a plus :). Only Izabella is left to have her cria but she’s not due until September, bless her heart having to carry through the hot summer.
I’ve been using my wool combs on the 2nds from Leah (a year old cria). This fleece is soooo soft, but dirty and the combs are doing a good job helping to take out the hay pieces. I’m washing after combing instead of before because her fiber is so soft that the hay just sticks to it and I figured that washing it first would just dig it deeper in. I’ll show a picture when I get enough to card into a batt. It’s a slow process but worth it to save this luxury fiber. 🙂
Ok, some of this is a more than a month old and some is this month. If you click on the picture you are looking at it will enlarge. The first picture is a vertical swift my son made for me out of pvc pipe from some plans that I found online (maybe Ravelry). It was made, when finished, for a 4 yard skein around, but I only wanted a 2 yard skein so he cut it down a bit for me. Nice to have a great son who is willing and able to do stuff like this for me, I’m very grateful because he has a full time job and his farm to run, he could have said, I don’t have time, but he made it for me anyway, he is a sweetie!
The next two pictures are to show my progress on the Look for Happiness baby blanket I’m working on. I am loving this pattern, it’s such a pretty pattern, and it’s peaceful to make. I figure I am almost 1/2 way finished :). I took one up close so you could see the pattern a little better. I am still working on the fingerless mitts and will put a picture up when I get one finished and start the other one.
The next 3 pictures are at my son’s farm’s last Saturday with the public for the year (the Saturday before Christmas). He had to postpone from the week before because we had had an ice storm, I took the pictures before people started arriving. The first picture is Libby (the Llama) in a Christmas Top Hat, she was not impressed, hehe. The next 2 pictures are some of the female alpacas at the farm, 2 of them are wearing Christmas hats. They were ok with them. Libby is a bit more head strong, but that is a llama for you :P. They are all loving the cooler temperatures. There were cookies and hot chocolate for the visitors and my son’s mother in law made a wonderful chile con carne, for those of us working at the farm, for lunch, soooo good!!! She promised me the recipe.
Real cold weather is finally on the way, hello winter!
This is what I woke up to this morning, as you can see it wasn’t much, the ground isn’t quite cold enough for “fluffy stuff” to really stick around very long. Winter’s here, or at least trying to get here, we are suppose to have another warm up by this weekend into the 30’s, then we get hit with another winter blast from Canada. We only got the back side of this big storm that hit everyone with lots of snow east of us. But the weatherman said don’t worry there are more storms on the way. Sigh.
Got my Christmas tree up! I got this one 2 Christmas’ ago because my very old fiber optic tree (that I bought used in 2005) finally quit and I got this new fiber optic tree, I like all the colors it turns. It’s about a foot shorter, but I like it :). It’s feeling like Christmas is coming!!! I’m listening to all the Christmas music on my favorite radio station and loving it :). I’m trying to work on some knitting, need to push through, I have stuff that needs to get done!!!! Hopefully in a week or so I will have some progress to report.
This is Wish, the last cria born on the farm this year. He’s almost 4 months old so this is his first winter. I asked Ev, my son in law, if Wish was running and playing in the snow because of the snow on his back, but he said no, he was sitting by the barn door which stays open, except in bad storms or extreme cold, watching the snow and got snowed on, lol. But as you can see it doesn’t melt on him, because of the dense fiber which insulates his body from the cold and snow. Just thought I would throw this picture in because the cria (baby alpaca) are so cute!
Ok, as promised :). The top pictures from left to right – The first picture is my son’s sock machine, it was rather windy – you can see the yarn blowing in the breeze, lol. He can whip out a pair of socks in about an hr, pretty cool huh? It’s made of metal and he lets the kids that come take turns turning the handle making a tube, they love it. Next picture is my spinning wheel, a Rick Reeves double drive wheel. It’s the smallest of my two wheels and will actually fit in the back seat of my car. My Kromski Polonaise is much bigger and would have to be taken apart to travel in my car, and nope not gonna do that! I’m not as sharing with my wheel at the event, it’s not replaceable, lol. I spin and people watch and ask questions that I am very happy to answer about the alpaca fiber and the wheel and making yarn, I do let them feel the alpaca fiber :). That cria fiber spins like a dream!! The 3rd picture is my son’s drum carder that he makes batts with for the dryer balls he sells at his farm store. I have two and put lavender on them before they go in the dryer, makes my clothes smell nice :). Behind the drum carder you can see his little tractor, that makes it easier for all the farm stuff he and Ev have to attend to. The 4th picture is the skirting table he made so it would be easier for them to skirt the fleeces and let the dirt fall to the ground and behind that you can see the frame with seats he made and attached on the trailer (that he pulls with the tractor) for hay rack rides he does once a week, everyone seems to enjoy the ride and the fire pit making smores afterwards :). My son is very handy with making things. The bigger picture to the left are his pea fowl and a family member who came to help. The peacock is starting to color out on the feathers on his back and a little on his tail, but it will be another 2 years before he has full color on all his feathers. He already looks at himself in the mirror that my son set out for him, the peacock is a narcissist, lol. The next 3 pictures to the left are of some of his herd. I did cover up faces of two people who were there because I didn’t get to ask them if they minded being in my blog. The last of those 3 pictures is the newest cria that was born a month ago, they call him Wish, but his full name is Wish Upon a Star, because his mother’s name is Star. He’s a cutie.
The last picture at the bottom is a hat with the new tags I ordered. I didn’t get leather because I was worried about how they would handle being washed and I wanted these to be easy care hats with a little something extra, so these are faux leather (a thick vinyl, lol) I chose the one that looked like bamboo. I think they look nice and everyone likes something nice. For the shelter I will make some with Child of God showing and some with the knitted heart showing so they have a choice. I think when I reorder I will get the ones I have to sew on instead of the snaps so they won’t come off in the washing machine. I’m a worry wort and I worry about everything, lol.
Prayers are going still going out to all those who were affected by Helena, please keep asking Heavenly Father for peace and comfort and help for them all. The devastation was massive and the emotional toll, for those who lost family and/or all they had, is great :(. I saw that there are many people out there trying to start helping with clean up and bringing things in, water, food etc, even tho FEMA and the Red Cross weren’t out there yet (where the heck are they?). My church always assesses what is needed and sends truck loads of things and there will be some of my church members from all over going to help with the clean up as well. I know that Ryan Hall Ya’ll (a YouTube weatherman) also sends trucks of things out to help from donations from those who watch his channel. Because food and things are coming in, I think clean up and housing will be the biggest issues, along with accounting for everyone that is still missing. :(. My heart is broken for all of them.
LDSVenus-knits 