Frost, Fiber, a Festival, Friends

This is why I have a mudroom!

I missed posting last week.  I had one of those days where I had not slept well the night before and I just couldn't get my mind in gear to think about it.  Not only that, but our weather had been grey and drizzly and dreary, so I had no photos to share.  

We have had rain.  Lots of rain in fact.  Enough that the pond has gone from being down almost 2 feet to flowing out the overflow pipe.  Carter is somewhat fascinated with the pond.  He always goes out on the end of the diving board and peers down into the water.   We are trying to discourage the dogs from actually getting wet.  I am sure the water is quite cold, despite the warm December weather.

We have also had some very cold, bright frosty mornings.  Personally, I love these mornings.  I love being out in them.  Everything sparkles with frost and each stem and blade of grass is coated with tiny crystals.  

 You can tell it has been oddly warm by the green leaves on the multiflora roses.  

 Once the sun comes up and hits the fields and buildings the frost will disappear.  The alpacas do not seem to mind the cold.  I can usually tell where they have spent the night by the ovals of unfrosted ground in the pasture, created by warm, kushed alpaca bodies.

The Christmas Festival went quite well.  I sold a lot of my Made in USA Alpaca Socks.  I send 5 pounds of fiber to a fiber pool in New England along with some money, and they send me a dozen pairs of socks.  I have been doing this ever since the Fiber Pool started and the products have been getting nicer and nicer.  I usually only get socks, though they have lots of other products available. 

This past Friday, my friend Tari and I went to Apple Creek Ohio to Morningstar Fiber Mill and picked up my latest batch of 100% alpaca yarn.  I have about 11 pounds in 46 skeins of sport weight.  It is white and just screaming to be dyed!  I also dropped off another 9 pounds of fiber to be spun into a 3-ply worsted weight yarn.  While in the area, Tari and I also went to Wooster and visited Calla Lily Yarn and Gifts.
www.callalilyyarn.com/   While I go to Wooster every Memorial Day weekend to attend the Great Lakes Fiber Show, I have never made it to this yarn shop and so we made the trip.  It is a very nice shop with a good selection of yarn.  The owner even seemed as though she might possibly be interested in carrying some hand-dyed alpaca yarn.  Hmmmm.....  It was just fun to spend a day with Tari and we stopped at some bulk food stores in Amish country and had lunch out and talked about kids and dogs and gardening and knitting and spinning and..................

In other news, we have finalized travel plans for younger son, Sam/Zac to fly home in January.  He will be here for 2 weeks, though I am sure he will be borrowing a car and taking off to visit college buddies for part of that time.  But it will be so good to see him.  Older son Ian, has completed his first semester at Portland Community College and has made the dean's list.  I am immensely proud that  he is taking this on, though not surprised that he is doing so well.

Christmas knitting is finished!  All of the projects were small and could be finished in a period of a couple days or so and I tried to alternate them with a few days of my personal knitting on my shawl or on this sweater I have started.  It is kind of a blue spruce color and the yarn is a commercial blend of 50/50 merino wool and alpaca.  So far I am very happy with the progress on it.

  Carter is doing very well.  I am thinking of removing the dog crate from the living room as he really hates it and has now been left alone for up to 8 hours (with Rowdy) uncrated and  does very well.  Some dogs like their crates, it is a safe den for them to retreat to, but not so with Carter.  He resists going into it, though he settles after a few minutes.  

 He is thoroughly enjoying the life of a farm dog.  He is still kept on a lead most of the time around the chickens, but he really doesn't seem to care about them.

I am still not able to get him to "pose" for a photo, so most pictures I get of him are of him coming toward me.  His coloring also makes it hard to get a good picture as the white seems to get over-exposed.  We will work on it.  I have been spoiled by taking photos of Rowdy.  He is an excellent photo subject.

And aren't these girls cute?  This is Mayhem and Caley taking advantage of the fact that all the adults are in the barn eating grain to be the first at the newly filled hay feeder.  They are almost 3 months old now and will hopefully start eating grain themselves soon.  They all figure it out in their own time.